At least a quarter of K-12 students have been chronically absent in recent years, but gaps in federal oversight and data collection may be limiting efforts to address a major challenge schools have faced since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, or GAO.
States that receive funding from Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965 must report chronic absenteeism data, alongside other indicators in their statewide accountability systems. But GAO says the Department of Education suspended efforts to closely monitor whether states met ESEA’s programmatic and fiscal requirements earlier this year.
Since the agency is not assessing states’ ESEA compliance with Title I fiscal requirements, that increases the risk of fraud, waste, or abuse of federal funds, according to GAO.
Title I funds comprised about two-thirds of the nearly $27 billion in ESEA funding in 2025.
The study also identified issues with how the Department of Education calculates chronic absenteeism rates using state data. States report the number of chronically absent students over a school year, but total enrollment numbers are based on a single date.
These differing timeframes have produced unreliable or implausible results, such as chronic absenteeism rates over 100%. Low-performing schools with fluctuating enrollment and shared-time schools where students attend for partial days had especially faulty data. Over 30% of these schools had implausible chronic absenteeism rates, compared to just 2% of other schools, according to GAO’s analysis.
GAO has proposed three recommendations to Congress and the Secretary of Education to improve the quality of chronic absenteeism data and avoid misuse of funds:
- Resume comprehensive monitoring to ensure states are meeting ESEA fiscal and programmatic requirements.
- Require states to report the number of enrolled students in a manner that matches chronic absenteeism counts to calculate more reliable chronic absenteeism rates.
- Provide guidance on how states should report chronic absenteeism data for shared-timed schools to ensure more consistent reporting.
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