Data-Driven Education Journalism
The OPS male graduation rate has been below 70% for six consecutive years. The 2025 gender gap was 10.3 points, 2.4 times the state average, and 664 OPS males did not finish on time.
Illinois reached an 89.0% four-year graduation rate in 2025, the highest point in the state's comparable 2019-2025 graduation-rate series and 1.0 point below 90%.
Beckley's home county is one of three at record-low attendance and one of five that worsened since the 2022 trough. Independence Middle and High are Raleigh County's lowest-attendance schools.
Washington produced record graduates in 2025, but the rate fell for the second straight year as the cohort grew faster than the diploma count.
42.9% of Ohio's Black students are chronically absent, more than double the white rate. The 23.8-point gap grew slightly in 2025 after two years of narrowing.
Before the pandemic, boys in MA had higher chronic absenteeism. Since 2022, girls have led every year. In 2025, 58.7% of districts showed the same flip.
Arizona's statewide chronic absenteeism rate improved slightly in 2024-25, but 38 comparable districts posted their highest rates in the four-year district dataset.
Nearly a quarter of North Dakota districts with enough data history posted their lowest-ever graduation rates in 2024.
Across Alabama's 20 Black Belt counties, chronic absenteeism averages 22.4%, nearly double the state rate, with only three of 20 districts recovering to pre-COVID levels.
Alaska's special education graduation rate has barely moved in seven years while 471 students in the 2025 cohort left high school without a diploma.
Davidson County posted the strongest attendance recovery among Tennessee's largest districts, but Black and low-income students still miss school at rates that dwarf their peers.
Michigan's 4-year graduation rate reached a record 84% in 2025 even as the graduating cohort shrank by one-fifth since 2008.
SB 123 bans absence-only expulsions and mandates intervention teams, but 199 of 231 districts already exceed the 10% chronic absenteeism threshold that triggers the law.
The share of Nevada schools with chronic rates below 10% collapsed from 17.3% to 3.6%. Nearly half of all schools now exceed 30%.
In Minnesota, 40% of Black students were chronically absent compared to 14.5% of white students -- a 25-point gap the state can no longer track because it stopped publishing subgroup data.
A majority of Colorado districts reduced chronic absenteeism in 2024-25, yet the statewide rate ticked up because a handful of large districts worsened enough to overwhelm everyone else's progress.
After excluding authorized charter schools, Twin Rivers Unified's district-operated schools still rank seventh among California's large districts for chronic absenteeism.
Four of Illinois's largest urban districts outside the collar counties have chronic absenteeism above 40%. Decatur is worst at 46.1%, while Springfield was already at 42% before COVID.
Rhode Island's 5-year graduation rate rescues foster care (+8.6pp), homeless (+7.6pp), and special education (+6.0pp) students, but not LEP students, who actually do worse.
Pennsylvania's economically disadvantaged students graduate at 83%, and the poverty gap with all students narrowed 55% since 2011.
Portland SD 1J's graduation rate peaked at 84.4% in 2023 after climbing from 53.6% in 2010, then slipped to 82.5% in 2025.
Black students in Kansas City 33 graduated at 89.1 percent in Missouri's 2025 four-year cohort, 9.3 points above white students in St. Louis City. The comparison favored St. Louis in 2019.
Pam Long says Brussels' size is its strength as she begins leading the small Calhoun County district as superintendent.
Florida's gender graduation gap has narrowed from 7.5 to 3.7 points since 2016, with boys improving 10.9 points versus 7.1 for girls. But eight small districts still have double-digit gaps.
Piedmont, Deer Creek, and Yukon graduate 96-97% of students while Oklahoma City and Tulsa manage 70-77%, a persistent suburban-urban divide in graduation outcomes.
Closter has NJ's largest Black-white chronic absenteeism gap at 39.9 points. Across 9 districts, gaps exceed 20 points.
After beginning in Green County as a student teacher, Melissa Collison will lead Green County Intermediate with a focus on academic and emotional support.
Indiana's male graduation rate gained 2.7 percentage points over a decade, narrowing the gender gap from 4.0 to 2.8 points as young men improved faster than young women.
California's English learner graduation rate surged from 70.9% to 79.7% but the 85,815-student cohort still sees 1 in 5 fail to graduate, with vast district variation.
Reservation-area districts average 45.7% chronic absenteeism while five suburban East Valley districts average 16.8%. Tuba City's 29-point drop shows the divide is not fixed.
All six racial chronic absenteeism gaps versus white students widened between 2019 and 2025 in Wisconsin, led by Native American and Pacific Islander students.
North Dakota's economically disadvantaged students graduate at 67.6%, the lowest rate in 12 years of state data.
Warren County (53.9%), Halifax (51.0%), and Northampton (50.5%) lead a rural corridor where half of students miss a month or more of school.
Delaware's charter schools post both the lowest and highest chronic absenteeism in the state. Which number you use determines what story you tell.
In seven years of data, students who are currently homeless' graduation rate has never exceeded 65%. The 2025 rate of 63.4% is the best on record, and still 16.5 points below the state average.
Richmond fall membership is down 18% since 2003, but virtual-school enrollment and ADM data show the 2021 spike was not a simple local headcount change.
Incoming Woodlawn Middle leader Terran Perry says school culture, community support, and transformation work will define the first year.
Des Moines, Davenport, Cedar Rapids, Waterloo, and Sioux City account for 20,801 of Iowa's 76,535 chronically absent students — 27.2% from 17.1% of enrollment.
Montana's White-Native American graduation rate gap has hovered near 20 percentage points for over a decade despite constitutional mandates and targeted funding.
As Dr. Shawn Poyser begins the permanent role, he points to relationships, budget discipline, and the district's community reputation.
In San Francisco Unified's district-operated schools, 54.6% of Black students were chronically absent in 2024-25, a 47-point gap above Asian students and one of the widest racial attendance divides in California.
West Franklin's incoming MS/HS principal says literacy work, experienced staff, community traditions, and expanded learning pathways will shape the next chapter.
Susan Blockburger says Riverview's next year starts with continuity, student supports and a small-school atmosphere as she serves as interim superintendent.
Low-income students are chronically absent at 35.4% vs. 19.0% for their peers — a 16.4-point gap that has grown by a third since the pandemic.
Multiracial enrollment grew 81.8% since 2011, the fastest growth of any racial group in Virginia. The shift reflects demographic change and evolving identity.
Oregon's poverty graduation gap appeared to vanish because 78% of the cohort was classified as disadvantaged. A tighter definition revealed a 12-point gap.
Foster care youth graduate at 55%, English learners at 52%, students who are currently homeless at 62%. Nebraska's most vulnerable populations form a graduation floor 26 to 36 points below the state average.
Mooresville Graded School District is the only district in North Carolina to reach a 95% graduation rate, up from 64% in 2006 and above 90% for nine straight years.
Grandview C-4's graduation rate has fallen every year since 2019, dropping from 82.7 percent to 72.5 percent while neighboring suburban districts hit record highs.
McPherson's incoming superintendent says visibility, trust, and shared leadership will matter as the district starts a new chapter during bond construction.
Leon County's graduation rate has declined for four consecutive years to 85.1%, the lowest in its recorded history. It is the only Florida district at an all-time low while 16 others set records.
Two outer-ring entities now enroll more students than four inner-city Phoenix districts combined, exposing a demographic fault line in Arizona's school choice landscape.
Vick Barrett says Poyen's next chapter starts with staff support, student success and steady growth as he moves from principal to superintendent.
Wyoming's K-8 enrollment has fallen 12.4% since the 2016 peak, while high school actually grew 4%. The divergence is temporary — small K classes will reach HS by 2032.
45.9% of Native American students are chronically absent while the community shrinks — down 30% since 2015. In Portland, nearly two-thirds are chronically absent.
Ocean Gate, Seaside Heights, Keansburg, and Neptune City all have chronic absenteeism above 30% while the state rate falls. Ocean Gate hit 43%.
The Native American-white chronic absence gap in MA grew 4.2 points since pre-COVID, the widest expansion of any racial group. Recovery lags all but one.
Dr. Brett Gallini says he advanced his start date to avoid another transition, then spent his first weeks visiting schools and classrooms across CCSD59.
DeKalb County graduated 81.6% of its Class of 2025, crossing 80% for the first time. But nine superintendents in 15 years left it trailing every metro peer.
Seaford School District's graduation rate dropped 5.8 points since 2015, the steepest decline in Delaware. A 13-point gender gap and deep racial disparities compound the problem.
Arkansas girls graduate at 91%, boys at 87% — a persistent 4-point gap that shows no sign of narrowing.
Dothan City Schools names Marketa George principal of Jerry Lee Faine Elementary, where she will lead a 285-student campus.
Dothan City Schools names Aundria L. Sewell principal of Beverlye Intermediate, where she will lead a 335-student campus.
Hawaii's foster care graduation rate fell 16 points since 2018 while every other vulnerable group improved, opening the widest equity gap in the state.
Before COVID, Delaware's English learners were less likely to be chronically absent than average. That flipped in 2021 and has not reversed.
More than a quarter of Virginia school divisions recorded their worst-ever graduation rate in 2023, including Norfolk, Bedford, and Portsmouth.
Texas's graduation landscape is splitting: 437 districts hit all-time highs in 2024 while 260 hit all-time lows. Traditional ISDs average 95.6% vs 83.4% for charter/alternative schools.
The Hispanic-white chronic absenteeism gap in Tennessee narrowed from 6 percentage points to 2.5, even as the Black-white gap barely moved.
While SC's graduation rate hit an all-time high, Lexington 2 dropped 13 points, Darlington fell 11, and Spartanburg 4 declined 10.6, the largest declines among traditional districts.
Six years into Rhode Island's takeover of Providence schools, enrollment has fallen 17.2% to a 16-year low ahead of a July 1, 2026 return to local control.
Redmond SD 2J climbed from 46.1% graduation in 2010 to 91.2% in 2025, a 45-point gain, the largest among Oregon's mid-size and large districts.
Guymon Public Schools raised its graduation rate from 60.5% to 90.4% in six years, while English learners climbed from 28.7% to 80.0%.
The white-Hispanic graduation gap in New Mexico narrowed from 11.5 to 5.9 percentage points between 2009 and 2017, driven by Hispanic students improving 7.5 points, the fastest of any racial group.
Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools has a 32.1% chronic absence rate, the second-highest among NC's five largest districts, and 10.5 points above its pre-COVID level.
Montana's gap between actual enrollment and pre-COVID growth projections has grown sixfold since 2023 to 14,337 students, with 59% of districts still below 2020 levels.
Six years after the pandemic, 371 Missouri school districts remain below their pre-COVID enrollment. The combined deficit exceeds 46,000 students.
Hawaii's county-operated schools lost 3,702 students in 2025-26, the steepest real decline on record. Traditional enrollment now stands at 150,280, down 15.1% from the 2014 peak.
The graduation rate for Hawaii students who are homeless jumped 15 points since 2018, cutting the gap with the state average in half and outpacing every other subgroup.
Macon's school district had more than half its students chronically absent in 2021. Four years of sustained improvement made it Georgia's top recovery story.
Conecuh County's graduation rate rose 17 points in a decade, from well below to above the state average. A rare rural turnaround story.
Two-thirds of Alaska's 53 districts are majority-minority, but the state's racial composition has barely shifted in seven years of data.
Elko, Lyon, and Mineral counties have chronic rates of 34.6%, 39.5%, and 40.2% respectively, all more than double their pre-COVID levels.
Montana's four-year graduation rate has posted three consecutive annual declines, falling to 85.0% in 2024 -- below where it stood a decade ago.
Mississippi climbed from a 73.8% graduation rate in 2014 to 87.9% in 2025, a 14-point gain that moved the state from 48th in the nation to above the national average.
The gap between all students and high-needs students shrank from 9.4 points to 1.6 over a decade, driven by gains in cities like Waterbury and New Britain.
While most Colorado districts improved, 21 posted their worst-ever chronic absenteeism rates in 2024-25, led by Colorado Springs D11 and including several with multi-year worsening streaks.
Sacramento County's district-operated chronic absenteeism rate was 21.9% in 2024-25, 8.4 points above its pre-COVID baseline, with a wide gap between its highest and lowest districts.
Kindergarten chronic absenteeism fell from 29.1% to 26.1%, the largest improvement of any grade. Elementary schools are leading Illinois's attendance recovery.
Pawtucket climbed from 58% to 83% in six years, making it a turnaround success story. Then the rate fell back to 71%, with a 19% dropout rate.
For every 100 Wisconsin public-school seniors in the 2024-25 data, only 76 kindergartners entered five-year-old kindergarten. The gap has nearly doubled since 2006.
