Texas public schools continue to struggle with stubbornly high rates of chronic absenteeism, unable to reverse a trend brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
New data released by the Texas Education Agency shows 19% of students were chronically absent in 2023-24, a marginal decline from the prior year and still well above pre-pandemic rates. Texas deems students chronically absent if they miss at least 10% of their school year, typically equivalent to 18 days of class.
Education leaders across Texas and the rest of the country have labored since the pandemic to get more students back into the classroom, often to little effect.
Chronic absenteeism in Texas hovered around 20% to 25% in the first three post-pandemic school years with fully in-person classes, roughly in line with national averages and double pre-pandemic rates. (Attendance data for 2024-25 will be released next fall.)
Educators and researchers cite several trends resulting in elevated rates of chronic absenteeism, including parents’ willingness to keep children home due to mild illness, shifting perceptions about the importance of in-person classes and an increase in students missing school due to mental health concerns.
For chronically absent children, the impact of consistently missing class can be life-changing. Research has consistently shown chronically absent students are more likely to struggle in early grades, fall behind academically and fail to graduate.
“Understanding absenteeism is not only about looking at test scores,” said Erin Baumgartner, director of the Kinder Institute’s Houston Education Research Consortium. “It’s also considering what being absent might mean in terms of access to other resources that schools so often provide and connect students to, like food, health care, and safe and stable housing.”
Behind the spike
The TEA began tracking chronic absenteeism in the state’s public schools in 2018-19, when 11% of students met the criteria. The pandemic struck the following school year, leading to an artificially low rate of chronic absenteeism because schools stopped counting attendance after campuses shut down in mid-March.
Since then, chronic absenteeism has exceeded the pre-pandemic baseline, peaking in 2021-22 at roughly 25% before a dip toward 20% in the two subsequent years.
Several demographic groups that already perform academically at average or below-average rates — including Black, Hispanic and economically disadvantaged children and students with disabilities — have higher rates of chronic absenteeism than their classmates. While absenteeism rates vary by demographic group, they rose and remained elevated after the pandemic across all groups.
In the Houston area, chronic absenteeism rates have been fractionally lower than those across the state, TEA data shows.
Missing more than class
Researchers often caution that it’s hard to isolate the causal impact of absenteeism on student achievement, particularly given that other potentially life-altering events — illness, family emergency, upheaval in living situations — often result in missing school.
Still, a wide body of research finds strong evidence of a relationship between absenteeism and negative outcomes for children.
Research has consistently shown a connection between poor attendance and lower standardized test scores, particularly in math. Texas students’ performance on state math exams hasn’t yet bounced back to pre-pandemic levels, though researchers haven’t specifically linked the lower scores to higher chronic absenteeism rates.
Chronically absent students also are less likely to remain engaged in their academics and more likely to suffer from anxiety, loneliness and low self-esteem.
In addition, studies have shown the effects of missing class can start in the earliest grades and continue well beyond high school.
No easy solutions
Given the multiple factors contributing to chronic absenteeism, many of which are outside of educators’ control, school leaders have struggled to bring students back.
Attendance advocates and researchers typically encourage schools to create friendly learning environments, analyze data to identify potentially chronically absent students early and deliver support tailored to each student’s individual needs. Kinder Institute research published last year also found students who attend public prekindergarten classes in the Houston area were slightly less likely to be chronically absent in kindergarten and first grade.
“We know early childhood education is important for a lot of reasons, one of which might be helping kids and families get in the habit of going to school on a regular basis starting at an early age,” Baumgartner said.
Texas schools have launched various initiatives to boost attendance rates in recent years, often relying on their internal data and partnerships with local social service nonprofits.
State legislators also enacted a new law this year that classifies chronically absent students as “at risk” of dropping out of school. The designation could result in some students receiving more attention and resources from educators, though many children frequently missing class already meet other criteria for an “at risk” designation.
