(The Center Square) – Wisconsin students continue to miss K-12 school at much higher rates than before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum.
Data shows that 19.5% of students missed more than one in 10 school days for any reason, defined as being chronically absent.
The rates are above pre-pandemic levels for every race, grade level and socioeconomic status and chronically absent rates were the highest above norms for those in elementary school.
Rates were below 13% from 2006 to 2020 before rising to 16.1% in 2021, 22.7% in 2022 and now 19.5% in 2023.
“Absenteeism in the youngest grades is particularly concerning since habits formed in the early years may carry through students’ academic careers, setting up today’s elementary school students to experience chronic absenteeism in future years at rates even higher than today’s middle and high school students,” the report said.
The report showed that 16.8% of first-graders were chronically absent and 27.6% of 12th-graders missed more than one in 10 days.
Students are chronically absent if they miss 18 or more days in a school year.
“Rates of chronic absenteeism for students classified as economically disadvantaged were nearly three times as high as their non-economically disadvantaged peers in 2023 – 31.6% compared to 11.3%,” the report showed. “On the other hand, their rates improved more from 2022 to 2023 than rates for more affluent students, the latter of which remained almost twice as high as pre-pandemic levels.”
There were 16 school districts statewide with more than 30% of students chronically absent in districts such as Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Racine and a handful of districts on or adjacent to tribal land.
Milwaukee Public Schools had the state’s highest rate of chronic absenteeism at 50.4% while no other district was above 45%.
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