Philadelphia's graduation rate rose from 55% to 76% since 2011, the largest urban improvement in PA, driven by the 9th Grade Success Network.
Portland's Native American graduation rate is stuck at 47.6% for three straight years, 26 points below statewide and 35 below the district average.
Ralston Public Schools has declined from 90% to 76.9% over seven years. The enclave inside Omaha now sits closer to OPS than to the state average.
NC charter high schools have closed a 14-point graduation gap with traditional schools since 2006 while quadrupling in number. But convergence masks enormous school-to-school variance.
The gap between Missouri's 4-year and 5-year graduation rates shrank from 2.1 points to 0.5 points, suggesting improvements are genuine rather than students being shifted to extended timelines.
Nearly half of Iowa's school districts hit their highest-ever graduation rate in 2024, while 87 districts posted their worst -- a bifurcated state where the middle ground is thinning.
When Florida waived assessment requirements during COVID, graduation rates in its poorest districts spiked by up to 22 points. When requirements returned, the gains evaporated, and some districts fell below their pre-improvement levels.
Kindergarten fell 15.9% while 12th grade rose 16.7%. Arizona consistently has more seniors than juniors. Now the shrinking pipeline hits high school.
Weston County School District #7 went from 222 students to 902 in three years, driven by Powder River Basin oil activity. The boom has already started to recede.
After briefly improving, Logan County's attendance reversed in 2024-25. Man Senior High leads the state's worst at 84.7%. Only 3 of the county's 17 schools are above 90%.
Utah's special education graduation rate climbed from 69.4% to 77% since 2017, narrowing the gap with the state average, but nearly one in four SpEd students still don't graduate in four years.
Tennessee's graduation rate hit 92.3% in 2025, setting an all-time record on a growing cohort of nearly 75,000 students.
Oregon's 15,920 students who are currently homeless have a chronic absenteeism rate of 56.4% — more than half miss too much school. The gap with the overall rate has persisted at 22-25 points for a decade.
Native American students in Oklahoma graduated at 84.3% in 2025, outpacing the state average in 6 of 7 years — the opposite of the national pattern.
In northwestern New Mexico, six districts serving predominantly Native American communities all graduate below 70%, forming a regional crisis that spans the Navajo Nation.
The Black-white chronic absenteeism gap nearly doubled during COVID and has only partially recovered, leaving Black students 10 points behind.
Nearly half of Maine districts with three years of data improved chronic absenteeism in both consecutive years. Only 15 worsened in both. The breadth of improvement suggests systemic recovery, not isolated success stories.
East Baton Rouge Parish graduated 76.3% of students in 2025, nearly 9 points below the state average and the lowest rate among Louisiana's major parishes.
South Bend's 40.3% chronic absenteeism rate has more than doubled since 2013, and one school recorded 99.3% chronic absence.
173 Indiana school corporations with meaningful cohorts now graduate at least 95% of their students, up from about 90 a decade ago, with 24 posting a perfect 100%.
Ten schools on Oahu's Waianae Coast have chronic absenteeism rates between 42% and 55%, more than double the state average, driven by deep poverty and limited healthcare access.
Georgia's foster care students graduate at 50.1%, 37 points below the state average and the lowest of any subgroup. Homeless youth face a similar gap.
Students in foster care and students who are currently homeless are the only subgroups in Delaware whose graduation rates fell over nine years, even as the state hit an all-time high of 88.9%.
In 47 California districts with meaningful sample sizes, Black students graduate at higher rates than white students, challenging default assumptions about racial gaps.
The Pacific Islander-white chronic absence gap tripled from 3.6 to 11.4 points after COVID, the widest relative expansion of any racial group in Arizona.
Two Rivers gained 18 points on its graduation rate in three years, climbing from 71.2% to 89.2% — the largest improvement of any Arkansas district.
LEP students in Wisconsin went from 15.1% chronic absence in 2019 to 25.6% in 2025, the largest excess of any subgroup, with the LEP-overall gap quadrupling.
Utah's economically disadvantaged students miss school at 1.45 times the state rate, and the gap has barely budged in three years of available data.
The graduation rate for North Dakota students who are currently homeless has been stuck below 65% for eight years, with a 30-point gap to the state average.
Despite statewide improvement, 7 districts recorded their worst-ever chronic absenteeism rates in 2023-24, including Warren County at 53.9%.
One of Honolulu's largest high schools graduates barely seven in 10 students, with Pacific Islander rates below 50% and a 15-year gender gap.
Delaware's students with disabilities are the only major demographic where chronic absenteeism fell below pre-COVID levels, dropping from 24.1% to 23.6%.
Alaska Native students graduate at a 68% rate, nearly 18 points below white peers. Seven years of data show a gap that refuses to narrow.
Virginia Beach City improved its graduation rate every year from 2019 to 2023, reaching 95.3% with the second-largest cohort in Virginia at 5,111 students.
Aldine ISD jumped 6.2 points in a single year to reach 84.6%. Donna ISD posted four consecutive years of improvement to reach 96.3%. Both serve high-poverty, majority-Hispanic populations.
Students with disabilities in SC graduate at 61.6% (25 points below the state average) and at the current pace of improvement, closing the gap would take 25 years.
Georgia's English learners post lower chronic absenteeism than the state average, bucking a national trend. But the advantage is shrinking fast.
Alabama's white-Hispanic graduation gap swung from 0.9 points to 6.1 points and back to 1.8 points in a decade, extreme volatility with a good ending.
Lyon County's chronic absenteeism rate reached 39.5% in 2024-25, an all-time high. It is the only Nevada district that has not improved from its COVID-era peak.
New Britain graduates 71% in four years, lowest among CT traditional districts. But its high-needs students nearly match the state average.
Chronic absenteeism dropped from a 30% peak to 19.4%, but improvement slowed to just 1 point last year. At that pace, a return to the 12.1% pre-pandemic baseline would take about eight more years.
Despite statewide improvement from 26.3% to 25.4%, 64 districts recorded their highest chronic absence rates in the available 2018-19 to 2024-25 series.
Students who are currently homeless in Rhode Island graduated at just 59.0% in 2024, a 25-point gap from the state average and no improvement since reporting began in 2019.
Washington's attendance recovery follows a nearly perfect gradient by age — younger students are bouncing back while high schoolers remain stuck near their pandemic peak.
Pennsylvania's white-Black graduation gap dropped from 23 to 11 percentage points since 2011 as Black students' rate soared from 65% to 81%.
Nebraska's special education graduation rate dropped nearly 4 points during COVID, widening the gap to 22.5 points. Five years later, the rate has barely returned to pre-pandemic levels.
English learners in NC have the most volatile graduation trajectory of any subgroup — spiking, crashing, and spiking again as the cohort more than doubled and the definition changed.
Joplin Schools hit a trough of 75.1 percent in 2021 before surging to 96.5 percent by 2025, including an 8.4-point leap in the final year.
Iowa's graduation story is increasingly a story of geography, with 18- to 26-point gaps between urban cores and surrounding suburbs across the Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, and Quad Cities metros.
Pasco County's graduation rate climbed 16.4 points to 95.5% in 2024, with its special education rate of 96.2% exceeding the overall rate. The large suburban district near Tampa is rewriting expectations.
Wyoming's energy-producing counties have lost 14.9% of their enrollment since 2016, nearly three times the rate of non-energy districts.
Wayne County's attendance surged from 86.0% to 91.0% since the 2022 trough, with Tolsia High School gaining nearly 10 points. What happened in this southern WV county?
Kingdom East and St Johnsbury went from majority-absent to below the state average in two years, achieving the largest turnarounds in Vermont.
Utah's Native American graduation rate crossed 80% for the first time in 2025, reaching 80.1%, but the volatile trajectory and 9.7-point gap to the state average tell a more complex story.
SC's K:G12 ratio fell below 100 for the first time in 2025 and dropped to 95.4 in 2026, with 2,546 fewer kindergartners than 12th graders.
Pacific Islander students have the highest chronic absenteeism of any racial group in Oregon at 51.5%. The gap with white students has quadrupled from 5.0 to 20.8 points.
Economically disadvantaged students in Maine are chronically absent at 35.0%, nearly double the 17.6% rate for their peers. The gap narrowed 3.2 points in two years but remains the state's deepest structural divide.
Lawrence cut chronic absenteeism from 43.5% to 23.3%, 0.6 points below its pre-COVID rate. Among Massachusetts' nine largest Gateway Cities, it stands alone.
Louisiana's Hispanic graduation rate of 72.8% sits nearly 17 points behind white students, a gap that has fluctuated wildly since 2018 without clear improvement.
Special education students gained 13.2 percentage points over a decade, the largest improvement of any subgroup, collapsing the gap with general education peers.
Georgia's largest district improved from 67.6% to 85.4% over 14 years while its cohort grew by 3,320 students and became majority-minority.
Delaware's SpEd graduation rate gained 9.6 points since 2015, but a 15.6-point gap persists. Christina graduates barely half its SpEd students.
Anaheim Union High rose from 86.8% to 94.4% across four straight reported gains, ranking second among California districts with 2025 graduating cohorts of 4,000 or more.
Across 22 campuses, BASIS charter schools averaged 10.9% chronic absenteeism in 2024-25, less than half the state rate. The consistency is hard to dismiss.
Foster care students' graduation rate in Arkansas fell from 73.5% to 67.9% since 2018 — the only subgroup declining while all others improved.
After two years of improvement, Beloit's chronic absenteeism jumped 4.6 points to 42.7% in 2025 while the state continued recovering.
Pacific Islander students miss school at more than double the rate of white peers, a 25-point gap that Utah's attendance campaigns have not specifically addressed.
Williston Basin district graduates just 68.6% of students, the lowest rate among large ND districts, amid oil boom-driven growth and transience.
Davidson County Schools dropped from 29.4% to 11.4% chronic absence, the largest North Carolina district to improve this far this fast.
Maine's 9-12 enrollment has barely budged in nine years, falling just 4.3%. But K-8 has lost 11,198 students, and today's kindergarten classes are 2,320 smaller than grade 9.
Chronic absenteeism peaks at 23.4% in 9th grade, nearly double elementary rates. Black and low-income freshmen hit hardest at the key dropout predictor.
Fifteen Alaska school districts graduated fewer than 70% of their students in 2025. Nearly all are remote Bush communities where teacher turnover, tiny cohorts, and extreme geography collide.
Nine Virginia divisions show a spike-then-crash graduation pattern: rates rose at least 3 points by 2021, then fell at least 3 points by 2023.
Texas's 2024 graduation gaps are tightly compressed in the state file: poverty 1.1 points, special education 6.6 points, and gender 2.0 points.
West Des Moines has a 31-point gap between its K-8 and computed high school chronic absence rates, the largest in Iowa's 2025 district data.
A longstanding pattern reversed in 2022: Georgia girls now have marginally higher chronic absenteeism than boys, and the gap has not closed.
The graduation rate for students who are currently homeless in Alabama reached 86.3% in 2025, the highest mark in the 2015-2025 state series.
Nevada Learning Academy at CCSD has a 74.3% chronic rate with 3,204 students, meaning an estimated 2,400 students are chronically absent. But Nevada Virtual Charter achieves 9.6%.
Hartford's graduation rate hit an all-time high of 78.6%, but a decade of stagnation, a grading policy inquiry, and a literacy lawsuit complicate the numbers.
Pacific Islander, Native American, and Black students all have chronic rates above 31%. Every racial gap with white students is wider now than before the pandemic.
Five districts in the Metro East region across from St. Louis have chronic rates above 50%. Venice CUSD 3 went from 9.1% to 51.8% in five years.
Washington's 3,777 foster youth have seen their chronic absence rate flatline at 41% for three straight years, even as other vulnerable groups continue recovering.
Woonsocket's 44% chronic absenteeism rate is the highest among Rhode Island's large districts, with more than half of middle schoolers chronically absent.
Pennsylvania's four-year graduation rate reached 88% in 2024, but the state produced nearly 6,000 fewer graduates than in 2011 as cohorts shrank 10%.
Even as Oregon hits a record 83% graduation rate, 15 districts graduate fewer than 70% of students. The list skews rural and coastal, with Coquille at 41%.
The gap between white and Black graduation rates in Missouri fell to 7.8 percentage points in 2025, driven by Black student gains that outpaced white students by more than 2 to 1.
Students with disabilities graduate at 83.1% in Kentucky, a 10.5-point gap from the state rate. Nationally, that gap is 13 points.
Iowa began reporting graduation rates for non-binary students in 2022, with a cohort that has grown from 15 to 73 students and a rate of 84% in 2024, above Black, English learner, and special education students.
Florida's graduation gap between low-income and all students narrowed from 6.3 to 3.5 points since 2016, with FRL students improving 11.8 points. Unlike the ELL gap, the poverty gap did not snap back after COVID.
