Mississippi’s schools have a slightly better attendance story to tell this year than last year, though the improvement is modest and the remaining problem is still large. A report carried by The Winona Times on November 3, 2026, drawing on Mississippi Department of Education figures, puts the state’s chronic absenteeism rate for the 2025-26 school year at 26.5 percent. That is down from 27.6 percent in 2024-25. In student terms, 115,385 Mississippi public school students missed at least a tenth of the school year in 2025-26, compared with 120,408 the year before — about five thousand fewer students crossing that threshold.
The direction matters, but so does the scale. More than one in four Mississippi students still missed enough school to count as chronically absent. That is the tension running through the whole report: a real decline, and a rate that remains far above where the state stood before the pandemic. Understanding the new numbers means looking past the statewide average to the district split, the grade pattern, and a measurement change that will make next year’s comparison trickier than this one.
The headline numbers
Chronic absenteeism has a precise meaning in Mississippi’s reporting: a student is counted as chronically absent when they miss 10 percent or more of the school year, which works out to about 18 days of a standard school year, for any reason. Excused absences, unexcused absences, and suspensions all count toward the total. That broad definition is important because it means the rate is not a measure of skipping school alone. It captures illness, family circumstances, transport problems, and disengagement together.
Placed in context, the 2025-26 figure is the latest point in a long arc that began well before the pandemic:
| School year | Mississippi chronic absenteeism rate |
|---|---|
| 2018-19 | 13 percent |
| 2021-22 | 28 percent |
| 2024-25 | 27.6 percent |
| 2025-26 | 26.5 percent |
The 2018-19 rate of 13 percent was the lowest the state had recorded since it began reporting the measure in 2016. The pandemic then pushed the rate to a record 28 percent in 2021-22, a pattern seen across the country as the national rate rose from 16 percent before the pandemic to nearly 30 percent in the same year. Mississippi’s rate has come down from that peak, but it has not returned to anything close to its pre-pandemic level. The 2024-25 school year even saw a rise in the number of chronically absent students, from 107,266 to 120,408, before the 2025-26 decline brought the count back down to 115,385.
State Superintendent of Education Lance Evans welcomed the latest movement, saying it was encouraging to see a decrease in the state’s rate and that the department’s goal was to see it fall further by helping families remove the barriers that keep students out of school. That framing — barriers rather than blame — is worth keeping in mind, because the breakdown of the numbers points in the same direction.
A state moving in two directions at once
A statewide average can hide as much as it reveals, and the district and school movement figures in the report show why. In 2025-26, most districts improved, but a large minority moved the other way:
| Change in 2025-26 | Districts | Schools |
|---|---|---|
| Rate decreased | 74 | 1,043 |
| Rate increased | 58 | 538 |
| No change | 7 | 13 |
The previous year looked similar, with 70 districts decreasing, 64 increasing, and 5 unchanged, and 1,001 schools decreasing against 544 increasing. In other words, the statewide improvement is not a uniform story of every school getting better. It is the net result of more places improving than worsening, with hundreds of schools still heading in the wrong direction. Any family or educator reading the headline rate should therefore ask what happened in their own district, because the state average will not answer that question.
The gap between districts is wide. DeSoto County, the state’s largest public school district, recorded 10,651 chronically absent students and a rate of 29.7 percent, above the statewide average. At the other end, Rankin County reported a rate of 14.2 percent. Those two figures, side by side, show how different the attendance picture can look within a single state — and why state-level campaigns tend to pair broad messaging with targeted support for the schools and student groups with the highest rates. Readers who want the full state picture can find it in the original Winona Times report, which sets out the district and school movement in detail.
This pattern is not unique to Mississippi. A recent multi-state roundup found chronic absenteeism easing in many states at once, including a state-by-state improvement picture across 21 states and a decline in Indiana’s chronic absenteeism, which suggests the post-pandemic recovery in attendance is broad but uneven everywhere, not a Mississippi-only story.
Where absence concentrates: the grade pattern
The report’s grade pattern is one of its most consistent findings, and it repeats a shape seen in state after state. Chronic absenteeism was lowest among students in grades 2 through 5. It was higher among kindergarten and first-grade students, and highest among students in grades 6 through 12.
That shape has practical consequences. The youngest children depend entirely on adults to get them to school, so absence in kindergarten and first grade often reflects family circumstances — illness in the household, transport trouble, unstable housing, or a parent’s work schedule — rather than anything a five-year-old has chosen. The older end of the pattern is different. Teenagers have more reasons to be away and more ways to drift: part-time work, caring for younger siblings, long bus journeys, and a weakening connection to school itself all pull in the same direction. The same statewide policy therefore lands differently at different ages, which is why the department’s stated approach pairs family support with earlier intervention for students at risk, rather than relying on a single message for every grade.
The concentration in grades 6 through 12 also matters for what comes next. Students who miss a tenth of the school year or more fall behind in coursework, and the gap compounds year by year. A high school student who is chronically absent is not simply missing lessons in the present term; they are losing the thread of subjects that build on earlier material. That is why attendance researchers treat the 10 percent threshold as an early warning line rather than a final verdict: crossing it is the moment to intervene, not the moment to give up.
Excused and unexcused: a 64-36 split
The 2025-26 report splits missed days into two groups: 64 percent of absences were unexcused, and 36 percent were excused. That split deserves a careful reading, because it is easy to misread in either direction.
