Shining a light on education & government in TennesseeShining a light on education & government in TennesseeChronic absenteeism, the percent of students missing 10% or more of enrolled school days, is the single strongest predictor of academic failure we have. Look up the rate for any Tennessee public school below.
A student is chronically absent if they miss 10% or more of the days they were enrolled in school. In a standard 180-day year, that's about 18 days , roughly two a month. Excused or unexcused, illness or skipping, doesn't matter. The academic effect is the same.
Filter by school or district. Sort by rate or biggest year-over-year drop. Every card shows the absenteeism rate, the count of chronically absent students, total enrolled, and trend.
The 10% Threshold:A student is "chronically absent" when they miss 10% or more of enrolled school days. Research consistently shows chronic absenteeism is one of the strongest predictors of academic failure, dropout, and long-term outcome gaps. Today, 575 of 1695 TN schools (33.9%) have rates of 20% or higher.
Tennessee schools binned by % of students missing 10%+ of enrolled days.
Memphis-Shelby County Schools
Achievement School District
Davidson County
Davidson County
Davidson County
Memphis-Shelby County Schools
Bradley County
Achievement School District
Rutherford County
Davidson County
Achievement School District
Memphis-Shelby County Schools
Four pieces of context before you draw conclusions about any one school.
A student is chronically absent when they miss 10% or more of enrolled school days, excused or unexcused. The bar is intentionally low, research shows missing more than two days a month is enough to depress reading and math outcomes by the end of the year.
Unlike most TDOE files that only cover high schools, the chronic absenteeism file reports for every public school. The dashboard shows roughly 1,700 schools statewide.
Of every metric on this site, chronic absenteeism most reliably predicts dropout, depressed achievement, and long-term outcome gaps. A kid who is not in school cannot learn what is being taught there.
Subgroup rates are suppressed when a group has fewer than 10 students, in line with FERPA. An empty cell means the data was suppressed, not zero.
A student who misses 10% or more of the school days they were enrolled, for any reason, illness, family obligations, suspensions, transportation, you name it. The metric is intentionally agnostic to cause because the academic effect is the same regardless.
Yes. Nationally and in Tennessee, chronic absenteeism roughly doubled during the pandemic and has only partially recovered. The current statewide rate is still well above the pre-2020 baseline. The schools recovering fastest are mostly the ones that already had attendance support infrastructure before the pandemic.
Because it shows up in the data before grades, before test scores, before any of the academic measures degrade. A kid not in school in October is statistically very likely to be a kid struggling academically in May. Tracking absenteeism gives schools a months-long lead time over waiting for end-of-year results.
ADA tells you what fraction of enrolled students show up on a given day. Chronic absenteeism tells you what fraction of individual students miss a meaningful chunk of the year. A school can have 95% ADA and still have 25% chronic absenteeism if the same group of kids keeps missing days.
Chronic absenteeism data comes from the Tennessee Department of Education annual chronic absenteeism file (school-level, suppressed). Refreshes annually each fall for the prior school year.
Subgroup data is suppressed when a group has fewer than ten students. The rate includes excused and unexcused absences, suspensions, and illness, read the rate as a measure of school attendance, not student behavior. Pair it with the discipline dashboard for the fuller picture.
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