July 2026

The pandemic affected all communities, leading to sharp increases in chronic absenteeism in most school districts. Across the nation, chronic absenteeism rates nearly doubled between the 2018-2019 and 2021-22 school years. Significant increases occurred in urban and rural areas, in both low-income and affluent communities, in districts with historically high rates of chronic absenteeism, and in districts where few students had been chronically absent before the pandemic. As a result, reducing chronic absenteeism has become a major priority for most school districts.

This new analysis from researchers at the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University identifies how many districts experienced substantial pandemic-era increases in chronic absenteeism, which types of districts were most affected, and how many returned to close to pre-pandemic levels by the 2023–2024 or 2024–2025 school years.

The report pays special attention to districts nationwide that had at least a 10 percentage point increase in chronic absenteeism from pre- to post-pandemic. Districts that were able to decrease their chronic absenteeism rate to within two percentage points of their pre-pandemic level by 2024-25 or 2023-24 were considered to have “bounced back.”

Key findings include:

• Bouncing back is possible. Districts of all sizes and locales have been able to bounce back to near pre-pandemic levels of chronic absenteeism.
• Bouncing back is not yet common. By the 2024-25 school year, only 11% of school districts that experienced significant post-pandemic chronic absenteeism increases had returned to chronic absenteeism levels close to pre-pandemic. 
• While bouncing back took place in many different kinds of districts, it was most common in small and rural districts. 20% of small and rural districts bounced back by 2024-25 (compared to 100% of all districts). The small and rural districts that bounced back were largely concentrated in particular states, suggesting that state actions may have played a role in districts’ ability to bounce back.