Chronic absenteeism is 7 points above pre-COVID and isn't recovering

The average across every school in New York City with reliable attendance data. The peak is 2021-22, the first school year after schools fully reopened. The dip in 2019-20 isn't really a dip — that's the year that ended in remote learning, so the way attendance was measured doesn't quite compare to the in-person years. The recovery from the 2021-22 peak has been steady, but each year of recovery is smaller than the last.

The average alone tells only part of the story. The chart below shows the full spread of schools — from the bottom 10% of attendance to the top 10% — year by year. The 2021-22 spike wasn't a small group of failing schools dragging the average up; every part of the distribution rose by similar amounts. And the 2024-25 distribution looks like the 2018-19 distribution shifted up by roughly 7 percentage points. The schools at the best end are now about as far above the schools at the worst end as they used to be — there just isn't a 'good' end anywhere near the 2018 good end.

Before COVID, Queens had the lowest absenteeism rate and the Bronx the highest. That order hasn't changed, but every borough has moved up. The change ranges from +3 percentage points in the Bronx (which started around 36% and didn't have as much room to climb) to +10 percentage points in Manhattan — the largest pre-to-post increase of any borough.

High-school attendance has almost recovered: it's only 3.5 percentage points above the 2018-19 baseline. K-8 schools — which include the middle grades where the pandemic was most disruptive — fared worst at +10 points. The pattern matches a simple split: students whose attendance is decided by parents (elementary-school age) are more absent than students who decide for themselves (high-school age). That's consistent with a shift in family attendance habits post-COVID, though the data alone can't prove that's the cause.

A handful of schools cut absenteeism by 25 to 35 percentage points over the period. Most are in high-need neighborhoods, in groups 4 through 9 on the 1-to-10 student-body challenge scale (1 is easiest to serve, 10 is hardest). Most are outside Manhattan. Bronx Aerospace High School leads at a 34.6-point drop, but most of that cut happened between 2018-19 and 2020-21 — including during the remote-learning period when attendance was measured differently. That story has its own piece (bronx-aerospace-mystery). New York City Department of Education's "attendance teacher" program, which sends an extra staff member to schools with chronic absenteeism above 30%, has been operating since around 2022 and overlaps several of the schools on this list.

These schools added 30 or more percentage points to their chronic-absenteeism rate. The list skews heavily Manhattan. P.S. 116 Mary Lindley Murray, in the wealthy Murray Hill neighborhood, went from 18% to 56% — a 38-percentage-point increase. That rise probably reflects more than just the zoned neighborhood families; Murray Hill schools also enroll students placed from nearby temporary housing. Several schools on this list were near-best-in-class for attendance before COVID and now sit in the worst tier.

Each year of improvement is smaller than the last:

• 2021-22 to 2022-23: dropped 4.5 percentage points • 2022-23 to 2023-24: dropped 1.5 points • 2023-24 to 2024-25: dropped 1.4 points

If the current rate of progress held steady, New York City would return to its 29.8% pre-COVID baseline around 2031. But that's a straight-line projection from only three data points and probably wrong in both directions. Recovery from major shocks is rarely smooth — the floor could be reached sooner or settle higher. What does hold up across all the cuts of the data: the new floor sits about 7 percentage points above the old one.

District 75 (the citywide system of schools for students with significant disabilities) saw a +6.5-point shift, which sits inside the citywide range. These schools aren't directly comparable to general-population schools — their students' medical and transportation needs interact with attendance differently — but the size of the shift looks normal.