EDUCATION & CHILDREN • CHRONIC ABSENTEEISM • FEDERAL OVERSIGHT

The Absence Rate Was Over 100%. The Oversight Had Already Stopped.

At least one in four students has been chronically absent. But the federal data used to track the problem can produce rates above 100 percent, and the Education Department stopped its most comprehensive oversight of the programs carrying nearly $27 billion.

A school cannot have more chronically absent students than students.

But the federal data used to track chronic absenteeism has produced rates above 100 percent.

That should have triggered a simple response: fix the calculation, find out which children are missing and make sure federal education money is reaching the schools and students it was meant to help.

Instead, a September 2026 report from the Government Accountability Office found two failures happening at the same time. The Department of Education was using mismatched data to calculate some absenteeism rates, and it had discontinued its most comprehensive monitoring of key federal education requirements.

The children were missing from classrooms. Reliable numbers and federal oversight were missing too.

The number is serious even before the data problem

Chronic absenteeism usually means missing at least 10 percent of the school year for any reason. It is not limited to skipping school without permission. Excused absences count because lost learning time is still lost learning time.

GAO reported that at least one quarter of K-12 students were estimated to be chronically absent in recent years. The Education Department’s own public information says the national rate reached about 31 percent in the 2021-22 school year and fell to about 28 percent in 2022-23. That improvement still left roughly one student in four missing a large part of the year.

This is not only a story about children who do not want to attend.

Students miss school because they are sick, anxious, bullied, homeless, caring for family members, working, changing schools or unable to find reliable transportation. Some families lack food, housing, laundry, internet access or medical care. A punishment-only response can make those barriers worse.

The Education Department’s National Center for Homeless Education says children and youth experiencing homelessness are more likely to be chronically absent than students overall and than low-income students who are housed. Its 2026 guidance recommends regular data review, supportive communication with families, school-based health services and partnerships that address the reason a student is missing.

You cannot target that help properly if the measurement is unreliable.

How an absence rate goes above 100 percent

The federal calculation combines two numbers that do not cover the same period.

States report the number of students who were chronically absent over the whole school year. But total enrollment is reported using a single date.

Imagine a school where students move in and out during the year. The annual count can include students who attended at different times, while the enrollment number captures only who was there on one particular day. The numerator and denominator are describing different groups.

That mismatch can produce an impossible result.

GAO found the problem was especially common in low-performing schools with more student turnover and in shared-time schools, such as career and technical programs that students attend for only part of the day. More than 30 percent of those schools had implausible rates, compared with fewer than 2 percent of other schools.

That does not mean the underlying absences were invented. It means the federal rate could not reliably show the size or pattern of the problem at those schools.

An impossible number is not a harmless typo. It can hide which communities need help, make schools look better or worse than they are and prevent officials from judging whether an intervention worked.

The watchdog was pulled back too

The data problem arrived alongside a larger oversight decision.

All states receiving Title I funding must create statewide accountability systems. Thirty-six states have chosen to include an indicator related to chronic absenteeism. Federal law also requires chronic-absence reporting by every state, whether or not the state uses it in its accountability system.

In 2026, however, the Education Department discontinued its most comprehensive monitoring of program and financial requirements under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

GAO said that decision has consequences extending beyond absenteeism. The law does not clearly state exactly how often or by what method the department must monitor grantees. That legal gap is part of the dispute. But GAO warned that without the discontinued reviews, the department was not assessing compliance with Title I financial requirements.

Title I represented about two-thirds of nearly $27 billion in federal ESEA funding in fiscal year 2025. GAO said the lack of comprehensive monitoring raises the risk that fraud, waste or abuse could go undetected.

That is a risk finding, not a finding that states stole or misused the money. GAO did not report that the entire program was corrupt. The point is that the system used to test compliance was reduced while large sums and vulnerable students were still at stake.

Who is missing?

The first missing seat belongs to students whose absences are treated as a number before anyone asks what happened.

Children experiencing homelessness are especially easy to lose in a system built around stable addresses, stable enrollment and reliable transportation. A student who changes schools, sleeps in temporary housing or lacks clean clothes may disappear from one count and reappear in another without the barrier ever being solved.

Students in low-performing and high-turnover schools are also missing from the clean national picture. Those were the schools where GAO found implausible rates most often.

Parents, teachers and local organizations are missing when federal reporting becomes a compliance exercise instead of a tool they can use. A family cannot respond to a rate above 100 percent. It can respond to a school showing how many children are missing, why and which supports are available.

Who held power, who benefited and who carried the burden?

The Education Department controlled the federal reporting instructions and decided to discontinue its most comprehensive ESEA monitoring. Congress held the power to clarify the department’s monitoring duty. States and school districts controlled the local attendance records, interventions and family outreach.

No one meaningfully benefits from bad data. But institutions can avoid scrutiny when the numbers are too unreliable to support comparison and the federal review is weaker. Officials can claim they are addressing absenteeism without a trustworthy national measure showing whether the strategy worked.

Students carry the educational burden. Teachers carry the burden of helping returning students catch up while keeping the rest of the class moving. Families carry the burden when health, housing or transportation barriers are treated as irresponsibility. Taxpayers carry the risk when billions in federal support are not paired with adequate monitoring.

