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The Issue Waiting on the Campaign Trail
In Maryland this election season, school board candidates are being asked about reading scores, budgets, and building repairs. But one question keeps coming up in county after county, and it has nothing to do with test papers. It is about empty desks.
Chronic absenteeism — students missing a large share of the school year — has become a defining issue in Maryland’s 2026 school board races. Candidates from Kent County to Wicomico County, from Baltimore City to Montgomery County, are being pressed on the same problem: too many students are missing too much school, and the fixes on offer so far have not closed the gap.
The story, reported by Capital News Service for Maryland Matters on October 24, 2026, draws on a statewide candidate questionnaire run by the Local News Network. It is a useful snapshot because it does not focus on a single school or a single district. Instead, it shows how one issue looks from nine different counties at once — and how similar the answers sound even when the places are very different.
This article breaks down what the numbers actually say, where the gaps are widest, what candidates say is driving the absences, and what the state and its counties say they will do next.
The Story in Brief
- The statewide rate is improving but still high. Maryland’s chronic absenteeism rate fell to 22.8% in 2025-26, down from a pandemic-era peak of 30.9% in 2021-22. It has now fallen for four straight years, yet it remains above where it stood before the pandemic.
- The county gap is wide. In 2024-25, Baltimore City recorded 46.4% chronic absenteeism, while Frederick County recorded the lowest rate at 16.7%.
- Disadvantage tracks closely with absence. Economically disadvantaged students were chronically absent at a rate of 36% in 2024-25, against a statewide average of 25.2% that year. The jurisdictions with the highest absence rates also had the state’s lowest median household incomes.
- Candidates point to everyday barriers. Transportation problems, unstable housing, and home instability came up repeatedly. In rural areas, candidates also pointed to missing essentials such as food, water, electricity, and broadband.
- The state has a plan with a name. Maryland’s “Maryland Shows Up!” effort combines monthly monitoring, a statewide attendance-policy framework for local school systems, earlier intervention, family outreach, and extra resources for schools and student groups with the highest absence rates.
A Timeline in Four Numbers
Chronic absenteeism is usually defined in a simple way: a student is counted as chronically absent when they miss 10% or more of school days in a year. That threshold matters because it turns an everyday worry — a child missing a few days here and there — into something schools can measure, compare, and track over time.
Maryland’s recent history on that measure falls into four clear stages.
Before the pandemic, the state’s rate sat below where it is today. The Maryland Matters report does not put a single pre-pandemic figure on the record, but it is explicit that the current rate remains above pre-pandemic levels even after four years of improvement. That framing matters: it tells readers that the recovery is real but incomplete.
In 2021-22, the rate peaked at 30.9%. That was the pandemic-era high point, when disruption to schooling, illness, and changed family routines pushed absence to levels schools had not seen before. Nearly three in ten Maryland students were missing at least a tenth of the school year.
Over the next four years, the rate fell every year. The steady decline — four straight years of improvement — brought the state to its current position. A one-year drop can be a blip. A four-year run in the same direction is a trend, and candidates across the state are now being asked what they will do to keep it going.
In 2025-26, the rate reached 22.8%. That is the latest statewide figure in the report. It means more than one in five Maryland students still missed at least 10% of school days last year. Progress and problem, in other words, are both true at the same time — and that tension is exactly why the issue is dominating candidate questionnaires.
Readers who want the full candidate-by-candidate picture can find it in the original Maryland Matters report, which sets out the survey responses county by county.
The County Gap, in One Table
Statewide averages hide the most important part of this story: where a student lives in Maryland changes the odds of chronic absence dramatically. The 2024-25 figures in the report make that gap impossible to ignore.
| Jurisdiction or group | Chronic absenteeism, 2024-25 |
|---|---|
| Baltimore City | 46.4% |
| Statewide average | 25.2% |
| Economically disadvantaged students | 36% |
| Frederick County (lowest) | 16.7% |
Three things stand out in that table. First, the spread between the highest and lowest jurisdictions is enormous — Baltimore City’s rate was nearly three times Frederick County’s. Second, the gap is not random: the report notes that the jurisdictions with the highest absence rates also had the state’s lowest median household incomes, which points to a link between family economic pressure and school attendance. Third, the disadvantage gap sits inside every county average. Economically disadvantaged students were absent at 36% in 2024-25, well above the 25.2% statewide average that year, which means county-level figures alone understate how uneven the experience is for the students facing the most pressure at home.
This is also why the candidate debate is not only about totals. A statewide rate of 22.8% sounds manageable until it is broken down, and the breakdown shows that some communities are carrying a far heavier share of the problem than others. Any plan that only moves the state average, without narrowing these gaps, would leave the worst-affected places behind.
The national picture tells a similar story of uneven recovery. A recent look at chronic absenteeism improvement across 21 states found the same pattern of progress that still leaves large gaps between places, which is why local detail matters more than any single headline rate.
Quick Answers: Five Questions About the Maryland Story
What does “chronically absent” actually mean?
A student is generally counted as chronically absent when they miss 10% or more of school days in a year. The definition covers all absences, whatever the reason, because the concern is the total amount of learning time lost rather than any single cause.
How much has Maryland’s rate improved?
Maryland’s chronic absenteeism rate fell to 22.8% in 2025-26, down from a pandemic-era peak of 30.9% in 2021-22. It has fallen for four straight years, but it remains above pre-pandemic levels.
Which Maryland places have the highest and lowest rates?
In 2024-25, Baltimore City had the highest rate cited in the report at 46.4%, while Frederick County had the lowest at 16.7%. The statewide average that year was 25.2%.
