Ohio's Chronic Absenteeism Rate Remains High at 23.7%
Ohio's chronic absenteeism rate was 23.7% for the 2025-26 school year, a slight decline but still far above pre-pandemic levels.
Ohio's chronic absenteeism rate was 23.7% for the 2025-26 school year. Nine districts had chronic absenteeism rates above 50 percent that year, with East Cleveland City Schools reporting a rate of 54.2%.
Trends
The statewide chronic absenteeism rate has declined slowly since a peak of 30.2% in the 2021-22 school year. It reached 23.7% in 2025-26 but remains far above the pre-pandemic level of 16.7% from 2018-19. Almost a fourth of Ohio students were chronically absent last year.
| School Year | Chronic Absenteeism Rate |
|---|---|
| 2025-26 | 23.7% |
| 2024-25 | 24.9% |
| 2023-24 | 25.6% |
| 2022-23 | 26.8% |
| 2021-22 | 30.2% |
| 2020-21 | 24% |
| 2019-20 | 11.2% |
| 2018-19 | 16.7% |
| 2017-18 | 16% |
Progress is slowing. "The incremental improvements are less and less," said Arya Ansari. If progress does not accelerate, Ohio will not return to its pre-pandemic chronic absenteeism rate until 2033.
Impact
Chronic absenteeism harms academic, social, and behavioral outcomes. A school day missed is equivalent to 2.5 days of lost math learning and 1.5 days of lost language and literacy learning, according to a 2022 report from the Crane Center. Not every day is created equal, and a lot of learning happens while kids are in the classroom academically. Kids miss considerably more than just a day when they are absent. There is often a snowball effect. It is hard to get students to catch up after chronic absenteeism.
Barriers
Underlying a lot of barriers to attendance is poverty. It contributes to housing instability, food insecurity, and the physical and mental health of the child and family. School hours do not necessarily map onto families who work evening shifts or multiple jobs. This misalignment makes consistent attendance difficult for many students.
Response
State efforts to address the issue are expanding. In 2024, the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce published the Ohio Attendance Guide and joined more than a dozen other states in pledging to cut chronic absenteeism by half. In 2025, policymakers revamped state law requiring districts to update their absence policies. Earlier that year, the department launched a new statewide attendance dashboard to track trends by district, school building, and grade level. The 2026-27 school year is the first full year of implementation for both the revamped law and the dashboard.
State report cards currently include chronic absenteeism as an indicator on the Gap Closing component. Schools receive credit for meeting the statewide target rate or reducing their rate from the previous year. Under the current standard, districts with rates above 36 percent need only reduce their chronic absenteeism rate by 1.1 percentage points to receive credit. Several districts with rates above 50 percent for three consecutive years received full credit for 'closing the gap'. Some experts argue the department should increase the required absenteeism reduction rate to 5 percentage points for a school or district to receive credit on the state report card.
