Chronic absenteeism – referring to students who miss 10% or more days of the school year – has become one of the most urgent problems across American schools since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Before the pandemic, about 15% of students across the country missed that much school.

That figure roughly doubled between 2022 and 2023 to more than 28%, according to recent national estimates.

Now, several years later, this figure sits at around 23% nationally. That means close to 1 in 4 students are still missing enough school to put their learning at serious risk.

Researchers point to various challenges to help explain why so many students frequently miss school, including poverty, unreliable transportation and housing instability.

But addressing those problems requires long-term policy changes that are often slow to make and not necessarily possible.

This challenge layered on top of the very real barriers that chronically absent students face can make educators feel defeated and think that absenteeism is simply too big and entrenched of a problem for schools to meaningfully address. This feeling can cause educators and other observers to lose sight of how the school itself can be part of the solution.

We are education scholars who recently published research showing that positive school climates play a significant role in reducing chronic absenteeism, including for students most at risk for chronic absence. This research demonstrates that when schools attend to the conditions that make all students feel welcomed and valued, they are much more likely to show up.

Understanding the evidence on........

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