A new report from the Helios Education Foundation and WestEd found nearly one-third of Arizona’s elementary and junior high students are chronically absent from school.
Being chronically absent means missing 10% or more of the school year. In Arizona, that’s about 18 days of class. Chronic absentee rates among students in grades one through eight remain at more than double what they were before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Helios Senior Vice President of Community Impact and Learning Paul Perrault said chronic absenteeism has had a negative impact on student outcomes.
“Those students that are more chronically absent tend to have lower math scores, lower reading scores and that leads to them being more disengaged with the school," Perrault said.
While rates are declining from their pandemic peak of 34%, Perrault said they’re not going down fast enough.
During the 2022-23 school year, 29% of Arizona students in grades one through eight were chronically absent.
Officials in districts like the Kyrene Elementary School District are getting proactive. Kyrene’s Executive Director of Communications and Engagement Erin Helm said they've launched a campaign to educate families on how easily those missed days add up.
“If a student misses just two days per month —it doesn’t sound like a lot — but if they do it every month, that adds up to, in Kyrene, 20 days per year and if that habit continues kindergarten through eighth grade, then they’ll have lost one entire year of education by the time they enter high school," Helms said.
Kyrene has also developed resources to help students maintain good attendance habits, like guidelines for when to stay home sick and best practices for getting students to school consistently and on time.