Why should an ordinary person care?

Because attendance is where many public failures become visible.

A child may be absent because the bus route failed, asthma is untreated, housing is unstable, the school feels unsafe or the family cannot reach a counselor. The absence is not always the original problem. It may be the receipt for problems that other systems did not solve.

Reliable attendance data helps a school distinguish a few missed days from a pattern requiring action. It helps communities decide whether they need transportation, health services, mental-health support, mentoring or a safer school climate. It also helps the public see whether federal education money is reaching the students it was intended to support.

When the data is wrong, the loudest explanation can replace the best evidence. Families are blamed. Schools blame funding. Government points to a dashboard. Children keep losing instruction while adults argue about a number that should never have passed a basic math test.

The fair counterargument

Federal monitoring costs time and money. States and districts already face layers of reporting requirements, and adding another review can pull staff away from students. The Education Department may also use other oversight tools even after discontinuing the comprehensive strategy GAO examined.

The department agreed with one GAO recommendation and disagreed with two. Its disagreement matters. A watchdog recommendation is not automatically the only lawful or practical answer.

But the government cannot say detailed oversight is too burdensome while requiring schools to report data that the government itself calculates in a way capable of producing impossible results.

The answer is not more paperwork for its own sake. It is aligned data, a clear monitoring schedule and public reporting that tells families what the government checked and what it found.

Pull Up a Chair

Congress should require the Education Department to publish a plain-language ESEA oversight plan stating which fiscal and program requirements it will review, how often it will review them and how unresolved findings will be tracked.

The department should also align the enrollment count with the period used for chronic-absence counts. Shared-time schools need a separate, clearly defined method so their rates can be compared without pretending part-day enrollment is full-day enrollment.

Every state should publish a data-quality report showing how many schools produced impossible or unreliable rates, what caused the error and when corrected numbers will be available.

Local school boards can act now. Ask for chronic-absence data broken down by school, grade, homelessness, disability, race and other legally reportable groups. Then ask what happened after the count. How many families were contacted? Which barriers were identified? How many students received transportation, health care, counseling or housing support? Did attendance improve?

Do not settle for a campaign telling children to show up.

Ask whether the systems responsible for counting, funding and supporting them showed up too.

Ally = Action. 🪑

Who is missing?

• Students whose health, housing, safety, caregiving or transportation barriers are reduced to an attendance code.
• Children and youth experiencing homelessness or frequent school changes.
• Students in low-performing and high-turnover schools where GAO found implausible federal rates more often.
• Families and communities that need usable information rather than a defective national percentage.

Power, benefit and burden check

• Who held power? The Education Department, Congress, states and school districts.
• Who was affected? K-12 students, families, educators and communities relying on federal education funds.
• Who benefited? No student benefits from unreliable data; weakened oversight can reduce institutional accountability.
• Who carried the burden? Students losing instruction, teachers managing learning gaps, families navigating unresolved barriers and taxpayers funding programs without complete assurance.
• Why should an ordinary person care? Attendance data helps communities direct real help and tests whether almost $27 billion in federal education funding is being overseen properly.

Receipts

• U.S. Government Accountability Office, GAO-26-107920, September 23, 2026
  https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-26-107920
  Primary source for the discontinued monitoring strategy, mismatched reporting periods, implausible rates, federal funding amount, agency positions and open recommendations.
• Full accessible GAO report
  https://files.gao.gov/reports/GAO-26-107920/index.html
  Full methodology, analysis and Education Department response.
• U.S. Department of Education, Chronic Absenteeism
  https://www.ed.gov/teaching-and-administration/supporting-students/chronic-absenteeism
  Current department definition, national rates and support resources.
• National Center for Homeless Education, In School Every Day, 2026
  https://nche.ed.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/In_School_Every_Day_Addressing_Chronic_Absenteeism_Among_CYEH_Feb_2026.pdf
  Federal technical-assistance resource describing barriers faced by children and youth experiencing homelessness and supportive intervention strategies.

Verification and evidence notice

• Verified finding: GAO reported that at least one quarter of K-12 students were estimated to be chronically absent in recent years.
• Verified finding: The federal calculation used annual chronic-absence counts with single-date enrollment counts, producing unreliable and sometimes impossible rates.
• Verified finding: More than 30 percent of low-performing, high-turnover and shared-time schools in GAO’s analysis had implausible rates, compared with fewer than 2 percent of other schools.
• Verified finding: Education discontinued its most comprehensive ESEA monitoring strategy in 2026.
• Risk, not proven loss: GAO said reduced financial monitoring creates a higher risk of undetected fraud, waste or abuse. It did not find that all or most ESEA funds were misused.
• Agency dispute: Education agreed with one recommendation and disagreed with two. GAO maintained that all three actions were needed.
• Open action: Congress’s matter for consideration and all three GAO recommendations remained open when checked on October 2, 2026.
• Inference: Unreliable rates can make it harder to direct resources and assess whether interventions work. GAO identified the data’s limitations but did not claim every state or district intervention failed.
• Opinion: A federal attendance rate above 100 percent should be treated as a governance failure, not a harmless data oddity.

← Return to all editorials