West Virginia's largest county and state capital posted its lowest attendance ever at 91.4%, one of five counties that worsened since the 2022 trough even as the state recovered.
Carbon District in Utah's coal country has seen its graduation rate plummet 13.2 points since 2018, the steepest decline of any school district in the state.
Beaverton, Portland, Tigard-Tualatin, and nine other districts saw chronic absenteeism worsen in every measurable year for six straight years, spanning pre-pandemic, pandemic, and post-pandemic eras.
Oklahoma's Black graduation rate fell from 82.7% to 73.7% during COVID and has only recovered to 78.2%, leaving a 5.3-point gap with white students.
New York enrollment fell from 2.84M to 2.45M since 2005, declining in 19 of 21 years. The 2026 drop of 37,176 is the worst since COVID.
Twenty-one Louisiana parishes hit their all-time highest graduation rate in 2025, spanning turnaround stories and established performers, while only 2 regular parishes sit at lows.
Chronic absenteeism rose every year from 2015 to 2019, crossing 10% for the first time in 2018. The pandemic accelerated a trend already in motion.
Gary Community School Corp's graduation rate fell from 85.5% to 57.8% over a decade, the steepest decline of any Indiana corporation with a cohort of 100 or more, with most of the drop arriving after the 2017 state takeover.
Pacific Islander students in Hawaii have a 40% chronic absenteeism rate (29 percentage points higher than Asian students), and the gap has widened since the pandemic.
While every other equity gap in California graduation data narrowed since 2018, the student who is currently homeless gap widened from 7.5 to 10.7 points amid a growing cohort.
Arizona's students who are currently homeless face a 39.7% chronic absenteeism rate, 10 points above the pre-COVID level. The pandemic permanently elevated their baseline.
Wisconsin's chronic absenteeism climbs steadily from 3rd grade through 12th, with 27% of seniors (17,014 students) chronically absent in 2025.
Every student group in Utah improved on chronic absence except English learners, whose gap with the state average widened to 12.4 points.
Oconee County has worsened every year in SC's chronic absenteeism data, rising from 19.3% to 23.2% while the state recovered from its peak.
Minot's Native American graduation rate has collapsed to 25.9%, down from 85.7% seven years ago, amid a broader district-wide decline.
Students with disabilities have a 32.4% chronic absence rate in NC, 7.4 points above the overall average. The gap was roughly 5 points before the pandemic.
Saco Public Schools added 179 students over nine years, making it the largest traditional district gainer in a state where 88 districts hit all-time lows.
Multiracial enrollment grew 41.7% in seven years, outpacing every other racial group. The surge is concentrated in suburban parishes and reflects both demographic change and shifting identity.
Pacific Islander students graduate at 68.4% in Hawaii, a 17pp gap below the state average that has barely moved in nine years of tracking.
Delaware recovered 81% of its COVID attendance loss statewide, but only 8 of 35 districts have returned to pre-pandemic levels.
One in five Alabama districts now has fewer than 1,000 students, up from one in 25 a decade ago. Black Belt legacy systems are nearing viability limits.
Alaska's 4-year graduation rate has stayed below 80% for six of seven years, trailing the national average by 7 points. Nearly 2,000 students per year leave without a diploma.
92 of 117 WV high schools held attendance at or above 90% last year. The 25 below that mark cluster in five southern coal counties, where Wayne County leads a 5-point recovery from its 2022 trough.
16 of West Virginia's 55 counties have returned to or surpassed their 2019 attendance rates. 15 more are on three consecutive years of gains, led by Wayne, Summers, and Wyoming counties.
Osbourn High School in Manassas City improved from 77.7% to 89.5% between 2019 and 2023, closing a 14-point gap with the state.
Fort Worth ISD's graduation rate plunged 4.4 points to 81.0% during COVID, then recovered to 82.6% -- but remains 2.8 points below its 2020 level and 11.8 below the state average.
Sumter has the worst chronic absenteeism of any large SC district at 35.9%, with rates above 30% for every racial group and nearly every subpopulation.
Male students in SC graduate at 83.3% vs. 90.2% for female students, a 6.9-point gap that peaked at 12.2 points in 2019.
Oregon's 12th-grade chronic absenteeism rate was 52.5% in both 2022 and 2025. While kindergarten recovered 12 points, seniors have shown no improvement at all.
Oregon's third-largest district hit 43.1% chronic absenteeism in 2024-25, more than double its pre-COVID rate, with 48.3% of Hispanic students chronically absent.
59.5% of Oklahoma districts have recovered to their pre-COVID graduation rate. 115 districts remain below 2019 levels, including Tulsa and Ponca City.
Three Nebraska school districts on the Omaha and Winnebago reservations have chronic absenteeism rates from 54% to 90% -- the highest in the state by a wide margin.
Maine's Black and white students are chronically absent at near-identical rates, a parity rooted in the state's Somali, Congolese, and Sudanese immigrant communities.
Native American chronic absenteeism dropped 14.9 points in two years, the fastest improvement of any racial group, but 39.3% of students still miss too much school.
The Hispanic-white chronic absence gap in MA is 3.6 points wider than pre-COVID. In Boston and Framingham, over 40% of Hispanic students miss school.
The median chronic absenteeism rate in Massachusetts Gateway Cities is 26.9%, more than triple the 8.6% suburban median, a gap that widened 2.2 points since COVID.
Nine Louisiana parishes hit their worst-ever chronic absenteeism rates in 2025, led by Winn Parish at 40.8%, even as the state improved overall.
Among individual New Orleans schools in 2025, chronic absenteeism ranged from near zero at Einstein Charter at Village De L'Est to 70.4 percent at McDonogh 35, against a statewide rate of 22.5 percent.
Gary Community School Corporation's 63.6% chronic absenteeism rate is the highest among traditional districts in Indiana, and it has tripled since 2013.
Sixty of Indiana's 385 school corporations have returned to their pre-pandemic chronic absenteeism rates. The other 325 remain above their 2019 baselines.
A cluster of suburban Cook County high school districts reports chronic absenteeism between 45% and 53%, rivaling or exceeding Chicago Public Schools' 40.1% rate.
Every grade from K through 11 improved its chronic absenteeism rate in 2024-25. Seniors bucked the trend, worsening to 41.5% — a 23-point gap from elementary school.
35.1% of students who are economically disadvantaged miss too much school, nearly 10 points above the state average. Special education and English learner rates are similarly elevated.
A quarter of Georgia's special education students are chronically absent, a gap that predates the pandemic and has barely moved in eight years.
Alabama's Black Belt is splitting: Hale County's graduation rate rose 10 points while Sumter County's fell 17. A 27-point swing between neighbors.
Humboldt County cut its chronic absenteeism rate by 19.4 points from its 2022 crisis peak, the largest improvement of any Nevada district.
The Turtle Mountain reservation district saw its chronic absence rate jump from 28% to 54%, with one high school reaching 72%, as COVID reversed partial progress and the 2024 rate surged 9 points.
Minnesota hits four simultaneous grade-level records in 2026: all-time high pre-K and 12th grade, all-time low kindergarten and first grade.
Michigan's virtual school sector has grown 17,787% since 2010. COVID was the accelerant, but post-pandemic enrollment hit a new high in 2025.
Hartford and West Hartford share a border and a 13.6-point graduation rate gap that has narrowed by 11 points since 2018, driven by Hartford's climb.
Colorado's 12th graders have a 41.2% chronic absenteeism rate, the highest of any grade and nearly double the elementary average, even as the state posts record-high graduation rates.
The nation's second-largest school district has 126,481 chronically absent students -- a population larger than most cities' entire school systems.
Malvern School District spiked to 34% chronic absence in the COVID era, then improved every year since, landing at 13.8% — below its pre-COVID rate and half the state average.
Yukon-Koyukuk School District slashed chronic absenteeism from 52% to 17% in three years, the largest improvement in Alaska, with four schools reporting zero chronically absent students.
Woonsocket climbed from 63% to 74% over a decade, then collapsed back to 62% in three years. The dropout rate is double the state average.
From a 2022 peak of 41 majority-absent districts, Washington has cut the count by more than half. The 18 that remain are concentrated in tribal communities and tiny rural schools where the barriers to attendance are structural.
Rhode Island's urban districts have a 32% chronic absenteeism rate, double the 15.6% suburban rate. COVID widened the gap to 25 points before it narrowed.
Pittsburgh SD's chronic absence rate has come down from its 42% pandemic peak to 33%, with text-message reminders improving attendance for 60% of at-risk students.
Oregon's LEP graduation rate of 70% masks a complex picture. Former English learners graduate at 89.5%, above average. The four-year clock is the barrier.
Umo N Ho N Nation Public Schools graduated about 57% of its 2025 cohort, the state's lowest, after years near the middle. Winnebago held at 80%. The statewide Native American rate trails white students by about 20 points.
North Carolina students who receive special education services graduate at 71.6%, up nearly 22 points since 2006. But the gap to the state average has held near 15 points.
179 of Missouri's 455 districts posted their highest-ever graduation rate in 2025, including 13 that hit 100 percent with meaningful cohort sizes.
The gap between Kentucky's four-year and five-year graduation rates fell to 0.6 percentage points in 2025, down from 2.1 points during COVID. But English learners still gain nearly 7 points from extra time.
Eight Iowa districts graduated fewer than 70% of students in 2024, double the number from the year before, with Fort Dodge and Burlington among the mid-size districts on the list.
Florida Virtual School's graduation rate climbed 30 points in eight years, from 66.6% to 96.6%, while its cohort grew 56%. The state's flagship online program now outperforms most traditional districts.
Five years on, only 33% of Arizona districts have regained their 2020 enrollment. The state has lost 72,026 students since its peak, with losses rising.
Wyoming's enrollment peaked at 94,002 in 2016, driven by the energy boom. The state was already losing students before the pandemic arrived.
Mingo County recovered above 90% attendance while its four coal-country neighbors trail the state. The region averages 89.0%, about 3.3 points below West Virginia.
Harwood (17% chronic rate) and Rutland City (56.7%) enroll nearly the same number of students, but a 39.7 percentage-point gap separates their attendance outcomes.
Eight of Utah's ten reported student subgroups reached all-time high graduation rates in 2025, with the largest gains concentrated among the groups that started furthest behind.
Dallas ISD crossed 50% English learner enrollment in 2024, joining 53 other Texas districts where a majority of students are classified LEP.
Native American enrollment fell 49.6% since 2015, but most of the drop is a reporting artifact. A 2017 reclassification into multiracial moved 2,065 students into a new category in one year.
In 2015, Hispanic and white students had nearly identical absence rates. By 2025, the gap had grown roughly sixfold to 9.8 points (40.5% vs 30.7%).
Fort Gibson posted the longest active improvement streak in Oklahoma — five straight years of gains from 52% to 99.1%, with economically disadvantaged and Native American students at 100%.
Five years after COVID, Ohio's enrollment hasn't recovered. It's gotten worse. Two in three districts sit below their pandemic floor as losses accelerate.
NYC's share of New York enrollment rose from 36.8% to 40.4% as upstate shrank faster. COVID reversed the dynamic, and the city is now losing ground.
Espanola's overall graduation rate rose to 65.5% in 2017, but a 44-point gap separated its Native American students, the widest such gap of any New Mexico district that year.
McKenzie County grew enrollment 344.8% and still graduates 85.8% of seniors. Other oil-boom districts grew just as fast and now sit lower in the state's graduation table.
Boston Public Schools cut chronic absenteeism from 42.2% to 33.0% since 2022, but still sits 7.8 points above pre-COVID levels. Hispanic students and students receiving special education face rates above 40%.
Orleans Parish hit 82% in 2024 and held above 80% in 2025, but a 34-point gap between white and Hispanic students exposes deep inequity within the all-charter system.
The white-Black graduation gap in Indiana narrowed from 12.1 to 6.5 percentage points, with most of the closure happening in a rapid three-year span after 2022.
Zionsville, Carmel, and Fishers keep chronic absenteeism under 8%. IPS, three years into a steady decline, is at 32%, a 26.7-point metro gap.
Twenty-two Hawaii schools have fully recovered to pre-COVID chronic absenteeism rates, led by charter schools. But 133 schools remain 10 or more percentage points worse than 2019.
Georgia's special ed graduation rate rose from 29.8% to 78.4% in 14 years, the largest gain of any subgroup. The gap to peers shrank from 42 to 10 points.
Florida's share of schools with high chronic absenteeism eased from its 2021-22 peak of 76.3% to 73.0% by 2023-24, with about one in four schools now below the threshold. 496 schools still have a majority chronically absent.
