On the morning of October 1, 2026, reporters for The Boston Globe found nearly 30 teenagers from Chelsea High School gathered at a nearby Dunkin’ during the school day, many of them skipping class. It was an ordinary weekday scene, and that is exactly the point. The Globe opens its new series, “15 Million Missed Days: The Broken Bond With School,” with that image because the numbers behind it are no longer a pandemic aftershock that will fade on its own. They describe a changed relationship between students and school, one that Massachusetts is only now starting to measure in full.
The series, published on November 5, 2026, draws on the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s annual attendance and chronic absenteeism report, and it comes with a searchable tool covering all 395 districts and charter schools in the state. The headline finding is a genuine improvement: the chronic absenteeism rate fell to 17.1 percent in the 2025-26 school year. But the same data set carries a harder truth. Since 2019, Massachusetts students have missed nearly 15 million days they would not have missed if absenteeism had stayed at its pre-pandemic level. Improvement and crisis can both be true at once, and this year’s numbers show how.
The story in five numbers
Before the detail, here is the whole picture in the five figures that matter most.
17.1 percent. That is the share of Massachusetts students chronically absent in 2025-26, meaning they missed at least 10 percent of the school year. It is a step down from the previous school year, when the rate stood at roughly 22 to 23 percent.
93.6 percent. That is the statewide attendance rate for 2025-26. It sounds high on its own, and it is, but an average can hide a split: a small share of students missing a great deal of school pulls the chronic absence rate far above what the average suggests.
4.8 percent. That is the share of students who missed at least 20 percent of the year, one day in five. These are the students furthest from regular attendance, and they are the group for whom catching up is hardest.
15 million. That is the number of extra school days Massachusetts students have missed since 2019, beyond what the pre-pandemic absence rate would have produced. It is the figure that gives the Globe’s series its name, and it turns an abstract rate into something concrete: millions of lessons, assignments, and school days that never happened.
36.9 percent against 15.2 percent. That is the gap between low-income students and their classmates who are not low-income. More than a third of low-income students were chronically absent in the last school year, compared with about 15 percent of students who are not low-income. The recovery, in other words, is not reaching everyone at the same speed.
How Massachusetts counts a missed day
Massachusetts counts a student as chronically absent when that student misses at least 10 percent of the school year. In a 180-day school year, that works out to 18 days. Every absence counts toward the total, whether the reason is illness, a sports trip, a family vacation, or simply not showing up. The measure does not ask why a student was away. It asks how much school that student missed.
A student who misses 18 scattered days across a year has missed a tenth of the curriculum, whatever the reasons were. The state’s data also tracks a deeper threshold: missing 20 percent or more of the year. In 2025-26, 4.8 percent of students crossed that line.
The data behind the Globe’s reporting covers kindergarten through grade 12 across 395 districts and charter schools, excluding special education schools. That breadth matters, because it means the figures are not drawn from a handful of struggling districts or from one city. They describe the whole public school system, and the Globe’s searchable tool lets any reader look up a single district or school and see its own numbers. For parents, that is the most useful part of the story: the statewide average is interesting, but the district figure is personal.
There is also a useful contrast with the way attendance used to be talked about. Average daily attendance, the figure schools have reported for decades, can look healthy even while a large minority of students misses a great deal of school. A school can have a 93.6 percent attendance rate and still have nearly a fifth of its students chronically absent. Both numbers are real; they simply measure different things, and the chronic absence rate is the one that tracks the students most at risk of falling behind.
The timeline: 13 percent, a pandemic surge, and a turn in 2025-26
The current numbers only make sense against the timeline that produced them, and the timeline is the most striking part of the Globe’s reporting. Before the pandemic, in the 2018-19 school year, the chronic absenteeism rate in Massachusetts stood at about 13 percent. That was already a large number: roughly one student in eight missing a tenth of the year. But it was the baseline, the level the system had lived with for years.
Then came the pandemic, and the rate rose sharply. Remote learning, illness, disrupted routines, and a changed sense of what school attendance required all pushed absence upward. The Globe’s summary puts the scale plainly: absenteeism rates are about 50 percent higher than they were before the pandemic. In the school year before the new data, the rate stood at roughly 22 to 23 percent, which means nearly one student in four was chronically absent. The Globe’s main article reports that more than 220,000 students were chronically absent in the school year its reporting covers, the year before the new figures arrived.
The 2025-26 figure of 17.1 percent is the first real turn in the timeline. It is a drop of about five to six percentage points from the previous year, and it is the clearest sign yet that the post-pandemic peak has passed. But context keeps the celebration modest. A rate of 17.1 percent is still roughly a third higher than the pre-pandemic level of about 13 percent. The state has recovered part of the ground it lost, not all of it. And the cumulative cost of the years in between is what the series title captures: nearly 15 million school days missed since 2019 that would not have been missed at the old rate.
There is a second pattern inside the timeline that deserves attention. The rate is not spread evenly across grade levels. According to a summary from the Massachusetts Education to Career Hub, the 2025-26 chronic absence rate was highest in high school, at 23 percent. That fits the Chelsea scene that opens the Globe’s series: older students, with more freedom to decide whether to show up, are the ones most likely to drift away. Younger children depend on adults to get them to school, and their attendance follows the adults. Teenagers make their own choices, and when the habit of attending weakens, they are the first to stop coming.
