Early Returns, and Good News, on Attendance in Georgia | American Enterprise Institute

Last month, I published my annual report on national progress on chronic absenteeism. The picture is not comforting. Looking at data from 45 states for the 2024–25 school year, I show that chronic absenteeism rates continue to decline from their 2022 peak, but much more slowly than in prior years. As I put it in the report: 

Using the American Enterprise Institute’s Return to Learn Tracker, which provides chronic absenteeism data for districts in 44 states and the District of Columbia that have released data for the school year ending in 2025, this report shows that improvement is slowing dangerously. From its height [of over 28 percent] in 2022, chronic absenteeism in these jurisdictions declined by nearly 3 percentage points in 2023, by just over 2 points in 2024, and by just under 1 point in 2025. 

Almost all states have leaders who say chronic absenteeism is an urgent problem, but in practice, many don’t treat it that way. For instance, my recently released report came out in June—a full year after schools wrapped the 2024–25 school year. Why? Because it takes states a while to release data, and the last few data releases came in late May. Indeed, there are some states—Minnesota and Texas among them—that still have not released data for the 2024–25 school year.   

States can do much better on this front. For example, just last week, Georgia announced its chronic absenteeism rate for the 2025–26 school year, demonstrating a real focus on chronic absenteeism by being one of the first states to release its data for the school year that just ended. Perhaps even more impressively, Georgia’s chronic absenteeism rate is declining steadily, bucking the national trend.  

During the 2025–26 school year, Georgia’s (de-duplicated) chronic absenteeism rate was 17.7 percent, a nearly two-percentage-point decline from the year prior. Two points is solid progress, but better yet, that decline is the same size as the prior year’s decline and larger than declines in previous years. In other words, at a time when progress across the nation is slowing down, progress in Georgia is gaining momentum. 

Georgia is one of the states that signed on to the 50 percent challenge, a partnership between Attendance Works, EdTrust, and me, whereby states commit to cutting their chronic absenteeism rates by half within five years. Steady progress toward that goal is great to see, especially in the wake of my recent report that showed that many districts are not on track to meet that 50-percent goal.   

Districts and states across the country—Georgia included—still have a long road ahead to get chronic absenteeism back to manageable levels. But by continuing to make headway in lowering chronic absenteeism rates and prioritizing speedy release of data, Georgia is showing that progress on absenteeism is possible when states approach the issue with urgency.