New Castle County Vo-Tech has essentially eliminated the equity gap in graduation rates, with Black students outperforming white peers by 2.6 percentage points.
Nearly 40% of California districts recorded their highest-ever graduation rate in 2025, including six of the largest, while only 37 hit all-time lows.
Before COVID, Arizona had no gender gap in chronic absenteeism. By 2024-25, boys were 0.5 points above girls, a small but persistent new pattern.
Asian students in Arkansas reached a 96.3% graduation rate in 2024, gaining 5.4 points since 2016, the largest improvement of any racial group.
Wisconsin's chronic absenteeism gap by income widened from 16.3 to 20.7 points since 2019, with nearly 1 in 3 lower-income students now chronically absent.
North Dakota's cohort keeps growing, but at its 2020 peak rate the class of 2024 would have earned 573 more diplomas. The cumulative gap is about 1,633.
Jefferson Parish enrolls 8,718 English learners at a 19.2% rate, nearly four times the state average and a quarter of Louisiana's EL total.
Black students cut their chronic absenteeism rate from 22.1% to 15.9% while white students barely moved, narrowing the gap from 9.1 points to 3.0.
Woodbridge's chronic absenteeism rate fell from 18.4% to 5.2% in 2024-25, the largest single-year improvement among Delaware traditional districts.
Alabama's three fastest-growing districts owe their growth to statewide virtual schools run by Pearson and Stride, not local enrollment gains.
Fairfax County's 93.4% graduation rate masks three alternative schools where 40-79% of students drop out, serving 431 students where dropping out is the majority outcome.
Texas English learners gained 4.2 percentage points in graduation rate over four years, the largest improvement of any subgroup, cutting the gap with all students by more than half.
Thirty years after Abbeville, Florence 2 posted the largest graduation-rate gain in SC and crossed 90%, even as the 14 reporting Corridor of Shame districts still trail the rest of the state.
After Missouri removed enrollment barriers in 2022, three small districts hosting virtual academies grew by up to 559%, reshaping the state's enrollment map.
Hawaii's 9th-to-12th survival rate hits 90% for the first time, but a 2024 reclassification of students who receive special education inflated the count. The real gain is smaller.
The graduation rate for Alabama students who are English learners rose from 67.9% to 83.3% in two years, the fastest gain of any subgroup and an all-time high.
The number of Nevada schools with chronic rates above 50% surged from 51 to 70 in 2024-25, reversing three years of progress. Clark County accounts for 38.
While neighboring Fargo's rate doubled to 26%, West Fargo cut its chronic absence from a 15% peak back to 12%, with mid-year 2024-25 data showing just 3.3%.
East Helena K-12 added 681 students since 2019, growing 54% as housing on a former Superfund site draws families priced out of Helena.
Kindergarten enrollment fell 14.7% since 2016 while 12th grade barely moved. As smaller cohorts age up, high school enrollment will eventually collapse too.
Hastings is the only Minnesota district to decline every single year in the state's dataset. The 19-year streak has erased 1,118 students, 22% of enrollment.
Immigration-fueled growth made Dearborn Michigan's third-largest district. Seven consecutive years of decline now threaten that story.
Over half of Kansas school districts now enroll fewer than 500 students. Thirty-two have vanished since 2005, with four disappearing this year alone.
Connecticut's four-year graduation rate has oscillated between 88.4% and 89.6% for four straight years, erasing the pre-COVID trajectory of steady gains.
Chronic absenteeism among Denver's LEP students jumped to 44.2% in 2024-25, the sharpest increase among any subgroup except students who are currently homeless, as the district pointed to immigration enforcement as a factor.
The chronic rate for students who are currently homeless has fallen from its COVID peak, but the count reached a new high of 102,268 as California's housing crisis feeds its attendance crisis.
Alpena cut chronic absenteeism from 26% to under 10% across two consecutive years while 87% of Arkansas districts got worse. The rural district now outperforms its own pre-COVID baseline.
Alaska's kindergarten enrollment has fallen 15% since 2020 while 12th grade hit an all-time high, creating a pipeline inversion that will accelerate decline for years.
Providence posted a 79.4% graduation rate in 2024, its highest on record and a 5.8-point improvement since the state took over the district in 2019.
NJ recently released 2025-26 enrollment data. Total enrollment fell 23,732 to 1,357,450, the largest single-year drop in 27 years of state files. K-12 down 24,564. Hispanic and English-learner counts each fell for the first time in over a decade.
Wisconsin's special education share hit 14.7% in 2025, crossing the 1-in-7 threshold at an all-time high even as total enrollment fell.
Native American chronic absenteeism reached 45.6% in Washington, with tribal school districts reporting rates above 60% and a widening gap with white students.
Virginia added 14,686 English learners in two years while total enrollment fell. Two divisions are now majority-LEP, and the growth is spreading statewide.
Despite nationally recognized attendance campaigns, only 13.3% of Rhode Island districts have recovered to pre-COVID chronic absenteeism levels.
English learner students are the only group in Pennsylvania whose chronic absence gap has fully closed, matching the statewide rate at 20.4%.
Oregon's white-Hispanic graduation gap narrowed from 14.7 to 4.6 points since 2010. Hispanic students gained 24.7 points; in 23 districts they now lead.
Gretna graduates 99.3% of its seniors. Omaha Public Schools, just across a municipal line, graduates 71.5%. The 27.8-point gap maps onto the most visible divide in Nebraska education.
Hispanic students in North Carolina have cut the white-Hispanic graduation gap from 21 points to 6.5 while their cohort grew nearly fivefold. A 2024 breakout may signal the end of a 7-year plateau.
Missouri's graduation rate hit an all-time high, but St. Louis City remains trapped at 70 percent with a collapsing Hispanic rate and a shrinking cohort.
English learners graduate at 79%, 14.6 points below the state average, after a single-year reversal erased four years of progress.
Special education students in Iowa graduate at 70%, 18 points below the state average, and the gap has been stuck between 18 and 20 points for six straight years.
Hardee County has declined for four consecutive years, losing 17.8 percentage points since 2020. Its male graduation rate of 69.3% is 18.6 points below the state average.
English learner enrollment surged 21% since 2022 even as Arizona lost 59,000 students overall, crossing the 10% threshold for the first time.
Sweetwater #1 has lost 22.1% of enrollment since its 2016 peak of 5,749 students, the steepest decline among Wyoming's mid-size and large districts.
Students receiving special education services make up 25.4% of Vermont's chronically absent and recovered just 24.8% from the COVID peak, far less than their peers.
Utah's English learners improved graduation rates by 12.1 points since 2017, the fastest gain of any group, still trailing the state average by 10 points.
Granite District's graduation rates span 97% at Skyline to 73% at Granger, seven miles apart. The gap is widening as overall district numbers improve.
A Columbus-area district grew 36.6% while Ohio shrank, fueled by Nepali, Somali, and other immigrant families drawn to affordable housing and jobs.
New York's 9th-grade bulge shrank from 18% to 5% over two decades as survival rates climbed from 71% to 92%, a quiet success inside the enrollment decline.
Black students gain 7 points and Native American students 5.8 points with a fifth year, the largest gains among all subgroups in New Mexico.
Marmarth School District enrolled 4 students in 2025-26, making it the smallest of 33 North Dakota districts under 100 students.
Louisiana hit a record 85% graduation rate in 2025, but students classified as English learners remain at 51.7%, a 33-point gap unchanged for seven years.
Indiana's grad rate gap (state vs. federal) nearly tripled since 2020. About 1,600 students now earn diplomas through waivers, not standard requirements.
Native Hawaiian students are chronically absent at higher rates than the overall student body at 88.7% of Hawaii schools, with a 25-point gap versus Asian students that has widened since COVID.
Maunaloa Elementary on Molokai dropped from 63% chronic absenteeism in 2022 to 2% in 2025, the second-lowest rate in Hawaii and 13 points better than its own pre-pandemic baseline.
Crawford County posted a 50.7-point graduation rate gain since 2011, the second-largest in Georgia, one of 15 districts rising from below 60% to above 90%.
With a 17.4% chronic absenteeism rate, Collier County has been below the Florida average every year since tracking began, and the gap keeps growing.
Lake Forest posted Delaware's largest graduation-rate gain: up 12 points from its 2019 trough to 90.4%, first among all 16 traditional districts.
Connecticut's public schools became majority-minority in 2020. Since then, white enrollment fell to 44.7% and Hispanic students have grown to 32.5%.
The white-Hispanic graduation gap in California shrank from 6.5 to 2.1 percentage points as 287,000 Hispanic students approach graduation parity with white peers.
106 Arizona districts improved chronic absenteeism every year from 2023 to 2025. Fort Thomas dropped 45 points; Tuba City cut its rate from 57% to 28%.
Nearly 30% of Arkansas districts report exactly 95.0% graduation rates, a data suppression artifact that hides true performance.
Madison Metropolitan's chronic rate went from 7.1% in 2011 to 29.6% in 2025, a tripling that began before COVID and shows no sign of returning to baseline.
While most Utah districts remain stuck above pre-COVID absence levels, Washington District in St. George has posted three straight years of improvement.
Uintah District's chronic absenteeism rate surged to 50.9% in 2025, making it the only traditional district in Utah where most students are missing school.
North Dakota's foster care graduation rate has collapsed to 44.7%, down 28 points from 73.1% in 2020, falling well below the national average.
English learners in North Carolina had lower chronic absence than the state average before COVID. Now they are 3.9 points above it, a complete reversal.
Maine's multiracial enrollment surged 62% in nine years to 6,652. Three growing groups converge as white enrollment sheds nearly 20,000.
Seven years after the pandemic, 90.5% of Louisiana parishes remain below 2019 enrollment. The deficit is deepening, not closing.
Snake River District dropped from 10.3% to 3.1% chronic absenteeism in two years (less than one-quarter of the state average) in a cluster of eastern Idaho districts defying the statewide trend.
Hawaii's graduation rate flatlined near 86% after a decade of gains. A 17-point Pacific Islander gap reveals who the plateau leaves behind.
Native Hawaiian students lost 3.2 percentage points since 2021 while the state held steady, opening the widest equity gap in nine years of data.
The small Sussex County district went from one of Delaware's worst attendance performers to beating the state average, with 753 fewer students chronically absent.
Fifty-one Alabama districts hit record-low enrollment in 2025-26, including the four largest. The decline spans urban, rural, and suburban systems.
Danville City's graduation rate dropped from 81.8% to 73.3% over four years, while its dropout rate climbed from 9.4% to 17%, the largest increase in Virginia.
El Paso ISD's graduation rate fell from 87.6% to 82.3% over five years while Rio Grande Valley districts like McAllen ISD climbed to 98.3%. Same demographics, different trajectories.
LEP students saw the steepest subgroup decline in SC, dropping from 80.3% to 77.8% as the overall state rate climbed from 81.0% to 86.7%.
Nebraska's 12th-grade chronic absenteeism rate hit 34.5% in 2024-25, more than double the kindergarten rate and triple the third-grade rate.
Thirty-eight districts stayed below the state average for chronic absenteeism every year from 2012 through 2020, showing that sustained low absence is achievable across diverse community types.
Montgomery County's graduation rate crashed 17 points in 2023, the largest single-year district drop in Alabama. Two years later, it has recovered only partially.
SPCSA charter schools have a weighted chronic rate of 23.3% vs. 33.9% for traditional districts. But the charter sector includes both the state's best and worst schools.
Just 13 of 93 districts with comparable data have returned to pre-COVID chronic absenteeism rates, while 31% are at their all-time worst in 2024.
Denver's chronic absenteeism reversed course in 2024-25 while neighboring Aurora kept improving for a third straight year, narrowing a gap that once seemed structural.
739,000 Hispanic students are chronically absent, making up nearly two-thirds of the state's attendance crisis. The Hispanic-white gap doubled since pre-COVID.
While Arkansas's statewide chronic absence rate lurched from 14% to 27%, 33 districts kept their rates below 20% in every single measured year — including the COVID spike.
Rhode Island's white-Black graduation gap was closing steadily until 2018, reaching a record-low 4.8 points. Six years later, it's back to 9 points.
Multiracial enrollment tripled from 13,197 to 44,968 in 14 years, making it Wisconsin's fastest-growing demographic by a wide margin.
A 4,480-student district on the Olympic Peninsula has stayed below the state average for 11 straight years, with a 2025 chronic rate one-sixth of the statewide norm.
43 of Virginia's 131 school divisions hit all-time low enrollment in 2025, from Virginia Beach to Highland County's 208 students.
Providence Public Schools cut chronic absenteeism from 57% to 36% in two years under state control — the only large RI district to recover to pre-COVID levels.
