September 6, 2024
The Latest Chronic Absenteeism Numbers
A new school year is beginning, and students are returning to school, but the question this year is how many will return to attending consistently. Chronic absenteeism, the percentage of students missing 10 percent or more of the school year, nearly doubled during the pandemic, surging from 15 percent of K–12 students in 2019 to…
July 17, 2024
Coming Together on Chronic Absenteeism: Schools’ Top Priority This Year
Event Summary On July 17, AEI’s Nat Malkus was joined by Education Trust’s Denise Forte and Attendance Works’ Hedy Chang to discuss chronic absenteeism. Dr. Malkus presented chronic absenteeism data from his Return to Learn Tracker, then sat down for a fireside chat with Ms. Forte and Ms. Chang. They noted that chronic absenteeism is…
July 15, 2024
It Is Time to Set Goals for Cutting Chronic Absenteeism
Believe it or not, the 2024–25 school year will begin in some parts of the country in less than a month, and students will return to school. Whether they return to school consistently is the most important question at the opening of this school year. Whether schools, districts, and states make chronic absenteeism their top…
May 23, 2024
Biden’s Unending Student Loan Forgiveness Run
On Tuesday, the Biden administration announced $7.7 billion in student debt cancellation for about 161,000 borrowers, equating to about $48,000 per borrower. Compared to what has already been spent on loan forgiveness since the pandemic began, that’s an enormous drop in a gargantuan bucket. AEI’s Student Debt Forgiveness Tracker, which I run, tracks all student loan revenue from…
May 6, 2024
How Much Are You Willing to Spend on Student Loan Forgiveness?
Last Wednesday, the Biden administration announced $6.1 billion in student debt cancellation for over 300,000 borrowers who attended the Art Institutes, a defunct network of for-profit colleges that, according to the Department of Education, defrauded borrowers. This cancellation is generous—all borrowers, regardless of their current economic circumstances, who attended the Art Institutes between 2004 and 2017 will have their…
February 22, 2024
Chronic Absenteeism Could Be the Biggest Problem Facing Schools Right Now
Chronic absenteeism has become a grim reality across the nation. Nationwide, chronic absenteeism nearly doubled from 15 percent in 2018 to 26 percent in 2023. How bad are these numbers, really, and how can schools respond? My friend and colleague Nat Malkus has the most recent available numbers in his Return to Learn Tracker. In addition,…
February 8, 2024
Chronic Absenteeism After the Pandemic
Event Summary On February 8, AEI’s Nat Malkus presented on his research into post-pandemic chronic absenteeism and then discussed the phenomenon with a panel of experts. During his presentation, Dr. Malkus argued that a proper understanding of post-pandemic chronic absenteeism must consider both school pandemic closures and school pandemic responses more broadly. Dr. Malkus then…
January 31, 2024
Long COVID for Public Schools: Chronic Absenteeism Before and After the Pandemic
Key Points Read the PDF.
January 24, 2024
It’s National School Choice Week. Democrats: What Do You Think?
This week is National School Choice Week, which makes it a good time to ponder the state of the school choice coalition. During the Clinton–Bush school reform era, broad swaths of the public—both Republicans and Democrats—supported charter schools and different forms of public school choice. However, private school choice has long been a primarily Republican…
January 19, 2024
Ninety Percent Student Attendance Won’t Solve Chronic Absenteeism
One day after Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona presented the Biden administration’s “Improving Student Achievement Agenda,” which appropriately focused on the unprecedented chronic absenteeism rates in US public schools, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) released data under the headline, “Public School Leaders Report 90 Percent Average Daily Student Attendance Rate in November 2023.”…