Dive Brief:
- National progress in reducing student chronic absenteeism is beginning to slow, according to new data released by the American Enterprise Institute.
- A 45-state analysis by AEI specifically found that while chronic absenteeism has steadily declined since the COVID-19 pandemic, the collective absenteeism rate was 22.6% in 2025 compared to 23.5% in 2024 and 28.3% in 2022. That compares to 15.4% in 2019, one year before the global health crisis.
- Still, there are “accelerated levels of change” emerging among the 18 states that have pledged to reduce their chronic absenteeism by half within five years, said Hedy Chang, CEO, president and founder of Attendance Works, during a Thursday webinar.
Dive Insight:
States participating in the 50% Challenge have reduced their chronic absenteeism by an average of 5.7% from baseline between the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years, according to Attendance Works. Meanwhile, 29 states not participating in the pledge have seen a lower average reduction in absenteeism of 3.2% within the same period.
The 50% Challenge is an initiative launched by Attendance Works, EdTrust and Nat Malkus with AEI. Student chronic absenteeism is broadly defined as missing 10% of the school year, or about 18 days — for any reason.
“A lot of people, when they hear about the 50% challenge, they say, ‘Wow, that's a little ambitious,’” said Nat Malkus, senior fellow and deputy director of education policy studies at AEI, during the webinar. “And I think that what we're seeing is some proof points that substantive progress can be made.”
Despite concerns with this broader trend in slowing attendance progress, experts at AEI and Attendance Works pointed to states like Iowa and Rhode Island that have made substantive progress in recent years to reduce chronic absenteeism. Both states have opted into the 50% Challenge, as well.
Iowa, for instance, has reduced its chronic absenteeism rate by nearly six percentage points from 21.6% in 2023-24 to 15.8% in 2024-25, said McKenzie Snow, director of the Iowa Department of Education, during the webinar. That marks one of the largest drops in absenteeism for one state, Malkus noted.
Rhode Island has seen consistent declines in chronic absenteeism and is currently less than half a percentage point away from its pre-pandemic rates, “and they’re not showing any signs of slowing,” Malkus said.
Snow emphasized that improving attendance requires a “holistic approach” that means an entire community needs to be at the table working together for solutions.
That can be seen in many ways, she said, like Iowa’s absenteeism prevention plan, which is a state policy requiring student engagement meetings between families and schools when a student’s non-exempt absences surpass 15% of school days or hours in a grading period. The plan helps the school and family identify barriers to attendance and any interventions that can improve it.
Angélica Infante-Green, Rhode Island’s commissioner of elementary and secondary education, credits the state’s success in improving attendance to a combination of strong policy, statewide efforts and collaboration, and the collection and analysis of comprehensive data.
Some of Rhode Island’s initiatives include a student attendance data dashboard that also has a leader board for schools and districts. The state honors and celebrates those leading districts, and that can include receiving a call from the governor, Infante-Green said in the webinar. She added that Rhode Island is one of the only states with real-time daily attendance data, which “has made all the difference for us.”
