Attending to absence

It's back to school for the nation's youth, but for some, it is only partially so. Spikes in student absence reflect one thorny legacy of the COVID-19 pandemic. Chronic absenteeism (commonly defined as missing 10% or more of school days) has peaked in the past few years. Nearly twice as many students (28%) hit the chronically absent mark in 2022 (Return to Learn, 2025) as in pre-pandemic years (roughly 15% of students in 2018 and 2019). In 2023, rates began to fall, but remain high — approximately 26% of students nationwide. The pattern persists here in Rhode Island, including a shocking 43% of high schoolers being chronically absent (Rhode Island Kids Count Factbook, 2025). Sadly, it is predictable that although absentee rates are elevated for all, they were significantly higher in schools with a high percentage of nonwhite students, students in poverty, and in rural and urban (compared to suburban) schools. Although slightly higher in schools with the most masking or least in-person instruction in 2021–22, the growth in chronic absenteeism appears to be a global phenomenon, cutting across nations with very different approaches to the pandemic and schooling (Wallace-Wells, 2024).