Chronic absenteeism (2017-18) statistics from the California Department of Education are now available on RaceCounts.org at county and state levels. A chronically absent student is absent on 10 percent or more of the school days in the school year. According to the Perris Elementary School District, when a student misses one day of school it takes approximately three days to catch up. Reducing California’s high chronic absenteeism rates is a priority in the Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP).
Performance: Inyo County had the highest chronic absenteeism rate at 49% of students, compared to 11.1% for the State of California. The California Department of Education considers chronic absenteeism rates of more than 20 percent as very high, 10 to 20 percent as high, five to 10 percent as medium, 2.5 percent to five percent as low, and very low as 2.5 percent or less.
Disparity: San Francisco County school systems produced the most racially disparate chronic absenteeism outcomes among all counties in the state. There, 39.9% of Black and American Indian/Alaska Native students were chronically absent or 10 times more chronically absent than the best racial group.
Impact: California school systems recorded 702,531 chronically absent students in the 2017-18 school year. Latino/a students were the most impacted by chronic absenteeism, they made up 59% of all chronically absent students. Click here for data.