More than 244,620 Colorado students missed a significant amount of school during the 2024-25 academic year, a sign that attendance and chronic absenteeism rates have yet to return to pre-pandemic levels five years after COVID-19 initially shuttered classrooms.
While both student attendance and chronic absenteeism remained largely flat last year, the state saw 3,500 more students miss significant amounts of school when compared to the 2023-24 academic year, according to data released Wednesday by the .
“Our overall statewide rates, unfortunately, are moving in the wrong direction of what we hoped to see,” Colorado Education Commissioner Susana Córdova said.
A student is considered chronically absent if they miss 10% or more of the school days in an academic year for any reason.
Statewide, average daily attendance in school dropped by less than a percentage point to 91.4% last year. Chronic absenteeism also increased by less than a percentage point to 28.4% during the 2024-25 academic year, the data showed.
Attendance rates for most students of color lagged behind the statewide average, with Asian pupils the only demographic not to see a slight drop last year.
“These are more than data points,” Córdova said in a statement. “These are young people who are disengaged, disconnected and missing out on the critical learning experiences that they need to be successful.”
She said during a media briefing that itap not exactly clear why more students missed school last year, but that the state’s largest districts didn’t see as much improvement as they had during the 2023-24 academic year.
“It is not because of a lack of emphasis, focus or energy around the importance of daily attendance,” Córdova said.
Nationwide, chronic absenteeism in schools has increased since the pandemic — one of the many ways the health crisis upended education in the U.S.
Societal values and attitudes toward education shifted during the pandemic, even after schools resumed in-person learning, said Cori Canty, the school improvement and attendance manager at .
Parents are more likely to keep children home if they have a cough than they were before COVID-19, or for a mental health day if a student is struggling with stress or anxiety, she said.
Families are also more likely to take vacations during the academic year rather than waiting for summer or winter breaks compared to before the pandemic. Other students miss school because they are required to work to help financially support their families, Canty said.
DPS, the state’s largest school district, saw attendance rates improve last fall, but the progress was hindered after the presidential election and inauguration, she said.
The district has welcomed thousands of immigrant students in recent years, and many families and educators have feared that federal immigration enforcement officers will appear on school campuses under President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation efforts. The fear has led families to keep their children home from school, including in the wake of high-profile immigration raids across the Denver metro earlier this year.
DPS’s attendance rate was largely flat at 89.2% during the 2024-25 academic year, compared to the previous year. The percentage of students who chronically missed school increased 1 percentage point from 37.1% during the 2023-24 academic year to 38.1% last year, state data showed.
Attendance matters because students need to be in school to learn. Elementary-aged students who attend school regularly are more likely to read at grade level by the time they are in the third grade. Older students who are chronically absent are more likely to drop out and not graduate high school, according to the education department.
During the pandemic, Colorado’s average daily school attendance was 90.2% during the 2021-22 academic year, down from 91.9% the previous year. The statewide chronic absenteeism rate rose from 26% to 34.5% during that same period.
While more students are back in school compared to four years ago, Colorado adolescents are still missing more class time than they did before the pandemic.
In 2019, the statewide school attendance rate was 92.8% and chronic absenteeism was 22.6%, data showed.
Brandi Stott, the principal of , said the Loveland-based school has worked to combat chronic absenteeism by focusing on family engagement and supporting students instead of punishing them if they miss class.
The school hired a family engagement specialist and created an attendance team to support families as part of its efforts to keep kids in class.
Lincoln Elementary’s chronic absenteeism rate dropped by 5.7% between 2023 and 2025 and now sits at 20.38%, Stott said.
Educators said getting kids back into classrooms has involved strengthening relationships between staff and families and helping students feel like they belong at school.
“Itap a lot of increased communication,” Canty said. “Itap a lot of positive emphasizing the social and emotional support that schools play in a child’s emotional development.”