Why are some students more likely to be chronically absent?
Economically disadvantaged students were chronically absent at 36% in 2024-25, compared with the 25.2% statewide average. Candidates pointed to transportation problems, unstable housing, home instability, and — in rural areas — missing essentials such as food, water, electricity, and broadband.
What is Maryland doing about it?
The state has launched “Maryland Shows Up!”, which combines monthly monitoring of attendance, a statewide attendance-policy framework for local school systems, earlier intervention when absences start to build, outreach to families, and added resources for schools and student groups with the highest absence rates. Counties are also running their own campaigns, including Baltimore County’s “Here For It” and Wicomico County’s “Arrive to Thrive.”
What Candidates Say Is Driving the Absences
Ask candidates why students miss school and the answers cluster around a handful of everyday barriers rather than any single dramatic cause. Transportation comes up again and again: a student who cannot reliably get to school cannot attend regularly, whatever the school’s rules say. Housing instability is another recurring theme. When families move often or face uncertain living arrangements, school routines break down and re-establishing them takes time.
Home instability more broadly — the kind of disruption that makes mornings unpredictable and evenings unsettled — also features in the responses. These are not problems a school can solve with a timetable change alone, which is part of why candidates describe attendance as a systemwide challenge rather than a classroom discipline issue.
In rural counties, the list of barriers gets more basic still. Candidates pointed to missing essentials such as food, water, electricity, and broadband. A household without reliable broadband cannot easily receive school messages or complete work sent home. A household without reliable water or electricity faces morning routines that make on-time arrival genuinely difficult. These details matter because they reframe the debate: for many families, attendance is less about willingness and more about whether the basic conditions for getting to school are in place.
That reframing also explains why the candidate responses sound similar across very different counties. A suburban district and a rural county may look nothing alike, but a broken transport link and an unstable home create the same outcome in both: an empty desk.
The Responses, Step by Step
The plans described in the report work at two levels — the state and the county — and they follow a similar logic: spot the problem early, reach the family, and put extra help where absence is highest.
Step 1: Watch the numbers monthly. Under “Maryland Shows Up!”, the state monitors attendance every month rather than waiting for end-of-year figures. Monthly monitoring means a rising absence pattern can be spotted while there is still time in the school year to change it.
Step 2: Set one statewide framework. The state is building an attendance-policy framework that local school systems can work within. The point of a shared framework is consistency: families moving between districts, and schools comparing their own rates, work from the same basic expectations.
Step 3: Intervene earlier. Rather than waiting until a student has already missed a large share of the year, the approach calls for earlier intervention when absences start to build. Early contact gives schools a chance to find out what is actually going wrong — a transport problem, a housing problem, a health problem — before the pattern hardens.
Step 4: Reach out to families directly. Family outreach is a core part of the plan. The emphasis here is on contact and support rather than on distant notices: understanding the barrier first, then working on it.
Step 5: Put extra resources where absence is highest. Added resources are directed to schools and student groups with the highest absence rates. That targeting follows directly from the county table above: if Baltimore City’s rate is nearly three times Frederick County’s, equal treatment would not be fair treatment.
Step 6: Let counties run their own campaigns. Alongside the state effort, counties are running local attendance campaigns with their own names and styles. Baltimore County’s “Here For It” and Wicomico County’s “Arrive to Thrive” are two examples cited in the report. Local campaigns matter because attendance messages land better when they speak to a specific community rather than arriving as a generic statewide slogan.
Taken together, these steps describe a shift in how attendance is talked about: from a number reported at the end of the year to a pattern watched month by month, with help aimed at the places and students who need it most.
Why a School Board Race Is Now an Attendance Debate
There is a reason this issue has travelled from education reports into election questionnaires. School boards set local attendance expectations, approve the resources for outreach and transport, and decide how closely their district watches its own numbers. When nearly a quarter of a state’s students are missing a tenth of the year, those are board-level decisions, not back-office ones.
Candidates are also being asked to treat attendance as a systemwide priority rather than a problem for individual schools to solve alone. That language — treating attendance as a systemwide priority, targeting the highest-absence schools first, and using transparent, real-time data — runs through the responses in the report. It reflects a recognition that absence is produced by systems: transport systems, housing systems, communication systems. Fixing it means working across those systems, which is precisely what a school board is positioned to coordinate.
Other states are wrestling with the same shift. Indiana’s recent decline in chronic absenteeism, for example, came alongside a push for new strategies to keep students in class, and a truancy pilot in Washington, DC has tested what happens when early support replaces a slower response. Maryland’s debate fits into that wider pattern: the question is no longer whether absence matters, but which combination of monitoring, outreach, and resources actually moves the number.
What to Watch Next
Three things will show whether Maryland’s improvement continues. The first is the next statewide rate: if the four-year decline extends to a fifth year, the recovery story strengthens. The second is the county gap: whether places like Baltimore City close ground on places like Frederick County, or whether the spread stays wide even as the average falls. The third is the disadvantage gap: whether economically disadvantaged students, absent at 36% in 2024-25, see faster improvement than the state as a whole.
For parents and students, the most practical takeaway is simpler. Attendance is cumulative: a day here and a day there adds up to the 10% threshold faster than most families expect. Keeping track of the running total across a term — rather than discovering it at the end of one — is the easiest way to stay on the right side of that line.
If you want to check where a student stands, the free attendance percentage calculator on this site turns days attended and total school days into a clear percentage in seconds, so families can see the picture early and act on it while there is still time in the term.
