Reducing chronic absenteeism among public school students is a top priority in Washington, DC. Single-year chronic absenteeism is the most common measure of school-level attendance, used by educators, policymakers, and families to allocate resources, interventions, and supports. But a single identification strategy can result in resources not being distributed effectively and efficiently. On one hand, progress goes unseen, and schools may be forced to adopt new interventions rather than stay on a successful course. On the other hand, students at schools that seem to be doing fine by one measure may actually benefit from resources not otherwise available to them because they are not identified as needing support.

This report answers three questions: What easily replicable, easily understood approaches, using publicly available data, can be used to categorize school attendance? Which DC schools have “good,” improved, or better-than-predicted attendance? What school characteristics are associated with “good” or improved attendance? The findings demonstrate the feasibility and necessity of using different approaches to interpreting school attendance using the readily available and easily understood metric of school-level chronic absenteeism.

Why This Matters

In the 2024–25 school year, nearly 40 percent of DC students were chronically absent, meaning they missed at least 10 percent of the school days for which they were enrolled. Chronic absenteeism is associated with lower academic achievement, reduced credit accumulation, and lower rates of college enrollment, making it an important indicator of student success. Given the confluence of factors that cause poor attendance, the subsequently wide range of interventions needed to mitigate poor attendance, and the city’s commitment to improving chronic absenteeism, there is a clear policy case for strategic allocation of resources.

Key Takeaways

• Comparison with average rates, measuring change from the previous year, and comparison with predicted rates are all relatively straightforward, replicable approaches to understanding schools’ chronic absenteeism using publicly available data.
• Each approach identifies different schools with good attendance and different schools than a single-year rate alone. This is especially true for elementary schools and schools in different wards.
• Schools in Wards 7 and 8 are less likely than schools in Wards 1 through 6 to have better-than-average attendance, but they are equally likely to have improving and better-than-predicted attendance.
• DCPS schools are more likely than public charter schools to have better-than-average single-year chronic absenteeism, but charter schools are somewhat more likely to have better-than-predicted chronic absenteeism rates.
• Schools in safe passage zones are more likely than other schools to have improving attendance over the prior year (even though they are less likely to have better-than-average single-year attendance).

How We Did It

The analyses use school-level data from the National Center for Education Statistics, the Office of the State Superintendent of Education, and EdScape, education datasets compiled by the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Education for all DC Public Schools and DC public charter schools. In addition to chronic absenteeism, the analysis includes school-level characteristics, such as ward, location in a safe passage zone, provision of a specialized program, and student demographics. The analysis includes 227 DC public and public charter schools and relies entirely on publicly available data.