Dive Brief:
- Federal calculations for measuring student chronic absenteeism rates are unreliable and improbable, with some schools showing 100% of their students as chronically absent, according to a U.S. Government Accountability Office report released Wednesday.
- GAO's analysis found implausible chronic absenteeism rates at around 2.5% of schools nationwide for the 2022-23 school year, particularly at low-performing schools and at schools where students attend for part of the day, like those with career and technical education programs.
- In addition to improving chronic absenteeism calculations, GAO recommends the U.S. Department of Education restart comprehensive monitoring to ensure states are meeting federal fiscal and program requirements. The agency disagreed with this recommendation, saying that while it paused comprehensive monitoring in 2026, it is conducting targeted monitoring activities and will reveal a monitoring plan for next year.
Dive Insight:
Without careful comprehensive monitoring of states' implementation of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act Title I fiscal rules, billions of dollars could be subject to fraud, waste and abuse, the report said. In 2025, ESEA formula grant funds totaled more than $18 billion for Title I schools.
Under the Trump administration, the Education Department has cut staff by over 85% at its Institute of Education Sciences — the office responsible for EDFacts data collection. EDFacts is the Education Department's data submission and storage hub.
The agency's Office of Elementary and Secondary Education's workforce has been reduced by 43%. OESE "serves as data steward for the chronic absenteeism data collection," the report said.
To receive federal funding, states must report on chronic absenteeism rates and many other activities. As of the 2025-26 school year, there were 36 states that include chronic absenteeism as an indicator in their statewide accountability systems. Some states, the report said, also independently set attendance goals.
At least 25% of students nationally have been chronically absent in recent years. Chronic absenteeism is when a student misses 10% or more school days over the course of a school year for any reason.
GAO took issue with how the Education Department counts enrolled students, which is based on a single day count on Oct. 1 even though students identified as chronically absent for federal reporting requirements are counted over an entire school year.
Having the same timeframe for counting enrolled students and those who are chronically absent would yield more reliable data about student absenteeism, GAO said. Reliable rates also allow for comparisons across schools of different sizes.
"Using a single day count is problematic because enrollment counts may differ if students are moving in and out of the school over the course of the school year," the report said.
The Education Department disagreed with GAO's recommendation to better align these counts, explaining that this data limitation is already noted among its reporting activities and that it didn't want to impose additional reporting burdens on states.
The GAO report said an expert on chronic absenteeism data, who was unnamed in the report, told its researchers that states already need to identify the number of students enrolled for at least 10 days to determine the number of students who are chronically absent. That data is required for EDFacts reporting. Therefore, additional reporting burdens could be minimal since states are already collecting these figures, GAO said.
Unless the Education Department addresses the reliability of its chronic absenteeism data, "EDFacts data cannot reliably be used to compare or track trends in chronic absenteeism rates, identify which schools or states have particularly concerning levels of chronic absenteeism, or evaluate the impact of accountability efforts on a national level," the GAO report said.
The Education Department did agree with GAO's recommendation to issue guidance on how states can report chronic absenteeism data for students who have partial school day attendance.
"The Department will continue to partner with states, the private sector, and policymakers to improve American students' attendance and improve academic outcomes," said Kirsten Baesler, assistant secretary of the Education Department's Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, in an Aug. 21 letter to GAO.