York City SD dropped from 63.4% chronic absence to 36.8% in two years, the second-largest improvement in Pennsylvania. The recovery crossed every subgroup.
Medford SD 549C improved its graduation rate for 8 consecutive reporting years, climbing from 61.6% in 2010 to 88.1% in 2025.
Nebraska's English learner graduation rate has fallen from 64% to 52% over 14 years while the overall rate barely moved. The 41-point gap to white students is the state's widest equity chasm.
North Carolina cut the white-Black graduation gap from 13 points to 5 in a decade. Then it stopped narrowing. The remaining gap means about 1,800 Black students per year who would graduate at white rates.
Kansas City 33 and St. Louis City were within 2 points of each other in 2019. By 2025, an 18-point chasm had opened between Missouri's two largest urban districts.
Kentucky's Hispanic graduation rate climbed 5 points from 2022 to 2024, then dropped 2.1 points in 2025, the only racial group to decline while every other improved.
The gap between white and Black graduation rates in Iowa has held steady at 15-18 points for six years, even as the state's overall rate returned to pre-pandemic levels.
The number of Florida county districts graduating 90% or more of their students has surged from 6 to 29 since 2016, while districts below 70% have disappeared entirely.
Queen Creek Unified grew 117% since 2018, the fastest traditional district in Arizona. But annual gains have fallen from 2,299 to 374, raising questions about what comes next.
Wyoming was among the first states to reopen schools, yet only 6 of 48 districts have returned to pre-COVID enrollment. The post-pandemic decline has been 2.7 times larger than the initial COVID drop.
Three-quarters of Vermont districts with complete data cut their chronic rate in consecutive years, though many remain well above pre-COVID baselines.
Texas grew by 1.1 million students over 15 years, but the growth rate halved every five years. In 2026, it fell.
Multiracial enrollment has surged 73% since 2017, adding 21,312 students to become the state's fourth-largest racial group and reshaping how schools count their students.
The graduation gap between students who are economically disadvantaged and their peers peaked at 14.3 points, then shrank to 10.6 over two years.
Eleven districts have declined every single year for 11 straight years, losing 30.7% of their combined enrollment. Most are clustered in northeast Ohio.
Hobbs Municipal Schools climbed from 69% to 86% graduation in eight years, outpacing wealthier districts while serving a high-poverty, majority-Hispanic population.
NJ pre-K chronic absenteeism hit 29.7% in 2023-24, double the state average, even as the state expands universal preschool to 80,000 children.
Six urban districts now serve 49.2% of North Dakota students, up from 46.6% in 2008, as the state's 159 remaining districts split the other half.
Louisiana's graduation rate for students in foster care climbed from 34.8% to 63.5% since 2018, the largest improvement of any subgroup, though volatility and a 21-point gap remain.
School City of East Chicago lifted its graduation rate from 59.6% in 2017 to 90.0% in 2025, closing a gap with the state average from nearly 28 points to under 2.
Georgia's Hispanic graduating class grew from 11,654 to 27,276 in 14 years while the graduation rate rose from 57.6% to 82.3%, producing 15,739 additional diplomas per year.
Putnam County's chronic absenteeism rate is 57.5%. Walton County's is 24.3%. Both are rural districts with similar enrollment. The gap has nearly doubled since 2019.
In Seaford and Christina, male graduation rates sit near 67%, more than 13 percentage points behind female peers. Vo-tech districts show the gap can close.
Oakland Unified's graduation rate dropped 5.5 points in one year to 75.1%, the largest decline of any large California district and the lowest among urban peers.
The gap between Hispanic and white chronic absenteeism in Arizona jumped from 5.5 points before COVID to 10.1 points, with no sign of narrowing.
Economically disadvantaged students in Arkansas graduate at 86.9%, just 2.1 points below the state average, one of the narrowest income gaps in the nation.
Charter schools in Wisconsin have a weighted chronic absenteeism rate of 30.6% versus 16.9% for traditional districts, a gap that nearly doubled since 2019.
Minot Public Schools crossed below 70% graduation for the first time in 2024, capping a 19.3-point decline from 89.2% in 2013.
Durham Public Schools improved from a 41% peak to 37%, then flatlined. The district has the highest chronic rate among NC's 30,000+ student districts.
Lewiston's enrollment held within 3% of its 2017 level while twin-city Auburn, separated by a bridge, declined 9.1% over seven years. Immigration is pulling the two cities apart.
Louisiana's largest traditional district lost 2,053 students in one year, its steepest drop, as immigration enforcement reshapes a diversifying parish.
Idaho narrowed its Black, Native American, and Hispanic absenteeism gaps since 2021. The gap for students with disabilities has held within 1.4 points the whole time.
Delaware's chronic absenteeism rate fell from 25.7% in 2022 to 17.1% in 2025, but the 14.7-point gap for students who are economically disadvantaged has persisted.
Alabama's English learner population has nearly quadrupled since 2015, from 13,793 to 51,068 students, reshaping classrooms from the poultry corridor to Birmingham.
Richmond City's 23.8% dropout rate is nearly five times the state average. George Wythe High had 48.4% of its cohort drop out in 2023.
Houston ISD and Dallas ISD both posted 84% graduation rates for the Class of 2024, sitting more than 10 points below the state average of 94.4%.
Only 35 of 142 Tennessee districts have recovered to 2020-21 chronic absenteeism levels. The pandemic reset attendance norms for 75% of communities.
The Charter Institute at Erskine improved its aggregate graduation rate from 58.9% to 82.8% in six years, the largest improvement of any entity in South Carolina.
Nearly three in four Nebraska districts still have higher chronic absenteeism than before COVID -- and not a single large district has recovered.
174 of Missouri's 554 school districts hit all-time low enrollment in 2026, spanning rural towns, inner-ring suburbs, and urban cores alike.
Hawaii's K-to-12th-grade ratio fell to 96.2 in 2025-26, the second straight year with more seniors than kindergartners, as birth rate decline and a 2014 age cutoff change lock in further enrollment losses.
Georgia's largest virtual charter has seen chronic absenteeism rise every year since 2019, reaching 17.2% even as the state's rate fell.
Greenwich School District cut its chronic absenteeism rate from 8% in 2013 to 0.1% in 2020, one of only 8 districts to hit an all-time low during the pandemic-shortened school year.
Alabama's gap between graduation rate and college/career readiness collapsed from 49 points to 4 over a decade, one of the most dramatic diploma quality improvements in any state.
Chronic absenteeism among Native American students in Nevada has fallen from 51.5% in 2021-22 to 44.8% in 2023-24, but the gap with white students has nearly doubled since 2018-19.
After years of worsening attendance, Grand Forks implemented a new policy that produced the district's first improvement since pre-COVID, dropping chronic absence 4 points to 23%.
Helena's high school district shed 451 students since 2018 while East Helena, five miles away, surged 54%. The capital city's suburban donut is reshaping school funding.
More than half of Mississippi's 152 school districts are at their lowest enrollment ever recorded, led by Jackson, Vicksburg, and Meridian.
Minnesota lost 130,507 white students since 2007 while every other racial group grew. White decline exceeds the state's entire net enrollment change.
Michigan's K-8 grades lost 229,625 students since 1996 while high school barely moved. The pipeline inversion is just reaching secondary.
Kansas public schools crossed a demographic threshold in 2025-26, with white students at exactly 60% of enrollment, down from 75.8% in 2005. Hispanic enrollment has doubled.
Colorado's chronic absenteeism climbs from 23% in elementary to 41% in 12th grade. K-2 rates improved in 2024-25 while all four high school grades worsened.
California elementary grades cut chronic absenteeism by 1 to 1.6 points last year. Grades 9-12 improved just 0.2 points and stayed near 24%.
Lincoln School District pairs every student with a mentor and operates on a 4-day week. The data confirms it works: chronic absence is back to its pre-COVID level of 9.3%.
Alaska's 12th grade class consistently outnumbers the prior year's 11th graders, driven by correspondence school re-entry and credit recovery.
Hispanic chronic absenteeism has fallen from 36.1% at its 2022 peak to 31.7%, but the gap with white students has held at about 14 points for four years.
Providence's white students graduate at 75.2%, the lowest among the district's four largest racial groups, reversing the statewide pattern where white students lead at 88.5%.
174 of 446 Wisconsin school districts recorded their lowest enrollment ever in 2025-26, including nine of the state's 10 largest.
Elementary schools have recovered nearly half their COVID attendance losses, but high school chronic absenteeism remains within 1.5 points of the pandemic peak.
Virginia's largest school division lost 4.4% of its enrollment since 2020 even as its school-age population increased by 9,000. Where did the families go?
Half of Pawtucket's high schoolers are chronically absent — the rate is still rising while the rest of Rhode Island improves. Tolman High hit 59%.
The Black-white chronic absence gap in Pennsylvania grew from 8.2 to 11.9 percentage points. English learners are the only group that closed their gap.
Oregon's Native American graduation rate improved from 50% to 74% since 2010. Jefferson County graduates at 87%, Portland at 48%.
Grand Island Public Schools posted a 75.9% graduation rate in 2025, its worst on record. The district says an ELL enrollment policy change created a one-time bubble, but the underlying trend was already declining.
Guilford County Schools just posted a record 92.2% graduation rate, the highest of any large NC district. The state's third-largest system hasn't dipped below 89% since 2016.
Springfield R-XII improved its graduation rate every year since 2019, reaching 98.9 percent with a 2,017-student cohort. It now leads all large Missouri districts.
Foster care students in Kentucky graduate at 82.5%, far above the national norm of 50-65%, after a 15-point climb since 2021.
Des Moines Independent graduated 71% of students in 2024, down from 76% in 2019, while suburban Johnston and Waukee exceed 97% -- creating a 26-point gap within the same metro area.
Florida's English learner graduation gap narrowed to just 4 points during COVID assessment waivers, then blew back to 14.3 points when requirements returned. The V-shaped pattern raises hard questions about assessment policy.
K enrollment fell 15.9% since 2018, signaling years of continued decline as smaller cohorts advance through the system.
Natrona County School District #1 lost 443 students in 2025-26, capping three straight years of accelerating decline that has erased 25 years of growth.
The number of West Virginia students who are currently homeless surged 69% since 2018, even as total enrollment fell 11%. Their attendance rate lags 2.3 points behind the state average.
Vermont's Northeast Kingdom district went from 50.6% to 22.5% chronic absenteeism, the largest turnaround in the state, with nearby St. Johnsbury showing a similar pattern.
A charter that started with 659 students is now Texas' 6th-largest district at 79,608. But its growth engine just stalled.
Berkeley, Horry, and Charleston all flipped from growth to decline in 2026, joining 14 other districts in a coordinated reversal.
16 of 178 Oregon school districts have returned to pre-pandemic chronic absenteeism levels. None of the state's 10 largest districts are among them.
Tulsa Public Schools' graduation rate dropped from 78% to 66% between 2020 and 2024, and the partial rebound to 70.6% leaves it far below every large-district peer.
Ohio's 49 Joint Vocational School Districts added 20,389 students in five years while traditional districts shed 78,000. The boom is straining capacity.
NYC's citywide special education district added 8,794 students since 2005, even as the rest of the city lost 223,000. It is now the state's 11th-largest district entity.
Native American students in New Mexico graduated at 61% in 2017, 15 points below white peers. Three districts cleared 80%, showing the gap is not inevitable.
Students who are currently homeless miss school at nearly triple the state average, and the gap has widened since the pandemic despite statewide improvements.
Bismarck-Mandan added 4,328 students since 2008, but K enrollment has fallen 19% in four years and Bismarck just posted its first non-COVID decline.
Students from Maine's migrant farmworker families cut chronic absenteeism by 21.9 points from 2022 to 2024, the largest gain of any subgroup.
42 of 393 Massachusetts districts have brought chronic absenteeism back to pre-COVID levels. Voc-tech schools recovered at nearly triple the statewide rate.
Morehouse Parish climbed from a 64.3% graduation rate to 88.5% in 2025, the largest turnaround of any Louisiana parish over the period.
Three years of improvement have closed less than half the gap opened by COVID, and each year's gains are shrinking.
Indiana's English learners now graduate at 92.4%, surpassing the overall state average of 91.8% after a 32-point climb from a 2017 trough.
Linapuni Elementary in Kalihi went from a 92% chronic absenteeism rate in 2022 to 28% in 2025, leading a neighborhood-wide attendance recovery in one of Honolulu's poorest communities.
In 2025, 76 Georgia districts recorded their best-ever graduation rates while zero hit all-time lows, an unprecedented concentration of success across the state.
Polk County's chronic absenteeism rate has more than doubled since 2018, with 50,277 of 128,510 students now missing 10% or more of school.
Delaware's three vo-tech districts have graduated above 95% for nine straight years, a 10-point edge that holds across student subgroups.
