Schools are getting aggressive to combat persistent and considerable student absenteeism

How much is this absenteeism is possibly due to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic?

"Around one in four students nationally was chronically absent—a commonly used metric of those who miss at least 10% of school, typically 18 days—in the 2022-23 school year, according to an analysis of 24 states with available data compiled by FutureEd. Before the pandemic, the nationwide average was closer to one in seven students. Schools are rolling out marketing campaigns trumpeting the importance of being in class, sending staff to visit homes and even offering teachers financial incentives. Educators are eager to reduce the rates of chronic absenteeism because students who miss class are falling behind academically and, in many states, schools receive funding based on attendance."

"... Most states showed some recovery from the pandemic-related spike in absenteeism in the 2021-22 school year. But the recovery has been modest. Of the 27 states that have released 2022-23 absenteeism data, 17 reported improvements in chronic absenteeism rates of five percentage points or fewer. ...
Chronic absenteeism often signals that students are experiencing untreated health needs, transportation problems, mental health issues, or other significant challenges. When many students attend school irregularly, teachers can’t move through the curriculum at their usual pace, which hurts the academic progress of students who are attending regularly as well as absentees. ...

As of mid-October 2023, Rhode Island was the only state that had developed a publicly available, real-time dashboard that could spot the number of students in each school who were on track to miss more than 10 percent of the school year."

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Tracking State Trends in Chronic Absenteeism