Cross-posted from AASA (The School Superintendents Association)
August 18, 2026
Six years after the pandemic, chronic absenteeism remains a pressing concern. National rates are falling, but the pace of improvement has slowed in each of the last three years, with the slowest progress in schools that started with the highest rates. A recent GRAD Partnership report points to a strategy helping schools make progress, particularly those facing the greatest absenteeism and course performance challenges.
For the last three years, the GRAD Partnership has helped urban, rural, and suburban middle and high schools implement student success systems. These systems integrate measures of well-being, belonging, and connectedness with real-time indicators of academic success, using insights from teachers, staff, students, and families to drive strategic action and target support.
Data from GRAD Partnership schools show gains in attendance and course performance in the first year, with impacts accelerating each additional year:
- After one year: chronic absenteeism declined from 31% to 28% and course failure from 33% to 30%.
- After two years: chronic absenteeism declined from 33% to 27% and course failure from 35% to 27%.
- After three years: chronic absenteeism declined from 50% to 40% and course failure from 39% to 22%.
The largest improvements came in schools now in their third year—schools that began with chronic absenteeism affecting half of their students. In ninth grade, course failure declined 19% after one year and 26% after two years, while chronic absenteeism declined from 34% to 27% after two years. Among the small group of schools with three years of ninth-grade data, course failures fell 45%.
The report’s sharpest finding concerns implementation. Among more than 100 schools with first-year data, roughly three quarters fully implemented the system and cut chronic absenteeism by an average of five percentage points. The remaining quarter, which achieved only partial implementation, saw chronic absenteeism rise by an average of four points. Partial adoption does not offer a slower path to the same result: the components are interdependent, and data are only as useful as a team’s ability to act on them.
The GRAD Partnership’s results offer much-needed optimism that, with high-quality, sustained capacity-building support, schools can deliver the supports students need to succeed in school and beyond. As it expands its footprint, the GRAD Partnership remains committed to making student success systems the norm in schools and districts across the nation.
Read the full report for more details on the impacts of student success systems.