Newtown School District has declined every year since 2012, losing 1,583 students and nearly a third of its enrollment in Connecticut's longest active decline streak.
Students in foster care graduate at 68.5% in California, 19 points below the state average — the widest equity gap among graduation subgroups.
Three large Arizona districts cut chronic absenteeism 17-20 points in three years, proving sustained recovery is possible in diverse, working-class communities.
Little Rock School District graduates 82.3% of students, up from 80.0% in 2022. Suburban Bryant, 20 minutes south, hits 96.2%.
Native American students in Wisconsin show a 38.9% chronic absence rate against a state average of 17.3%, with tribal nations leading culturally responsive responses.
Jeff Foertsch, a 25-year Prescott educator, takes the superintendency after helping the district avert dissolution. The recovery plan ahead.
Nearly half of Logan City District students are chronically absent, a rate that has more than tripled since 2017 and now surpasses the district's pandemic high.
Fort Mill School District maintains the lowest chronic absenteeism of any large SC district, with even its most disadvantaged students below the state average.
Franklin graduated 84.8% of its Class of 2025, up from a 56.3% trough in 2020, the largest sustained turnaround of any traditional district in New Hampshire.
The white-Native American graduation gap widened back to 24 points, erasing all gains made between 2013 and 2018.
North Carolina's Black-White chronic absenteeism gap widened from 6.7 to 11.7 points after COVID, and every racial gap followed the same pattern.
Eighty-three of Maine's 214 districts hit all-time lows in 2026, including Portland, as three years of accelerating decline force budget cuts statewide.
Forty-eight of 75 Louisiana parishes are now majority-minority, up from 42 in 2019. Six suburban and rural parishes crossed the 50% threshold.
Idaho's largest district has a 21% chronic absenteeism rate (three points higher than 2021) with a 69-point spread between its best and worst schools.
Black students in Delaware are chronically absent at 20.3%, down from a 31.3% peak but still 6.3 pp above white peers. The gap is 0.8 pp wider than 2019.
If pre-pandemic trends had held, Alabama would have 746,099 students. Instead it has 714,363, and the gap widens every year.
Hampton City graduated 96.4% of its 1,461-student cohort in 2023, outperforming wealthier suburban divisions like Stafford and Chesterfield.
Karnes City ISD's graduation rate fell from 94.2% to 41.4% over five years -- the largest decline of any Texas district -- as the Eagle Ford Shale town faces population volatility.
Tennessee's high school chronic absenteeism rate is nearly 50% higher than K-8, and the gap has widened every year since 2023.
Black students in SC reached an 83.5% graduation rate in 2025, gaining 5.4 points in four years and narrowing the white-Black gap from a COVID peak of 8.8 to 5.8 points.
Nine Omaha-area school districts, separated by minutes on the highway, produce chronic absenteeism rates ranging from 7% to 45% -- a 38-point chasm.
Normandy Schools Collaborative fell from 5,585 to 2,589 students over 25 years, a 53.6% decline driven by accreditation loss and state takeover.
After losing 60% of its students, Kansas City Public Schools has posted three years of growth, fueled by immigrant families.
Maryland's two lowest-absence counties, at 16.8% and 17.3%, remain above the state's own 15% goal. Even the best is not good enough.
Despite statewide improvement, Waterloo (33.5%) and Davenport (33.2%) still have one in three students chronically absent, more than double the state average.
Maui County lost 281 students in 2025-26, a fraction of last year's 807-student plunge. The wildfire spike has passed but the decline continues.
Hawaii lost 3,425 students in 2025-26 after losing just 901 two years earlier. Six years into a crash era, the state has shed 17,437 students.
The gap between economically disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged chronic absence rates has widened 50% since the pandemic, with 316,000 students chronically absent.
Waterbury's chronic absenteeism proxy rate jumped 5.5 points to 21% in the COVID-shortened 2020 — the largest single-year spike among Alliance Districts.
Alabama's foster care graduation rate fell from 77% in 2019 to 62% in 2025, the only subgroup with a net decline while every other group improved.
Washoe County's weighted chronic rate of 30.5% is 4.5 points below Clark County, with consistent school-mean improvement from 31.0% in 2021 to 27.5% in 2025.
Grade 12 hit an all-time high of 26,008 in 2025-26 while kindergarten dropped to 21,275, near its early-2000s trough, widening a gap that signals a shrinking enrollment pipeline.
Four of five racial gaps in North Dakota chronic absenteeism are wider than 2019. But the recovery has been uneven across groups: Native American students recovered most from their pandemic peak, Pacific Islander students recovered not at all, and the Asian-white gap inverted.
Enrollment of students who are English learners grew 51.6% in eight years even as Montana lost students overall, with nearly half speaking Native American languages.
Mississippi lost 23,390 students in the pandemic year. Five years later, it has lost 18,035 more. Only 12 traditional districts recovered.
A virtual campus run by Pearson now enrolls more students than any brick-and-mortar school in Minnesota. Online enrollment has tripled since COVID.
Flint Community Schools enrolled 24,934 students in 1997. In 2025, just 2,541 remain, an 89.8% collapse driven by deindustrialization, school choice, and the water crisis.
Five years after COVID emptied Kansas classrooms, the state hasn't recovered a single student. Nearly two-thirds of districts are now below their pandemic-era trough.
More than half of Colorado's Native American students attended regularly in 2024-25, but the 45.3% chronic-absence rate worsened faster than any other group's. A handful of districts, led by Douglas County at 23%, point to what's working.
At 37.3%, foster youth have the highest chronic absence rate of any student group and are the only one where the rate increased last year.
While 87% of Arkansas districts saw chronic absenteeism worsen in 2024, Hoxie cut its rate in half over five years — the only district to improve in every measured period.
From Pelican's 16 students to the Pribilof Islands' 56, Alaska's smallest districts face existential questions about whether they can keep their doors open.
In 11 Illinois districts, more students are chronically absent than not. Five are clustered in the Metro East region, where rates reach as high as 63.6%. East St. Louis, the hardest-hit in 2019, has since improved.
After 33 years of state control, Central Falls' graduation rate peaked at 81.2% in 2015 and has fallen to 58.7% — with a dropout rate of 25.2%.
Wisconsin's English learner population grew 43% to 55,772 while total enrollment fell 8%, reshaping staffing and funding demands across 384 districts.
About 22,900 students who are currently homeless in Washington are chronically absent — 51.1% — but two rural districts post rates under 10%, suggesting what intensive support can do.
Hispanic enrollment crossed 20% for the first time in 2024-25, adding 59,229 students since 2017 while Black enrollment fell. The gap between the two groups shrank to 14,794.
Rhode Island's chronic absenteeism fell from 34.1% to 24.8%, but 33,061 students still miss 10%+ of school. Middle schools are recovering slowest.
Chester-Upland SD in Delaware County has never recorded a chronic absence rate below 50% in seven years of data, the only multi-school district in PA with that distinction.
Oregon's graduation rate for students with disabilities climbed from 41.8% to 72.2% over 15 years, the largest subgroup gain. But did standards also change?
Black students in Nevada have a chronic absenteeism rate of 37.8%, a 10.7-point gap above white students. The gap is narrowing from its 14.7-point pandemic peak but remains 70% wider than before COVID.
Lexington and Schuyler graduate nearly 9 in 10 Hispanic students in Nebraska. The statewide white-Hispanic gap has still widened to 16.8 percentage points — but the meatpacking corridor shows it is not demographic destiny.
151 of 244 Nebraska public school districts enroll under 500 students, holding just 12.3% of the state's children while large suburban districts absorb all growth.
Fifty-three percent of students who are currently homeless in North Dakota miss more than 10% of school days, up from 39% before the pandemic, with virtually no recovery from the COVID peak.
Students in foster care in North Carolina graduated at 55.4% in 2024, more than 31 points below the state average. The gap has widened since 2018 even as overall graduation held steady.
Missouri's four-year graduation rate reached 92.7 percent in 2025, the highest on record, with a growing cohort that produced nearly 4,000 more graduates than in 2019.
JCPS climbed from 83.7% to 88.7% graduation rate since 2020, with Black students gaining nearly 9 points and briefly surpassing white students in 2024.
Native American students in Iowa graduated at 68% in 2024, down from 79% in 2020, while the white-Native American gap widened to 23 points -- the largest racial gap in the state.
Forsyth County held good attendance near the top as Georgia's statewide rate slipped 13 points since 2019. The 'middle missing' is the fastest-growing group.
Putnam County's graduation rate climbed 27.6 points in eight years, from 63.6% to 91.2%, with students with disabilities improving by 53.5 points. The rural North Florida district now exceeds the state average.
Colorado's K-to-12th grade ratio collapsed from 105 to 77 in a decade, with 61% of districts now graduating more seniors than they enroll in kindergarten.
American Leadership Academy has doubled in size since 2018, growing faster than any large district in Arizona while enrolling a student body nearly twice as white as the state average.
Wyoming enrolled 6,064 kindergartners in 2025-26 — 25 percent below the 2014 peak — while Grade 12 sits near an all-time high. The grade pipeline tells the next decade's story.
Three years of post-COVID improvement are fading. The state recovered 70% of lost attendance but annual gains shrank from 0.58 to 0.40 points, leaving 39 of 55 counties below pre-pandemic levels.
Vermont's chronic absenteeism among students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch fell from a 2023 peak, but recovery has been slower than for their peers.
Black students in Utah improved their graduation rate from 73.1% to 83.9% since 2017, narrowing the White-Black gap from 15.2 to 8.2 percentage points.
Houston, Dallas, Austin, Fort Worth, and San Antonio ISDs are simultaneously at their lowest enrollment in 22 years of data.
LEP enrollment surged 39% in seven years while total enrollment grew just 2.3%. Jasper County leads the state at 45%, and the growth spans coast to Upstate.
Oregon's chronic absenteeism rate stands at 33.5%, with 174,000 students missing 10% or more of the school year. At the current pace, recovery to pre-pandemic levels won't come until 2037.
Oklahoma traditional districts averaged a 89.4% graduation rate in 2025; the state's five virtual charter schools averaged 49.3%, a 40-point gap.
White enrollment in Ohio public schools fell 15.4% since 2015, accounting for more than 100% of the state's total decline. Hispanic, Asian, multiracial, and Black enrollment all increased.
Long Island's largest suburban districts are in sustained enrollment decline, with Sachem and Smithtown losing students every year since 2013.
Albuquerque Public Schools graduated 67.9% of students in 2017, up 2.8 points over eight years while the statewide rate moved 5 points to 71.1%.
North Dakota's effective high school completion rate has fallen to 75%, down from 86% a decade ago. Mandan is the only large district to improve.
Whitefish High School added 175 students since 2018, a 36% surge, while every elementary district in the Flathead Valley lost enrollment over the same period.
Black enrollment in Minneapolis Public Schools has fallen 47% since 2007, while white share rose from 28.5% to 36.4%. The shift is not gentrification adding students. It is Black and Asian families leaving faster.
After three years of improvement, Massachusetts chronic absenteeism recovery has nearly stopped. Annual gains shrank from 5.5 points to under 1, leaving 89% of districts above pre-COVID rates.
Louisiana's special education graduation rate surged from 59% to 81% since 2018, nearly closing a gap that most states struggle to shrink below 30 points.
The gap between students who are economically disadvantaged and their paid-meals peers narrowed from 11.5 to under 1 percentage point, but a broadened definition may be doing some of the work.
Indiana's kindergarten class is now 18% smaller than its senior class, a gap that nearly tripled in three years, locking in a decade of decline.
King Kamehameha III Elementary, the Lahaina school destroyed in the August 2023 wildfires, has dropped its chronic rate from 67% to 24%, matching the state average, while other Lahaina schools lag behind.
Georgia's income graduation gap fell from 15.3 to 3.5 points since 2011. But 88 districts now classify 100% of seniors as disadvantaged.
Hendry County is the sole Florida district where chronic absenteeism is below pre-pandemic levels. The other 72 remain worse off, including every large urban system.
Red Clay graduates 92% of students. Christina, sharing Wilmington, graduates 73%. The Redding Consortium voted to merge them into one district.
Special education enrollment grew 40% over 15 years while total enrollment fell 12%, creating a structural mismatch that a $70M funding boost has not resolved.
Compton Unified rose from 83.5% to 93.7% graduation rate in seven years, now nearly six points above the California state average.
In nine Arizona districts, at least half of all students are chronically absent. Rates reach 64.9% in reservation and rural communities.
The white-Black graduation gap in Arkansas shrank from 7.7 to 5.5 points over nine years, driven by Black students gaining 3.6 points.
