Why are students still so behind post-COVID? Their school attendance remains abysmal

As schools and parents contend with uncomfortable and increasingly unavoidable truths about persistent learning loss, new data out Thursday points to a key source of the problem: Scores of students have in recent years missed so much school that catching up seems nearly impossible.

The U.S. Education Department data, analyzed by Attendance Works and Johns Hopkins University’s Everyone Graduates Center, shows that in the 2021-22 school year, 2 in 3 students attended schools with high or extreme levels of chronic absence. Chronic absence typically refers to missing at least 10% of the school year, and the analysis considers a school’s levels to be high or extreme if at least a fifth of its students are chronically absent. 

Overall, roughly 30% of students were chronically absent during the 2021-22 year. It was an era still reeling from the devastation of COVID-19 – quarantines were frequent, health needs were vast and hardship was widespread.

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