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).