On November 11, 2026, a researcher from the D.C. Policy Center stood before the DC Council’s Committee of the Whole and delivered a message that was equal parts progress report and warning. Chronic absenteeism in the District has come down from its pandemic peak, but the recovery has slowed to a crawl. The numbers, she argued, are not just a record of the past — they are a map of where the next round of absences will come from, if anyone reads them in time.
The testimony arrived at an oversight hearing on chronic absenteeism and truancy, and it carried a blunt central claim: the District already collects the attendance data it needs to act. What it has not yet done is use that data to find the schools that are improving, learn what they are doing differently, and spread those lessons while the school year is still young. The hearing made the case that the most useful thing a city can do about attendance is not to wait for the year-end report, but to respond to the numbers as they arrive.
The Headline Number: 38.8% and Barely Moving
In school year 2025-26, 38.8 percent of students in Washington, DC were chronically absent, meaning they missed at least 10 percent of school days for any reason. That is a real improvement on the pandemic peak of 48 percent in 2021-22, when nearly half of all students missed a tenth of the school year or more. It is also, the testimony stressed, a long way from where the city was before the pandemic, when the rate stood at 29 percent in 2018-19.
The more worrying part is the pace. The rate was 40 percent in 2023-24, then 39.5 percent, then 38.8 percent — less than one percentage point of improvement per year. At that speed, the District would need roughly two decades to reach its own 2025 goal of halving chronic absenteeism to 24 percent. The goal year has already passed, and the target is still far off.
There is also a quiet caveat behind the headline figure. Since 2022-23, a student in DC counts as present if they attend 60 percent of the school day, compared with 80 percent before the pandemic. A lower bar for being marked present means the reported rate may understate how much learning time students are actually missing. The improvement since the peak is real, but the yardstick itself has moved, and any honest reading of the trend has to account for that.
Three Ways to Read the Same Data
The testimony’s most useful contribution was not the headline rate but the way it broke that rate apart. A single district-wide percentage hides the patterns that decide whether a student stays on track or drifts away. Read three ways, the same data tells three different stories.
The Recovery Has Stalled
The first reading is the simplest: the easy gains are over. The steep fall from 48 percent was driven by the return to normal schooling after the pandemic, when the most extreme disruption faded on its own. What remains is the harder work of reaching students whose absences are rooted in daily life — transport, health, housing, and the habits formed during years of disrupted schooling. Those numbers move slowly, and the last three years show it: about a point a year, with no sign of acceleration.
The Ninth-Grade Cliff
The second reading looks at the data by grade, and it is the most striking part of the testimony. After the pandemic, 65 percent of ninth graders were chronically absent — 21 points more than eighth graders. Ninth-grade repeaters were chronically absent at a rate of 87 percent. The biggest increase since the pandemic, meanwhile, was in grade 8, while grade 12 was essentially unchanged.
Put together, those figures describe a cliff, not a slope. Many students arrive in ninth grade with absence patterns already established in middle school, and the transition to high school makes them worse. The ninth-grade year, when students are expected to earn the credits that put them on the path to graduation, is exactly where attendance collapses. For families and educators, the practical lesson is that the ninth-grade problem is built in eighth grade — and that waiting until high school to intervene is waiting too long. Understanding how the rate itself is measured helps here: the standard definition counts any student missing 10 percent or more of enrolled days, and readers who want to work with the same measure can see how to calculate the absenteeism rate for a single school or classroom.
Absence Is Sticky
The third reading is about persistence. Attendance patterns, the testimony showed, are remarkably hard to break. Of the students who were chronically absent in 2021-22, 82 percent were chronically absent again the following year. Absence does not reset with a new school year; it carries over.
There is a hopeful edge to the same data, though. Among the students who did improve, 77 percent had been in the moderate tier, missing between 10 and 20 percent of days. And among students who became chronically absent, 71 percent had been just below the line, missing 5 to 10 percent of days. The students closest to the threshold, on either side of it, are the ones most likely to move. That finding points directly at where early attention pays off: the students hovering just above or just below the line, whose attendance can still be turned around with a nudge rather than a major intervention. For parents weighing what the rules actually require, it is worth knowing whether attendance is compulsory and how schools are expected to respond when it slips.
At a glance: DC’s chronic absenteeism rate is 38.8% in 2025-26, down from a 48% pandemic peak but still far above the 29% pre-pandemic level. Improvement has slowed to under one point a year. Ninth graders are the hardest hit at 65%, and 82% of chronically absent students stay chronically absent the next year. The students nearest the 10% threshold are the most likely to improve — or to slip.
What September Already Knows
One of the most practical findings in the testimony came not from DC but from Baltimore, where researchers tracked how early absences predict the rest of the year. Students who missed 2 to 4 days in September were 5 times more likely to be chronically absent for the year. Those who missed more than 4 days in September were over 16 times as likely.
September, in other words, is a forecast. The first month of school reveals which students are likely to struggle with attendance long before the year-end data confirms it. That is why the testimony’s timing matters: it was delivered in November, while the first months of the school year could still shape what follows. A school that waits until spring to look at its attendance data has waited past the point where the data is most useful.
