Chronic Absenteeism Affects Nearly All School Districts
A new analysis of federal data by Attendance Works finds that half of all chronically absent students live in just 4 percent of U.S. school districts, mostly disadvantaged urban neighborhoods. The analysis finds that chronic absence (when a student misses 10 percent of a school year) affects 89 percent of school districts nationwide, even in affluent suburbs with high levels of academic achievement. High-poverty urban neighborhoods and small rural districts struggle the most with chronic absenteeism, according to the analysis.