Chronic Absenteeism in Missouri Schools

By Courtney Vahle, Ed.D.

Published On: February 28, 2025

Each year, the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education provides data on the attendance rates of Missouri students. Here, we provide a brief overview of chronic absenteeism and updated attendance rates in Missouri in advance of our forthcoming policy brief. We also debut PRiME’s interactive maps, this one detailing the most recent proportional attendance rates by district.

What is Chronic Absenteeism?

Chronic absenteeism or missing 10% (about 18 days) or more of the school year is highly prevalent in the United States with roughly 1 in 4 students considered chronically absent. Research suggests chronic absenteeism can negatively impact graduation, social engagement, and achievement including spillover classroom effects. In 2015, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) was passed to require school districts to broaden their assessment of school quality beyond test scores thus incentivizing states to hold school districts accountable for absenteeism, among other metrics, to assess school performance. School and district chronic absenteeism rates play an important role in school funding and accreditation scores.

The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) also does not have a stated definition of chronic absenteeism as other states do. However, their data reporting system helps us infer that they have a similar working definition. Missouri reports statewide and district-wide attendance by calculating the percentage of students who attend at least 90% of the time—that is, the percentage of students NOT chronically absent. This is called the Proportional Attendance Rate (PAR). Our interactive map below charts the 2024 PAR for each Missouri regular local school district, with darker areas indicating higher levels of attendance and lighter areas indicating lower levels of attendance.

Missouri’s LEA-Level Raw Average Proportional Attendance Rate by Grade Band

Missouri Absenteeism Mirrors National Rates

In 2024, the average proportional attendance rate (PAR) for all students was 78.2%. While this indicates an upward trend from last year, this still means that 22.8% of students in the state were chronically absent. That is, more than one-in-five students missed more than three weeks of school last year.

While all students saw a post-COVID decline in attendance, higher rates of chronic absenteeism are seen in older student populations. In the accompanying chart, we see that elementary and middle grade students are in attendance more than the high school population. In 2024, the average 9–12th grade chronic absenteeism rate was 1.4 times higher than the average K–8 rate. The average proportional attendance rate for elementary and middle school students was 83.3% while it was only 77.5% for high school students.

That said, while still much lower than historical rates, the state average proportional attendance rate as well as that of all measured subgroups increased since 2023. After a post-COVID drop of more than 11 percentage points, followed by a meager 0.5% uptick from the all-time low in 2022, 2024’s results are more optimistic.

Number of Missouri LEAs Classified as “High-Attendance” and “Low-Attendance” Districts

High-Attendance and Low-Attendance Districts

For the purposes of illustration, we will define a high-attendance district as one where less than 10% of students are chronically absent and a low-attendance district as one where more than 20% of students are chronically absent. Until 2020, a very low percentage of Missouri districts were low-attendance districts (about 4% in the 11-year pre-pandemic average). In 2022, after the pandemic, ten times that amount (about 40%) were low-attendance districts. In 2024, about 12 times as many districts are low-attendance districts compared to a decade before in 2014.

Likewise, the percentage of high attendance-districts is falling. In 2014, 369 districts (67%) were classified as high-attendance. A decade later, in 2024, just 16% of districts had chronic absenteeism rates under 10%—a 75% decrease. The accompanying figure illustrates how this reversal of attendance trends happened quickly in the years directly following the pandemic.

The past two years of data may mark a turning point. However, whether or not these will reset to pre-pandemic levels remains uncertain.

Stay tuned for the full-length brief on Chronic Absenteeism, set to release in March. Check our blog and data page frequently for more interactive maps, tracking education trends in Missouri.

References:

Ehrlich, S. B., Gwynne, J. A., & Allensworth, E. M. (2018). Pre-kindergarten attendance matters: Early chronic absence patterns and relationships to learning outcomes. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 44, 136–151. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2018.02.012

Gottfried, M. A. (2019). Chronic Absenteeism in the Classroom Context: Effects on Achievement. Urban Education (Beverly Hills, Calif.), 54(1), 3–34. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085915618709

Jordan, P. W., & Miller, R. (2017). Who’s in: Chronic absenteeism under the Every Student Succeeds Act. Future Ed, Georgetown University. Retrieved from https://www.future-ed.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/REPORT_Chronic_Absenteeism_final_v5.pdf

Mac Iver, M. A., & Messel, M. (2013). The ABCs of keeping on track to graduation: Research findings from Baltimore. Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk (JESPAR), 18(1), 50-67. https://doi.org/10.1080/10824669.2013.745207

Vahle, C., & Wallace, M. (2024). Every Day Counts: Chronic Absenteeism in Missouri Schools. Policy Research in Missouri Education, 6(12). Saint Louis University. https://www.primecenter.org/education-reports-database/every-day-counts-chronic-absenteeism-in-missouri-schools

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