Mass. students are absent from school at 'staggering' rates, says state education official

Nearly four years after the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted learning and drove up student absences, state education officials say Massachusetts students are still missing school at “staggering” rates.

At a meeting of the state's board of elementary and secondary education Tuesday, commissioner of K-12 education Jeff Riley said addressing chronic absenteeism will be "the most important thing we can do … if we want to improve outcomes for children.”

He said his office will make the push for more regular attendance a top priority in the year ahead.

“This level of absenteeism is something we've never seen before,” Riley said. "The numbers are staggering across this country."

Massachusetts defines students who miss 10% or more school days as “chronically absent.” That means at least 18 days missed in a regular school year, whether those are excused or unexcused absences. Between 2019 and 2023, the statewide rate of chronic absenteeism soared by 72%, according to state officials.

In 2019, just 13% of kids statewide were designated chronically absent. That rate rose, by June 2022, to nearly 29%. The latest data shows modest improvement but remains above 22%.

The chronic absenteeism rate in Massachusetts is particularly high in the elementary grades, according to Riley — as well as among students from low-income households, who are chronically absent at around 33% across all grades. Large urban districts saw particularly large spikes in absenteeism during the pandemic. And while some, like Lawrence, have made quicker gains since then, they haven't returned to pre-pandemic levels.

During the board meeting Tuesday, Riley said his office will offer $4 million to help districts better track absences and to work with students’ families to get them back in school.

He also proposed assigning greater weight to attendance as an accountability measure to gauge which districts warrant state intervention in the year ahead.

Research links frequent absences from school to negative outcomes beyond learning loss, from dropping out of school at higher rates to disciplinary problems.

At Tuesday’s meeting, pediatrician Beverly Nazarian said that’s no surprise. “Schools provide schedules and connection and socialization. So they are actually essential for student mental health,” she said.

“This is something that really requires a community solution,” Nazarian added.

Riley offered few details about what that solution might look like, but mentioned as an example “recovery academies,” which offer additional instruction during school vacations and are modeled on a program he launched a decade ago as a middle school principal in Boston.

Both the $4 million grant and the idea of using the state's formal accountability system to combat absenteeism sparked debate among board members Tuesday.

Board vice chair, Matt Hills, expressed concern about assigning too much weight to attendance in the state’s school accountability system, which is designed primarily to reflect academic progress.

Riley replied the absenteeism problem is dire enough that “we've got to [be] willing to think about new responses to fix it.” The subject will be up for further discussion at the board’s planned family summit on Thursday in Marlborough.

In the meantime, Patrick Tutwiler — the state’s education secretary since December — plans to appear in a television commercial to promote regular school attendance.

Tutwiler said Tuesday that he was participating “not because I'm photogenic or talented — it's more because I believe really deeply in this initiative.”

As superintendent of Lynn Public Schools, Tutwiler oversaw a decrease of three percentage points in chronic absenteeism between 2015 and 2020 — a change he attributed to a “mindset shift” encapsulated in the message, “every student, every day.”

Tutwiler said he and his team came to see absenteeism “as a manifestation of an unmet need — whether it's food security, housing stability … an issue with another student at school, or with the school itself.”