The District now has a tool built for exactly this kind of early reading. The Office of the State Superintendent of Education launched a monthly Attendance Dashboard in April, publishing attendance data through the school year rather than only at its end. The testimony’s central proposal is to use that dashboard the way it was designed to be used: to spot the schools that are improving right now, find out what they changed, and share it with everyone else before the year slips away.
The Stakes After Graduation
The testimony also connected attendance to what happens after school ends, and the gap it described is wide. About 7 in 10 graduates with satisfactory attendance enrolled in college within six months, compared with 3 in 10 graduates with profound chronic absence. For at-risk students, the figures were 54 percent against 23 percent. On the SAT, 35 percent of students with satisfactory attendance met the college-readiness benchmark, against 3 percent of students with profound chronic absence.
Those numbers make the attendance question more than a school-management issue. Missing a tenth of the school year is not a minor administrative matter; it tracks closely with whether a young person reaches college at all, and whether they arrive ready for it. The link is not proof that attendance alone causes those outcomes — students who miss school often face other barriers too — but the pattern is consistent and steep, and it repeats across the measures the researchers examined. The full testimony, with the underlying figures and sources, is published by the D.C. Policy Center.
Frequently Asked Questions
What counts as chronic absenteeism in DC?
A student is chronically absent when they miss at least 10 percent of school days for any reason, excused or unexcused. In DC, that is the standard the Office of the State Superintendent of Education uses, and it is the measure behind the 38.8 percent rate reported for school year 2025-26.
How bad is chronic absenteeism in Washington, DC right now?
In 2025-26, 38.8 percent of DC students were chronically absent. That is down from a peak of 48 percent in 2021-22, but still nearly 10 points above the 29 percent rate in 2018-19, and improvement has slowed to less than one percentage point a year.
Why is ninth grade such a problem for attendance?
After the pandemic, 65 percent of ninth graders were chronically absent, 21 points more than eighth graders, and ninth-grade repeaters were chronically absent at 87 percent. The biggest increase since the pandemic was in grade 8, so many students arrive in ninth grade with absence patterns already established, and the transition to high school makes them worse.
Can early absences really predict the whole school year?
Research from Baltimore cited in the testimony found that students missing 2 to 4 days in September were 5 times more likely to be chronically absent for the year, and those missing more than 4 days were over 16 times as likely. September attendance is one of the strongest early signals a school has.
What is the OSSE Attendance Dashboard?
It is a monthly dashboard launched in April by DC’s Office of the State Superintendent of Education that publishes attendance data through the school year. The testimony proposes using it to identify schools improving fastest, learn what they are doing differently, and share those lessons while the year is still under way.
A Three-Step Response Plan
The testimony did not stop at diagnosis. It proposed a concrete sequence for the District, built around the monthly data the OSSE dashboard now provides.
Step 1: Find the schools that are beating the trend. The first move is to identify the schools whose attendance has improved most since last year — and to judge them against schools serving similar students, so the comparison is fair. A school that improved while serving the same mix of students as its peers is doing something worth understanding.
Step 2: Ask those schools what changed. The second move is to go and ask. Which students improved, and what changed in staffing, family outreach, mentoring, or scheduling? The testimony’s point is that the answers will be specific and practical — a schedule change here, a family liaison there — and that they cannot be guessed from the data alone. The schools themselves hold the explanation.
Step 3: Share the findings and keep updating them. The third move is to spread what works broadly, and to repeat the analysis with each new OSSE attendance-data update within the school year. The loop is meant to run continuously: spot improvement, learn the cause, share it, and check again next month. Done this way, the data stops being a year-end report card and becomes a working tool.
It is a modest proposal in its shape — three steps, no new programme, no sweeping reform — and that is arguably its strength. It uses data and structures the District already has, and it asks for the one thing that costs the least and is hardest to organise: attention, applied early.
What to Watch Next
The early data from school year 2026-27 already gives the plan its first test. Chronic absenteeism rose 1 percentage point for both grades 3-5 and grades 6-8, and 3.6 percentage points for economically disadvantaged students. The year has started worse than the last one ended, at least for the youngest students and those facing the greatest economic pressure.
There is one counter-trend that needs careful reading. Chronic absenteeism fell for English learners and Latino students — but the testimony cautioned that this likely reflects who is enrolled rather than better attendance. Latino enrollment fell 3.8 percentage points in 2025-26, and a city report found that immigration enforcement activity and the presence of the National Guard hurt attendance for some Latino and newcomer students. A falling rate that comes from students leaving the system is not an improvement, and the testimony was careful to say so.
That caution is the thread running through the whole hearing: the numbers only help if they are read carefully. A rate can fall because students are attending more, because the definition of present has loosened, or because the students who were struggling most are no longer enrolled. The District’s attendance challenge is no longer mainly about counting absences. It is about reading the count honestly, finding the schools that are genuinely improving, and acting on what they know while there is still a school year left to save. Schools tracking their own numbers can work out how to calculate average attendance of students and compare their own trend against the District’s.
For parents and students keeping track of their own attendance, the simplest step is to watch the running percentage through the year rather than waiting for a report card. The free attendance calculator at attendancepercentagecalc.com turns days attended and days missed into a clear percentage in seconds, so families can see exactly where they stand against the 10 percent line — and catch a slide in September, while there is still time to turn it around.
