The pandemic brought a spike in NC students missing school. It’s still too high

This article appeared in The News and Observer, August 25, 2025

As North Carolina’s children head back to school, educators are searching for ways to keep them coming back throughout the school year.

The percentage of students who are chronically absent – missing more than 18 school days, or 10% of the 180-day school year – spiked during the pandemic and is not readily returning to pre-pandemic levels.

The persistence of high absenteeism is a national phenomenon, though North Carolina is on the higher side. Chronic absenteeism in the state’s public schools rose from 15% in 2019 to 31% during the pandemic and has only dropped to 25%. Nationally, the rate increased from 15% prior to the pandemic to 28.5% in 2022 and fell to 23.5% in 2024.

That decline is welcome, but the percentage is still quite high and in some districts even higher. Educators worry that without an effort to bring the percentage down, having one in four students chronically absent could become the “new normal” in public schools.

It’s much more than a problem of teens skipping school or only in high poverty districts. It’s an issue from kindergarten onward for districts of all income levels.

There are many reasons a student may be absent, including illness and injury, lack of transportation, family travels or problems at home. But those reasons don’t explain why chronic absenteeism has not returned to its pre-pandemic level.

Michael Maher, chief accountability officer at the state Department of Public Instruction (DPI), said something has changed since the pandemic.

“Our best performing students are missing as many days as our lower performing students,” he said. “That’s troubling.”

Reducing chronic absenteeism is a DPI priority this year. There will be a focus on giving districts resources to directly address why a student is absent for too many school days.

Meanwhile, North Carolina is working with researchers at the American Enterprise Institute to explore the causes of the problem and its potential solutions.

Ethan Hutt, an associate professor at the UNC School of Education, studies school absenteeism. “There seems to be a cultural shift in people’s attitudes toward school attendance,” he said.

That shift may be a result of schools turning to virtual learning during the pandemic, he said.

“I worry about what we’ve communicated,” he said. “One legacy of the pandemic is you can do school from home.”

In North Carolina, school attendance is compulsory for children age 7 to 16, but taking a legal approach to enforcing attendance is not the answer, Maher said. “We can’t arrest our way out of this problem,” he said.

Instead, Maher said, schools need to build connections with parents and caregivers and stress the value of attending school. “In-person is absolutely the best form of learning,” he said.

Hutt said that being in school is about more than instruction. It’s also about developing relationships and practicing diligence by committing to a routine that many a parent has asserted with: “You have to go to school!”

“Employers say one of the most important skills is reliability. We worry about creating situations where a lack of showing up is tolerated,” he said. “For employers, that’s a real mismatch of expectations.”

Hutt may be touching on the issue behind the issue. It’s not about students missing school. It’s about putting less value on physical attendance.

Schools are relying more on technology that makes class material and sometimes classes available at all hours. At the same time, politicians emphasizing school choice are weakening the concept of attendance by supporting homeschooling, virtual charter schools and vouchers that go to private schools with little state oversight of school hours.

State lawmakers are adding to the problem by failing to provide adequate funding for school counselors and social workers, who could focus on why a student is chronically absent.

In the end, public schools will have to do more to get attendance back to pre-pandemic levels and ideally even higher. That means using more than technology to track a student’s absence and to notify parents or caregivers, Hutt said.

“It’s going to be about communication and attention that requires real human contact,” he said. “People know when they are being texted by a BOT.”

Students will be there for school if schools are there for them. When students are chronically absent, schools should make it clear that somebody misses them. Associate opinion editor Ned Barnett can be reached at 919-404-7583, or nbarnett@newsobserver.com