A Note from the Executive Director

As the year comes to a close, I’d like to express my deepest gratitude for your innovation and your dedication to ensuring all students are engaged and learning despite the challenging times. Your persistence and commitment to noticing and reaching out when students miss school with caring and compassion are what makes progress possible. 

We are celebrating the continued improvement in student attendance and engagement happening in most states across the country. California, for example, has announced a drop in its statewide chronic absence rate to 19.4% in the 2024-25 school year down from a peak of 30% in 2022. In October 2025, Connecticut saw the chronic absence rate drop to 13.3%, down from 16.1% last October. High-needs students in CT also saw improvement, with a three-point decrease over the same period. 

We are delighted when schools contact us to share their successes because it shows what is possible. For example, educators at Robertsdale Elementary School in Alabama engaged the entire community in a year-long, data-informed effort resulting in chronic absence dropping from 18.5% to 9.51% in one year. Read how in this bright spot!

Keeping students healthy and in school is a challenge at all times, but the bad weather and winter illnesses during the winter season can lead to spikes in absences. Share our handouts developed with the National Association of School Nurses and Kaiser Permanente to keep students healthy and in school. Be sure to check out our new handouts on managing chronic health issues.

Along with my team, I wish you a holiday season that renews your spirit and strength. We look forward to working with you to support new successes, both large and small, in 2026!

Warmly, 

Hedy Chang

Founder and Executive Director

Concerned that cold or wet weather will create challenges to regular attendance? Check out Stay the Course: Support Attendance in the Winter Months for districts, schools and communities. Find sample letters to send home, tips for activities and actions you can take to help families overcome weather-related barriers that stand in the way of getting children to school. 

The winter months offer an opportunity to assess what you will need to do for the rest of the school year. Consult our year-long planning tool for schools PreK-12 and districts. Find them here!

RaaWee K12 just announced the launch of "Quick Wins for Attendance", a series of short videos with tips on implementing positive, solution-oriented approaches. 

Imagination Stage's Education Theatre, supported by Kaiser Permanente is offering a free, virtual 60-minute professional development workshop. Resilience in School Environments: Understanding and Practice (RISE UP), aims to help schools utilize a social emotional arts-based approach to examine mental health challenges.

National Equity Atlas, an interactive data tool for community and policy leaders, has added chronic absence to its readiness metrics. The Atlas reports that in the 2022-23 school year, national chronic absence rates reached 27% and there are stark disparities. For example, Native American high-schoolers in high-poverty schools had a 56% rate across all grade levels, and Black students in high-poverty schools had a chronic absence rate of 40%, nearly twice the rate of their counterparts in low-poverty schools (21%).

The nonprofit PIQE is hosting a research-based session in December that explores how shifting political climates and immigration enforcement are affecting early learner attendance for Hispanic families in California. Register for an evening chat and/or a lunch and learn session.

In an interactive data analysis, the North Carolina Early Childhood Foundation highlighted “good news schools” and found that 214 out of 1,306 elementary schools have low chronic absence rates; 15 of these schools are in low income communities. At Trent Park Elementary, for example, 9% of students were chronically absent in 2022-23, down from a high of 23% in 2020-21.

A new analysis from SchoolStatus, New 2025 Data: How to Engage K-12 Families to Improve Student Attendance, finds that when schools reach out to families early, consistently and at predictable times, the attendance improvements are dramatic. In many cases, families don't realize how deeply missed days, even when absences are excused, affect learning.

More than 400,000 estimated additional adults have been engaged as tutors, mentors and wraparound support providers in our schools, according to a survey of K-12 public school principals. Researchers at the Everyone Graduates Center, Johns Hopkins University reviewed the findings and challenges to implementing these programs in “Are K-12 Students Getting the Evidence-Based Supports They Need?”

School reopening during the pandemic resulted in significantly lower rates of mental health diagnoses among children, with the biggest drop seen for diagnoses of anxiety and depression, according to a new study of school-aged children in California during March 2020-June 2021. There was also a drop in related healthcare spending. In-person learning is an important component of children’s mental health, the authors concluded.

An evaluation by UC Berkeley found that schools with Playworks programming (designed to equip schools help students stay active and build valuable life skills through play) had lower chronic absence rates than schools without Playworks.

Helios Education Foundation, in collaboration with WestEd, recently released Missing Too Much High School: An Analysis of Arizona Chronic Absence Trends in Grades 9-12 showing that more than one in three Arizona high school students were chronically absent in 2023-24 and that chronic absence rises with grade level.

Registration is open for spring 2026 classes in our three-part professional training series. Each class offers free resources, evidence-based tiered strategies and opportunities to interact with peers and the Attendance Works team. If your state or district is interested in a customized series, contact us at help@attendanceworks.org.

High school bullying is up, attendance down as ICE raids sow ‘climate of distress,’ study says, Los Angeles Times, December 9, 2025

They Examined 3.3 Million Text Messages on Chronic Absenteeism. Here Are 4 Big Findings, The74, November 12, 2025

Chronic Absenteeism: An Overlooked Vital Sign, Hopkins Bloomberg Public Health, Fall/Winter

Our ability to provide free resources and tools, webinars, technical assistance and guidance depends on contributions from people like you. Please donate today to help all students show up to school every day possible.