School attendance rates and chronic absenteeism in Colorado took a slight turn for the worse last school year, adding 3,500 more chronically absent students compared to the year prior.

Colorado schools’ long-standing chronic absenteeism challenges saw a slight regression during the 2024-25 academic year, with declines in statewide averages for daily attendance, according to data released Wednesday by the Colorado Department of Education.

The statewide average daily attendance rate for 2024-25 was 91.4%, a 0.1% decrease from the prior year. The statewide chronic absenteeism rate sat at 28.4%, a 0.7% increase compared to the 2023-24 school year, according to a news release from the Colorado Department of Education. This means that more than 1 in 4 of all Colorado students were chronically absent for 10% of enrolled school days or more.

“While we did see some promising gains at the local level, our overall statewide rates for average daily attendance and chronic absenteeism, unfortunately, are moving in the wrong direction of what we had hoped to see,” Colorado Education Commissioner Susana Córdova said during a virtual briefing of the results.

Across the board, attendance and absenteeism rates saw steeper drawbacks among historically disadvantaged student groups and students of color.

Average daily attendance rates decreased for most groups — with the exception of migrant students — including multilingual learners (89.5%), economically disadvantaged students (88.8%), students experiencing homelessness (83.8%) and students with special needs (89.6%).

Hispanic students and Hawaiian/Pacific Islander students saw the steepest drops in attendance at 0.3%, putting their attendance rates below the 91.4% statewide rate at 89.2% and 86.4% respectively.

Rates of chronic absenteeism for students of color were between 6.2% and 30.1% higher than those of their white peers, according to data from the department. Chronic absenteeism rates for Latino students in particular are at 38.4% — 10% above the state average.

“It’s hard to be able to say exactly what’s going on with Hispanic student attendance,” Córdova said. “But we definitely heard anecdotally concerns around attendance in the second semester for immigrant students.”

A slowing post-pandemic recovery

Daily attendance rates and state chronic absenteeism significantly worsened during the pandemic, hitting their peak during the 2021-22 school year at a 90.2% attendance rate and a 34.5% chronic absenteeism rate. By comparison, Colorado’s state average for attendance was 92.3% and the average chronic absentee rate was 22.5% during the 2018-29 school year — the last full year data was collected before the pandemic.

“Statewide, we continue to struggle with closing the gap between pre- and post-pandemic rates,” Córdova said. “While we’ve seen a steady decline from the 2021-22 school year high, chronic absenteeism today is about 5.8 (percentage points) above where we were pre-COVID.”

Both rates saw gradual but consistent improvement for two years, before backsliding slightly in 2024-25. According to Wednesday’s data, 244,622 students were chronically absent in 2024-25 — the third-highest rate since data collection began in 2016.

“After the pandemic, we saw huge increases in absences in the early grades, to the point where kindergarten attendance was one of our three highest grades for chronic absenteeism,” said Johann Liljengren, director of Dropout Prevention and Student Reengagement at the Colorado Department of Education.

The majority of districts see positive growth

Some grades, however, performed better than others. The increases in chronic absenteeism apply strictly to grades 3-12. The earlier grades — like kindergarten, first and second grades — saw decreases in chronic absenteeism ranging from 0.2% to 0.6%.

“There are highlights where we believe that intentional and strategic work has led to improvement in outcomes,” Liljengren said. The improvement in kindergarten through second grade is welcome news, given the importance of these grades for establishing students’ foundations for learning, and students’ and families’ patterns of engagement.”

In addition, even with slightly worsening state trends, 60% of school districts (107 districts) and BOCES saw improved attendance rates, and 59% had declines in chronic absenteeism. Some districts were able to shrink their chronic absenteeism rates back into pre-pandemic levels, according to Liljengren.

One of the 105 school districts to see improvements in its chronic absenteeism rates was the Summit School District, which saw a 6.4 percentage point drop in absenteeism, though its chronic absenteeism rate is still higher than the state average at 34.3%.

Several other Western Slope districts recorded chronic absenteeism higher than the state average, including Aspen School District (36.4%), Eagle County School District (31.1%), Moffat County School District (33%), East Grand School District (33%) and West Grand School District (32.1%).

Western Slope districts with chronic absenteeism rates lower than the state average include Garfield School District Re-2 (18.1%), Garfield County School District 16 (24%) and Roaring Fork Schools (25.8%). 

In terms of common causes for chronic absenteeism, Cordova said attendance for lower elementary school grades is largely driven by parent behavior. Some elementary school students, along with students in higher grades, can have deeper barriers to education surrounding access to food, transportation, mental health resources and other necessities.

“It’s parents making sure kids are up and ready, parents making sure that kids are on their way to school, either taking them to the bus stop, taking them to school themselves, making sure that they’re walking to school. And so we’re really pleased to see the improvements that we had at (kindergarten through second grade),” Córdova said. “As students get older, we definitely see some of those things continue, but we also see the real challenges around engagement, disengagement.”

Over the years, chronic absenteeism has been closely tied to sustained learning loss and an increased likelihood of falling behind and dropping out of high school.

Elementary school students who attend their kindergarten and first-grade classes regularly are more likely to read at grade level by third grade. The trends become more concerning as students age, with chronically absent middle schoolers being more likely to drop out of high school while chronically absent ninth graders are more likely to fail courses and not graduate with their peers, according to data from the department.

Districts work to close attendance gaps

In 2024, the department announced the Every School Day Matters attendance campaign focused on decreasing chronic absenteeism rates by 50% from the state’s pandemic high of 35.5%, according to the release.

Córdova said the department’s goal is to support students, families and educators in reducing chronic absenteeism to 17.8% by the 2026-27 school year. To date, 45 schools and districts have joined the campaign and are receiving ongoing support, resources, and tools focused on attendance.

Liljengren said that about two-thirds of the participants in the learning cohort made progress in chronic absenteeism this year.

“We remain committed to our statewide challenge. And while we missed our target for this year, we know that it’s really important that we continue to focus on attendance and meeting the 50% challenge to reduce chronic absenteeism from the pandemic high,” Córdova said. “We set this ambitious goal because we know that kids have the best opportunity for learning and success when they’re engaged, connected and consistently attending school.”

Some schools, like Lincoln Elementary School in Loveland, have worked toward reducing absenteeism rates by providing families with resources to “help reduce the reasons for kids to be out of school,” according to Principal Brandi Stott. Lincoln saw a 5.7% drop in their chronic absenteeism rate between 2023 and 2025 and now have a current rate of 20.38% — roughly 8 percentage points below the statewide average.

“We have specifically hired a family engagement specialist to help us partner with our families to tackle those barriers,” Stott said during the briefing. “Things like transportation, access to food, housing assistance … connection to jobs, employment, all sorts of things like that.”