Racine Unified's chronic absenteeism rate held flat at 36.5% in 2025, unchanged from the prior year, as the state's fifth-largest district faces compounding enrollment loss and attendance challenges.
Ogden City District's chronic absenteeism rate rose to 40% in 2025, erasing gains and leaving the district 13 points above its pre-COVID baseline.
Three in four Black students in Tennessee attend school regularly. Nashville cut its Black chronic absence rate 7.8 points in three years — the steepest sustained recovery of any large district in the state.
If the state's pre-COVID enrollment trend had continued, nearly 149,000 students would be in public schools. Instead there are 138,861.
Students in foster care in SC have a 42.4% chronic absenteeism rate, up 13.4 points in four years, even as the foster care population dropped by nearly half.
South Jersey districts average 15.6% chronic absenteeism vs 11.1% in the north, a 4.5 pp gap that was only 2.4 pp pre-COVID.
New Hampshire's capital graduated just 73% of its Class of 2025 — an all-time low, and for the first time, below Manchester.
Fargo dropped to 80% and West Fargo to 79.9% in 2024, both all-time lows, despite being the state's fastest-growing metro area.
Michigan's 2025 enrollment is within 4,300 students of the trajectory projected before the pandemic. The COVID-era 45,858-student drop sits inside a longer structural decline, not outside it.
Maine's English learner population surged 54% in nine years even as total enrollment fell, driven by refugee resettlement and asylum seekers in Portland and Lewiston.
Louisiana classifies 70.1% of its public school students as economically disadvantaged, but the number measures the state's meal program accounting as much as its poverty.
Three southwest Kansas districts built around beef plants have become among the most Hispanic school systems in the nation, reshaping how the state funds and staffs its schools.
While every other student subgroup in Idaho improved or held steady, students in foster care saw chronic absenteeism rise from 24.2% to 27.1%, the only group moving in the wrong direction.
Capital School District has the highest chronic absenteeism rate of any traditional district in Delaware at 26.1%, nearly double the state average.
Five years after the pandemic, fewer than one in five measurable Colorado districts have chronic absenteeism rates at or below their 2019-20 levels, with most large districts still well above baseline.
Eleven rural Alabama districts have lost 40% of their enrollment since 2015. Perry County alone is down 57.7%, and the funding formula makes the spiral worse.
Wisconsin lost 28,898 students during COVID and another 24,054 since. None of the state's 10 largest districts have regained pre-pandemic enrollment.
Virginia's Advanced Studies diploma share ranges from 79% in Goochland County to 17% in Giles County, a gap that maps onto wealth and geography.
Five years after the pandemic, 96 of 131 Virginia school divisions remain below pre-COVID enrollment. The five largest losers account for 45% of the gap.
Texas tracks graduation rates for 13 student subgroups. For Black and Native American students, the structured files are blank across five years.
Greenville County Schools posted a 90.6% graduation rate in 2025, the first time the state's largest district has crossed 90%, with broad gains across every subgroup.
Omaha Public Schools' chronic absenteeism rate has plateaued near 45%, with nearly one in five OPS high schoolers missing more than a quarter of the school year.
Six of nine inner-ring St. Louis suburbs hit all-time enrollment lows while outer-ring districts surged, a textbook enrollment donut reshaping the metro.
When Maryland students logged into Zoom, chronic absenteeism appeared to drop. When they returned to classrooms, it spiked 12.6 points in a single year.
Iowa's chronic absenteeism rate has fallen from a 25.6% peak to 15.8%, but 183 of 325 districts remain above their pre-COVID baselines.
Charter schools now enroll 8.2% of Hawaii's public school students, but the 2026 gain of just 277 students signals a sector hitting structural limits.
A statewide online school run by ACCEL Schools nearly doubled Jenkins County enrollment and pushed its chronic absenteeism from 25% to 45%.
Students eligible for free lunch averaged an 18% chronic absence rate compared to 7.9% for non-eligible peers in 2020 — a 10.1-point gap that narrowed only because wealthier students got worse.
Weld RE-4 in Windsor has grown every year for 11 straight years, the only Colorado district with an unbroken streak, adding 3,781 students as the state shrank.
A 6,400-student Kern County district achieved a 5.3% chronic absenteeism rate -- well below the state average and its own pre-COVID baseline.
West Memphis cut chronic absenteeism from 22% to 5% in five years, while Arkansas's statewide rate climbed to a record 27.7%.
Birmingham City's graduation rate has barely moved in a decade (79.4% in 2015, 81.0% in 2025) while the state improved by nearly 5 points around it.
12th grade enrollment now exceeds kindergarten by 44,132 students in Texas, a complete inversion of the pipeline that held for decades.
Sumter has lost 3,610 students since 2015, a 21.3% decline, despite hosting one of the Southeast's largest military installations. The base's $2 billion impact isn't enough.
Ohio enrollment fell by 19,611 students in 2025-26, the largest non-COVID decline on record, and 391 districts now sit at all-time lows.
New York added 12,800 Pre-K students since 2012, driven by NYC's universal program. Kindergarten lost 35,550 over the same span, falling to its lowest level on record.
Six years after the pandemic, Eureka County is the only Nevada district where chronic absenteeism has returned to pre-COVID levels. Sixteen districts remain 3 to 27 points above.
Nearly half of Camden students are chronically absent after a post-pandemic recovery stalled and reversed in 2024, widening the gap with New Jersey's statewide rate.
Bennington, Gretna, and Elkhorn are the only Nebraska districts to post enrollment gains in all 21 year-over-year transitions since 2005.
West Fargo's enrollment rose 113.8% since 2008, making it North Dakota's second-largest school district.
Bakken oil region districts saw chronic absence rates double or triple since 2018, far outpacing the state's 8-point increase, as boom-bust volatility destabilizes school attendance.
Colstrip's combined school enrollment fell 19.8% since 2018, tracking the closure of two coal-fired generating units and the uncertain future of two more.
Mississippi's 10 charter schools enroll just 1% of students statewide. In Jackson, six charters now claim 15% of the combined enrollment pool.
Outer-ring Twin Cities suburbs gained 12,559 students since 2007 while inner-ring districts lost 7,248, reshaping the metro's enrollment geography.
231 of Michigan's 878 districts are at their lowest enrollment on record in 2024-25, a number that tripled in a single year and spans every size category.
Massachusetts kindergarten enrollment has fallen below grade 12 for 12 straight years, a pipeline inversion that guarantees smaller schools for a generation.
Kansas special education enrollment has grown 39% since 2005, crossing the 1-in-7 threshold even as total enrollment stagnates. The post-COVID acceleration is reshaping district budgets statewide.
Hispanic students now outnumber white students in Seymour Community Schools, the fastest demographic shift of any Indiana district over the past 10 years.
A Western Slope district of 4,641 students posted one of Colorado's most dramatic attendance turnarounds, dropping from the state's worst large-district rate to well below average in four years.
Of 607 large school districts, just 45 have returned to their pre-COVID chronic absenteeism rates. The median district remains 6.8 points above baseline.
Only 19 of 240 Arkansas districts improved chronic absenteeism in two consecutive years. They span every geography and every size. Here's what they share.
Rhode Island's foster youth graduated at just 42.7% in 2024, a new low and an 8.7-point drop from the prior year. A 17-member legislative commission is studying the problem.
Seattle has a below-average overall chronic rate of 23.4% but a 17.8-point gap between white and Black students — a disparity that widened after the pandemic.
Three ring districts south of Sioux Falls added 8,194 students since 2007, doubling their state enrollment share while the core plateaus.
Middletown cut chronic absenteeism from 42.7% to 19.9% in three years — the largest improvement among mid-size RI districts, without state intervention.
Pennsylvania's cyber charter schools saw chronic absence rise to 30% even as traditional schools improved to 20%. New state reforms add oversight.
Oregon's female-male graduation gap narrowed from 8.5 to 3.6 points since 2010, driven by male gains. Oregon also reports non-binary graduation data.
Omaha Public Schools graduated 71.5% of its 2025 cohort — a 16.4-point gap to the state average, the widest on record. Inside the district, 1,085 students didn't finish on time.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools once led its peers in graduation rate. Eight years later, CMS trails Wake by 7 points and Guilford by nearly 8, with the state's largest cohort of non-graduates.
Kansas City 33's graduation rate climbed from 69.4 percent in 2019 to 88.2 percent in 2025, a turnaround driven by even larger gains among Black students.
East Baton Rouge Parish enrollment fell 4.3% in 2026, seven times the prior year's rate, as school closures, charter exits, and outmigration collide in Louisiana's capital.
Black students in Kentucky graduate at 91.1%, cutting the gap with white students from 9.5 points to 3.9 since 2020. Both groups are above 90%.
Storm Lake's 54% graduation rate is the lowest among Iowa's traditional school districts, reflecting the structural challenges facing a meatpacking town where most students are learning English.
Florida students with disabilities graduated at 86.8% in 2024, closing a 19-point gap with the overall rate to just 2.9 points. The improvement is among the most dramatic special education gains in any state.
White enrollment in Arizona public schools fell 18% since 2018, nearly double the overall decline, as vouchers and demographics reshape classrooms.
Laramie County School District #1, Wyoming's largest, has lost 1,402 students since 2020 and plans to close 8 elementary schools through 2035. Parents have sued to stop it.
Rutland City at 56.7% and Winooski at 52.5% are Vermont's only districts where a majority of students miss 10% or more of school days.
Oklahoma's 4-year graduation rate hit 82.2% in 2025 after a 3-year recovery, but remains below the 2019 peak and nearly 5 points below the national average.
New Mexico's gender graduation gap of nearly 8 points exceeds the national average by 3 points. Male students graduate at lower rates than economically disadvantaged students.
Louisiana's white-Black graduation gap fell to 6.7 points in 2025, its narrowest on record, as Black students gained 4.8 points and outpaced white improvement.
Indianapolis Public Schools posted a 93% graduation rate in 2025, surpassing the state average for the first time after a two-decade transformation.
Every racial and socioeconomic gap in Hawaii's chronic absenteeism data is wider in 2025 than it was before COVID, and not a single one has returned to its pre-pandemic level.
Atlanta Public Schools posted a 90.5% graduation rate in 2025, up from 52% in 2011. The district that was rocked by a cheating scandal now outpaces the state.
Chronic absenteeism in Gadsden County surged from 15.3% to 56.0% between 2018 and 2024, the most dramatic deterioration of any Florida district.
The white-Hispanic graduation gap shrank to 5 points by 2019. By 2022 it had ballooned to 9.6 points. Sussex County districts show gaps exceeding 20 points.
California's white-Black graduation gap shrank from 15.6 to 6.4 percentage points as Black students posted the largest gains of any racial group.
Economically disadvantaged students in Arizona face a 29.8% chronic absenteeism rate, 6.1 points above average and 10.4 points above pre-COVID levels.
Arkansas graduates 89% of students, 2 points above the national average, with gains across every racial subgroup since 2016.
Only 83 of 421 Wisconsin school districts have returned to pre-pandemic chronic absenteeism rates, while 338 remain stuck with elevated absence three years after the 2022 peak.
Kindergarten has the highest chronic absenteeism rate of any grade in Utah at 30%, six points above the state average, raising questions about the state's half-day funding model.
Economically disadvantaged students are chronically absent at 28.5% vs 12.1% for their peers, a 16-point gap that has not budged in four years of data.
Twelfth-grade chronic absenteeism averages 20.3% across NJ schools, 8.3 points higher than 3rd grade, but seniors have recovered faster from COVID than any other grade.
Dover graduated 91.5% of its Class of 2025 — an all-time high and the only large district to set a record in a year when 21 districts hit bottom.
North Dakota's 4-year graduation rate dropped to 82.4% in 2024, its lowest in 12 years, even as cohort sizes grew 15%.
Maine's pre-K enrollment surged 30% while kindergarten fell 14.8%, the steepest grade-level decline in the state. The divergence reveals a policy success colliding with a demographic wall.
Coeur d'Alene's chronic absenteeism rate jumped from 13.3% to 20.7% over four years, crossing above the state average as Idaho's overall rate fell.
Colonial's 24.9% chronic absenteeism rate leads NCC peers, sitting 7.7 points above Delaware's average despite a 12.9-point drop from its 2022 peak.
Virginia still graduates more than 91% of its students, but the 93% pandemic-era peak in 2021 has eroded, with 78 of 130 divisions sliding back.
Texas's 4-year graduation rate hit 94.4% for the Class of 2024, matching its pre-COVID peak. But 26 districts still graduate fewer than 70% of their students.
Nearly 30% of Tennessee's economically disadvantaged students are chronically absent, and the poverty gap in attendance is wider now than before the pandemic spike.