That grade pattern also explains why the problem feels different from the attendance problems of a decade ago. This is not mainly a story of young children kept home by illness or transport trouble. It is a story of teenagers who have loosened their bond with school itself, in the Globe’s own framing, and whose absence is spread across many small decisions rather than a single cause.
Reading the district tool: what 395 districts show
The most practical part of the Globe’s publication is not the statewide figure but the tool that sits beside it. The companion data article, “Who is missing the most school? Search the data for your district,” lets any reader look up a Massachusetts district or school and see its attendance rate, its chronic absence rate, and the share of students missing a fifth of the year or more. It is built on the state education department’s data, and it covers the full system rather than a sample.
That matters because statewide averages hide enormous variation. A state rate of 17.1 percent can contain districts where absence is rare and districts where it is common, and the reasons differ from place to place. The tool does not explain those reasons, but it shows where to look, and it gives parents and educators a starting point that a statewide average never could.
The tool also makes the scale of the problem visible in a way that a percentage alone cannot. Massachusetts has 395 districts and charter schools in the data set, and each one has its own pattern. Some districts will have improved sharply in 2025-26, tracking the statewide decline. Others will have stayed flat or worsened. The story of the year is not one line going down; it is hundreds of lines, some falling, some not, and the statewide average is only their summary.
For families, the lesson is simple: look up your own district before drawing conclusions from the state number. A parent whose child attends a school with a chronic absence rate far above the state average is looking at a different situation from a parent whose school sits well below it. The Globe’s data article, Who is missing the most school? Search the data for your district, is the single most useful page in the whole series for anyone who wants to move from the headline to their own school.
The gap that has not closed
If the statewide improvement is the good news, the equity gap is the news that has not improved enough. The Globe’s charts show that low-income students miss far more school than their wealthier classmates. More than a third of low-income students, about 36.9 percent, were chronically absent in the last school year, compared with about 15 percent of students who are not low-income. That is a gap of more than twenty percentage points, and it sits inside every statewide average.
The gap matters because absence compounds. A student who misses a tenth of the year misses a tenth of the teaching and classroom time that learning depends on, and missing that much year after year pushes the student further behind with each passing term. When the students missing the most school are also the students with the fewest resources at home, the attendance gap becomes an achievement gap, and then a gap in what comes after school. The Globe’s series does not treat this as a side detail. It is one of the central findings, and it is the reason the statewide improvement, real as it is, cannot be read as a recovery for everyone.
High school is where the gap bites hardest, because it is where the rate is already highest. With 23 percent of high school students chronically absent statewide, and low-income students absent at more than twice the rate of their classmates, the students who most need school to be a route forward are the ones least likely to be in the building. That is the uncomfortable core of the data, and it is why the Globe frames the story as a broken bond rather than a statistical blip. A bond that is broken for some students and intact for others is not a shared problem with a shared solution. It is a split, and the data shows the split clearly.
Massachusetts has covered this ground before in a different form. An earlier article on this site looked at reporting that chronic absence in the state was hitting Hispanic students hardest, and the new data confirms that absence concentrates where disadvantage concentrates. It is the shape of the problem itself.
Why this matters beyond Massachusetts
Massachusetts is not alone in this pattern, and the comparison puts its numbers in perspective. Mississippi, for example, saw its chronic absenteeism rate fall to 26.5 percent in 2025-26 from 27.6 percent the year before, a smaller improvement from a much higher starting point. Indiana has reported its own decline, and a wider look at 21 states showed improvement in the same school year. The national story is the same shape everywhere: a pandemic peak, a partial recovery, and a rate still above where it stood before 2020. Massachusetts, at 17.1 percent, is doing better than many states, but it is recovering from the same shock, and its equity gap looks much like the gaps reported elsewhere.
What families can do with the numbers
The first step is to look up your own district in the Globe’s data tool and see where your child’s school stands against the state average. The second is to keep track of the number that matters: 18 days. In a 180-day year, 18 missed days is the line between regular attendance and chronic absence, and it arrives faster than most families expect, a day here and a day there. Counting attendance as a percentage across the term makes the drift visible before it becomes a problem, and this site’s attendance percentage calculator can do that arithmetic in seconds. The third step is to talk to the school early, as soon as absences start adding up, rather than waiting for the end of term.
The 15 million missed days will not be recovered. But the 2025-26 figures show that the direction can change, and the district data shows exactly where the change still needs to happen. For families, that is the useful part of the story: not the statewide average, but the number for their own school, and the 18 days that decide which side of the line a student falls on.
Frequently asked questions
What is the chronic absenteeism rate in Massachusetts for 2025-26?
The rate is 17.1 percent, down from roughly 22 to 23 percent the previous year. The statewide attendance rate is 93.6 percent, and 4.8 percent of students missed at least 20 percent of the year.
What counts as chronic absenteeism in Massachusetts?
A student is chronically absent after missing at least 10 percent of the school year, which is 18 days in a 180-day year. Every absence counts, whatever the reason.
What does “15 million missed days” mean?
Since 2019, Massachusetts students have missed nearly 15 million school days beyond what the pre-pandemic absence rate would have produced. It is a cumulative measure of the extra absence since the pandemic began.
Which Massachusetts students miss the most school?
High school students have the highest rate, at 23 percent, and low-income students are chronically absent at about 36.9 percent, compared with about 15.2 percent of students who are not low-income.
Where can I check my own district’s attendance data?
The Boston Globe published a searchable tool with the state education department’s data for all 395 districts and charter schools, linked in the district section of this article. It shows each district’s attendance rate and chronic absence rate for 2025-26.
