As chronic absenteeism rises, North Carolina revises policy so students can no longer fail classes based on attendance

Starting this school year, North Carolina students cannot fail a class based solely on attendance.

Before this policy change, students could have received a failing grade of “FF” even if they had been passing a course but weren’t showing up to classes, according to WRAL News.

“If a kid is making a B but doesn’t come to school, that’s more of a classroom issue than it is an attendance issue,” said Sneha Shah-Coltrane, senior director of North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI), at a recent board meeting.

Drew Washington, youth organizer with the Education Justice Alliance nonprofit, celebrated the state’s policy revision.

“I don’t think that’s fair to the student, for them to be pushed out of school because of things they may not be able to control,” he said. “I think it’s better to meet families where they are.”

Rising chronic absenteeism statewide

Other analysts, such as researchers from the nonprofit myFutureNC, focus instead on the chronic absenteeism spurring such administrative changes in the first place.

“Once in high school, chronically absent students are less likely to graduate and less likely to attend college,” the nonprofit’s website warns.

“The reasons for the increases in chronic absenteeism are still unclear, but the negative effects on student outcomes are substantial.”

The state’s chronic absenteeism rate – defined as the percentage of K-12 students missing 10% or more of school days per year – was 25% in the 2024-25 school year.

While this has declined from the COVID-19 pandemic rate of 31% during the 2021-22 school year, it still falls short of myFutureNC’s goal to reduce chronic absenteeism to 11% by 2030.

“Students from rural counties had the highest chronic absenteeism rates in 2024 with rural-non-metro at 29% and rural-metro at 28%,” the nonprofit noted, adding rates differed by race and ethnicity.

“Asian students (11%) were the only racial or ethnic group in 2024 that met the state goal of 11%. White students had the next lowest rates (20%) followed by Hispanic students (28%) and Multiracial students (29%). Black students had the second highest rates of chronic absenteeism (32%), and American Indian students had the highest rates of chronic absenteeism among all racial and ethnic groups at 41%.”

‘Something fundamental has shifted’

Some researchers have called chronic absenteeism “the most pressing post-pandemic problem in public schools,” according to the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

The nationwide rate of chronic absenteeism in 2023 stayed 75% above its “pre-pandemic baseline,” projected to “severely hamper” any progress in recouping learning losses from school closures, the institute reported.

“Even though nearly every school returned to in-person instruction over two years ago, many students have not fully returned to school in earnest,” explained Nat Malkus, the report’s author as well as senior fellow and deputy director of AEI’s Education Policy Studies.

The New York Times agreed.

“The trends suggest that something fundamental has shifted in American childhood and the culture of school, in ways that may be long lasting,” it noted. “What was once a deeply ingrained habit – wake up, catch the bus, report to class – is now something far more tenuous.”

The rise of chronic absenteeism partly stemmed from the disintegration of parental relationships with school boards, according to the article.

“The habit of daily attendance – and many families’ trust – was severed when schools shuttered in spring 2020. Even after schools reopened, things hardly snapped back to normal.”