On one hand, the majority-unexcused share means most missed days were not covered by an accepted excuse. That points toward barriers and disengagement — the everyday obstacles the department cites, from transport to family instability — rather than a wave of documented illness. On the other hand, more than a third of absences were excused, which is a reminder that a large part of the problem is not about willingness at all. Children get sick, appointments clash with school hours, and family emergencies happen. A strategy that only pressures families would miss that third entirely.
The split also explains why the department’s public campaign, Every School Day Counts: Attend to Achieve, is framed around awareness and support rather than punishment. Earlier parent notifications, required intervention strategies for students at risk, and referrals to school attendance officers when students reach unlawful absence thresholds are all part of the updated compulsory attendance framework. The emphasis, at least in the department’s own telling, is on catching a pattern early — when a student has missed a handful of days — rather than waiting until the 18-day line has already been crossed. Other jurisdictions are testing different responses alongside this approach, including a truancy pilot program expansion in Washington, DC, which shows how varied the policy experiments around attendance have become.
The comparison trap: why next year’s number will be measured differently
Here is the part of the story that could easily mislead readers a year from now. The 2025-26 rate was calculated on the basis of students attending less than 63 percent of their instructional day. Beginning with the 2026-27 school year, Mississippi will calculate chronic absenteeism using the federal definition of an absence, under which a student is considered absent when they miss 50 percent or more of the school day.
That change matters for comparisons. When the yardstick changes, a movement in the rate can reflect the new measurement as much as any real change in attendance. A rate that falls under the new definition may partly reflect the redefinition, and a rate that rises may not mean attendance itself got worse. Readers comparing the 2026-27 figure with 26.5 percent should therefore ask first whether the two numbers were measured the same way, before drawing any conclusion about progress.
The measurement change sits alongside updates to Mississippi’s compulsory school attendance law that took effect on July 1, 2026. Those updates include earlier parent notifications, required intervention strategies for students at risk of chronic absenteeism, enhanced attendance reporting, and referrals to school attendance officers when students reach unlawful absence thresholds. Reporting around the law change also describes a presence rule under which a student must attend at least two-thirds of the school day to be counted present. Families, schools, and anyone tracking the numbers should treat 2026-27 as a break in the series: a new measurement era, not a seamless continuation of the old one. That does not make the new numbers useless — it makes careful reading essential.
It is also worth noting what the new report does not yet settle. District-level detail for 2025-26 has been described as still to come in full, and the movement figures above are the statewide summary. The fuller district picture, when published, will show which of the 58 districts that worsened did so sharply and which only edged upward — the difference between a blip and a trend.
What families and students can track from here
For a family trying to use these numbers at home, the most useful figure is not 26.5 percent but 18 days. That is the threshold: miss 10 percent of the school year, and a student counts as chronically absent. A simple rule of thumb follows from it. Missing about two days of school per month, sustained across the year, puts a student on pace to cross the line. That is why monthly tracking beats end-of-year surprise. A family that checks attendance once a month can spot a pattern in October and act on it, while a family that first hears about it in May is looking at a problem that has already compounded.
Three habits make that tracking concrete. First, count all absences together, not just unexcused ones, because the state’s measure counts excused and unexcused days alike. Second, watch the early grades as closely as the later ones: the report shows the youngest children are more affected than primary-age pupils, and early absence predicts later absence. Third, ask the school what support exists when a pattern appears — transport help, schedule adjustments, or catch-up work — because the department’s own framework treats intervention as part of the response, not an afterthought.
The same arithmetic applies to students old enough to track their own attendance. Knowing the total number of school days, the number missed so far, and the percentage those missed days represent turns a vague worry into a clear number. That is exactly the calculation a percentage tool is built for, and it is a better guide than guessing whether a handful of absences matters. A handful does not; a pattern does.
Frequently asked questions
What is Mississippi’s chronic absenteeism rate for 2025-26?
The rate is 26.5 percent, down from 27.6 percent in 2024-25. It represents 115,385 Mississippi public school students who missed at least 10 percent of the school year, compared with 120,408 students the year before.
How does Mississippi define chronic absenteeism?
A student is chronically absent when they miss 10 percent or more of the school year, which is about 18 days, for any reason. The count includes excused absences, unexcused absences, and suspensions, not only days missed without permission.
Which students are most affected in Mississippi?
Rates were lowest in grades 2 through 5, higher in kindergarten and first grade, and highest in grades 6 through 12. That pattern means both the youngest children, who depend on adults to reach school, and teenagers, who face work, caregiving, and transport pressures, need attention for different reasons.
Did every Mississippi district improve in 2025-26?
No. While 74 districts saw their rates decrease, 58 districts saw increases and 7 saw no change. At school level, 1,043 schools improved while 538 worsened. The statewide decline is a net improvement, not a uniform one, so local figures matter more than the state average for any particular school.
Why might the 2026-27 rate not be directly comparable?
Mississippi is changing how it measures absence. The 2025-26 rate used attendance of less than 63 percent of the instructional day as its basis, while from 2026-27 the state will use the federal definition, under which a student is absent when they miss 50 percent or more of the school day. A change in measurement can move the rate even if attendance itself is unchanged, so year-to-year comparisons across the change need care.
Families who want to keep their own count on track can use the free attendance percentage calculator on attendancepercentagecalc.com to work out exactly what share of the school year has been missed so far — and how many more days would cross the 10 percent line.
