Chronic Absenteeism Is a Huge School Problem. Can Data Help? The pandemic has significantly increased the number of students who don’t attend class. Solutions aren’t easy, but school districts can recover the chronically absent by digging deeper into data. May 24, 2021 • 1/1: empty classroom 4 () The education losses resulting from pandemic school closures and an unanticipated shift to remote learning have slowed academic achievement. But no matter what resources or strategies are devised to make up for learning setbacks and prevent a generational catastrophe, students won’t benefit unless they show up. Chronic absence, already a significant problem before the pandemic, reached new levels in the last year. One in four American students were chronically missing in 2020, up from the previous rate of one in six. In some school districts, the rate reached as high as 40 percent.