South Carolina's graduation rate reached an all-time high of 86.7% in 2025, but youth in foster care graduate at just 44.8%, a 41.9 percentage-point gap.
Nebraska City had a chronic absenteeism rate of 2.9% before COVID. Six years later, it's 37.1% -- a 34-point increase that dwarfs every other district in the state.
From Frederick's 16.8% to Baltimore City's 48.7%, chronic absenteeism tracks poverty and geography more than any policy variable.
Fairfield School District's chronic absence rate remains well below Connecticut's average, but it increased every year from 2014 to 2020 -- the longest worsening streak in the state.
Alabama's graduation rate hit 91.56% in 2025 (second-highest ever) after a 2.5-point dip in 2023 when COVID-era supports expired.
After climbing 8 points from 2010 to 2017, Rhode Island's 4-year graduation rate has flatlined between 83.4% and 84.1% — unable to crack 85% while the national average sits at 87%.
Hispanic enrollment nearly doubled to 116,817 over 19 years, from 6.7% to 14.5% of students while total enrollment fell. Dairy towns anchor the shift.
In raw numbers, 296,544 Washington students were chronically absent in 2024-25 — 128,000 more than before the pandemic. The cumulative toll since COVID: 1.48 million student-years.
Norfolk Public Schools has declined every single year since 2003, losing 9,913 students. Now the Navy city is closing nine schools to match a student body that may never come back.
Rhode Island's middle school chronic absenteeism has recovered only 53% from peak — the slowest of any grade level, with 1 in 4 students chronically absent.
Of 733 Pennsylvania school districts, just 92 have returned to pre-pandemic chronic absence levels. 147 schools still have majority-absent student bodies.
Hillsboro SD crossed 90% graduation for the first time with 1,651 students, while Portland suburbs graduate 8 to 15 points above the city.
Nebraska hit a 90% graduation rate in 2014 and has not returned. The rate looks stable at 88%, but a growing cohort means 760 more students per year don't finish on time.
North Carolina's graduation rate climbed nearly 19 points in 11 years, one of the nation's most dramatic improvements. Then it stopped. The state hasn't gained a single point in seven years.
Kentucky's 4-year graduation rate hit 93.6% in 2025, nearly 7 points above the national average, with Black students driving the largest gains.
Iowa's 88.3% graduation rate for the Class of 2024 exactly matches its pre-pandemic level, but the recovery masks a K-shaped split where Native American, Asian, and English learner students fell further behind.
Florida's graduation rate reached a record 89.7% in 2024, eclipsing the pre-COVID high after a sharp post-waiver correction in 2022. The largest cohort in state history produced nearly 195,000 graduates.
Multiracial enrollment surged 41% in a decade, adding 14,096 students even as Colorado's schools shrank. The category now outnumbers Black students statewide.
Phoenix's inner-ring elementary districts have shed 30% of their students since 2018, driving school closures and a fiscal crisis across west Phoenix.
Seventeen of Wyoming's 51 districts — 33 percent — are at their lowest enrollment in the 26-year data record, and the two largest are within striking distance.
Vermont's largest district dropped chronic absenteeism from 21.3% to 9.9% in two years, using student engagement surveys to guide its approach.
Of 1,202 Texas districts, 206 are at record-low enrollment while 320 are at record highs. The split runs along a predictable line.
South Carolina lost 41,256 Black students since 2015, outpacing white decline and reshaping the state's school demographics as Hispanic enrollment nearly doubled.
43% of Ohio's community schools now enroll more students than before COVID. Only 16% of traditional districts can say the same.
Nineteen New York districts have declined every year since 2013, losing a combined 43,362 students across Long Island, NYC, and upstate.
New Mexico's graduation rate climbed from 66% to 71% over eight years but remains nearly 16 points below the national average, with progress stalling mid-decade.
Black, economically disadvantaged, and disabled students all hit 21% chronic absenteeism in NJ, converging from different peaks.
Native American grad rates fell to 63.4% in 2024, erasing six years of gains. The gap with white students widened to 24.1 points.
One in four traditional districts recorded their lowest enrollment in 33 years of state data, with Western MA and Cape Cod hit hardest.
Louisiana's graduation rate reached 85% in 2025, its highest on record, with gains across every major racial subgroup and the largest single-year jump in the dataset.
Indiana's second-largest county shed 8,789 public school students since 2016, a decline driven almost entirely by the collapse of its northern industrial cities.
Indiana's graduation rate hit 91.8% in 2025 — an all-time high and the second consecutive year above 90% — capping a 5.2 percentage point surge from a decade low.
Hawaii elementary schools have recovered 65.5% of their COVID chronic absenteeism spike, while high schools have recovered just 46.3%, and the gap between school levels is widening.
In 2011, white students graduated at 75.5% and Black students at 59.8%. By 2025, the gap had narrowed to 2.8 percentage points, one of the smallest in the nation.
976,305 Florida students missed 10% or more of school in 2023-24, up 55% from pre-COVID levels. The cumulative toll since the pandemic: 1.1 million excess student-years.
Christina School District's 73.2% graduation rate is Delaware's lowest by a full percentage point, and the gap to the state runs deeper than the headline.
Only 38 of 186 Connecticut districts have returned to pre-pandemic enrollment. The state is 32,852 students below 2019 levels, with the largest districts hit hardest.
California's statewide graduation rate reached an all-time high of 87.8% in 2025, with 69% of districts improving, but the state still hasn't crossed 90%.
Tucson Unified's chronic absenteeism spiked from 33.8% to 43.6% in one year, erasing two years of post-COVID recovery gains.
Jason Munford leads Barbour County's newly consolidated elementary campus as the district merges Pre-K through sixth grade under one roof. Outgoing Primary School principal Pamela Allen-Ingram reflects on the early literacy foundation she helped build.
Black students in Wisconsin face a 46.3% chronic absence rate compared to 10.8% for white students, a 35.5-point gap that has widened since before COVID.
In 18 Utah districts, more than half of students are chronically absent. All but one are charter schools, with rates reaching 82.8%.
Oglala Lakota County School District grew 49.4% since 2007, the 10th-fastest rate in South Dakota. Most of that growth came from opening Lakota Tech, the first CTE high school on any reservation.
South Carolina's poorest rural districts along I-95 have chronic absenteeism rates nearly double the state average, deepening decades of educational inequality.
NJ charter districts average 16.7% chronic absenteeism vs. 12.8% for traditional districts, but half of all charters beat the state average.
NH's graduating cohort has shrunk every year since 2015, from 14,780 to 12,980 — a 12% decline producing 1,662 fewer graduates annually.
Not one of North Carolina's 112 districts with 500 or more students has returned to its pre-pandemic chronic absenteeism rate. Every one remains above its baseline.
Five years after the pandemic, only 47 of 214 Maine districts have regained pre-COVID enrollment. The state is 11,436 students below its projected trajectory.
The 2025-26 school year brought Louisiana's largest non-COVID enrollment loss, with 67 of 75 parishes declining and six losing more than 500 students each.
Sixteen Idaho schools have chronic absenteeism rates above 50%, including Malad Elementary at 78%, the highest rate for a non-alternative school in the state.
Nearly 45% of Delaware's 3,946 students who are currently homeless were chronically absent in 2024-25, 2.6 times the statewide rate. The gap is closing but 1,772 students still miss too much school.
Nine districts have declined every single year since 2015, losing up to 58% of their students. Seven sit in the Black Belt.
The Achievement School District ends after a decade with the state's worst chronic absenteeism rate, 85% enrollment loss, and research showing no long-term gains.
SC produced 54,980 graduates in the class of 2025 (a record) as the graduation rate reached an all-time high of 86.7% from a record cohort of 63,440.
Lincoln Public Schools is the only major Nebraska district where chronic absenteeism has worsened every year since 2020 -- bucking the statewide recovery trend.
While other states saw enrollment crater during COVID, Missouri held steady. Then 2022 hit, and nearly three-quarters of its districts lost students at once.
Honolulu County has lost 20,854 students since 2014. At the current pace, Oahu will drop below 100,000 students by next year.
Georgia's largest district went from 9.4% to 18.4% chronically absent since the pandemic, adding 18,000 students to the missing rolls despite $19M in new mental health funding.
Hartford's 27.9% chronic absenteeism rate vs Greenwich's 0.1% in 2020 captures Connecticut's education inequality in a single statistic — a gap that widened for years before COVID.
Nine of Alabama's 16 student subgroups hit all-time graduation rate highs in 2025, spanning race, gender, poverty, disability, and housing status.
After two years of improvement, chronic absenteeism reversed in 2025. Thirteen of 17 districts worsened, erasing nearly half a year of progress.
North Platte Public Schools has the longest decline streak among Nebraska's mid-size districts, losing 14.8% of enrollment since 2016 even as the state grew.
North Dakota's largest district went from 13% to 26% chronic absence, with school-level rates ranging from 5% to 37% and Native American students at 53%.
Livingston Elem enrollment fell from 1,000 to 716 since 2018, the third-fastest decline among Montana districts with 200+ students, even as Park County's tourism economy booms.
White enrollment hit a record-low 40.5% of Mississippi public school students in 2026 as both white and Black groups decline.
Nearly one in five Minnesota students now receives special education services, up from one in seven in 2014, straining budgets despite a historic state funding increase.
In a state that has lost 349,000 students since 2004, Byron Center Public Schools has doubled its enrollment across 28 consecutive years of growth.
After a brief post-COVID recovery, Kansas enrollment has dropped for three straight years, with 181 districts losing students in 2026 and no sign of stabilization.
Denver Public Schools' student who is currently homeless chronic absenteeism rate hit 76.2% in 2024-25, worsening by 5 points as the district's equity gaps widened across nearly every subgroup.
Dashboard Alternative School Status schools have a 38-point chronic absenteeism gap over traditional schools, the largest structural divide in California's attendance data.
Magazine School District adopted a continuous calendar before COVID and has since recovered faster than nearly any district in Arkansas, cutting chronic absence from 36% to 9%.
Alaska's post-COVID enrollment gains were an illusion. The state is now 3,272 students below pre-pandemic levels, and correspondence growth masked deeper traditional losses.
Charter enrollment surged 17.5% during the pandemic, driven almost entirely by virtual schools. Four years later, the sector has kept those gains.
One in three Hispanic students in Washington is chronically absent, and the gap with white students has widened from 4.9 to 8.9 percentage points since the pandemic.
Virginia crossed the majority-minority threshold in 2014. Since then, white enrollment has fallen by 106,000 students and 13 more divisions have flipped.
RI's four gateway cities all exceeded 33% chronic absenteeism in 2022. Providence and Central Falls recovered dramatically; Pawtucket and Woonsocket barely moved.
Coatesville Area SD went from 50% chronic absence to 13% in three years, the largest such improvement among traditional Pennsylvania districts.
In 23 Oregon districts, Hispanic students graduate at higher rates than white students. The gaps are largest in agricultural communities.
Denver's six largest suburban districts have lost a combined 35,776 students from their peaks. All six hit all-time lows in 2025-26.
175 Arizona districts reached their all-time enrollment low in 2025-26, including most of the state's largest traditional systems.
Glendo High School enrolled one student in 2025-26. One of 19 Wyoming schools with fewer than 10, part of a rural system in the least populated state.
Winooski SD, Vermont's most diverse district, saw chronic absenteeism surge from 29% to 53% in one year as immigration enforcement heightened student anxiety.
Texas has 1.35 million English learners, up 97% in 20 years. LEP growth was 4.5x total enrollment growth since 2020, but 2025 brought the first dip.
34 of South Carolina's 81 school districts recorded their lowest enrollment in 12 years in 2025-26, while 59 declined and only 5 reached highs.
Ohio's 2025-26 kindergarten class of 112,390 is the smallest in 12 years, 1,865 below the COVID floor.
Just 101 of 722 New York districts have returned to pre-pandemic enrollment. Nine in ten students attend a district still below 2019.
Newark's chronic absenteeism dropped from 26.8% to 11.5%, falling below the state average while 87% of NJ districts remain above pre-COVID levels.
North Dakota's enrollment sits 6,336 students below its pre-COVID trajectory, a gap worth $71.9 million in per-pupil funding that widens each year.
No Massachusetts district has declined longer without interruption than Ludlow, which has lost students every year since 2009 and shed 30.6%.
Of 269 Indiana corporations that lost students during COVID, only 60 have returned to pre-pandemic levels. The state just hit a new post-COVID low.
One in three economically disadvantaged students in Hawaii is chronically absent, up from 21% before COVID to 32% in 2024-25.
Georgia's graduation rate climbed 19.8 points since 2011, matching the national average. The Class of 2025 produced 35,520 more graduates.
Jacksonville's school district recorded a 44.8% chronic absenteeism rate in 2023-24 — the highest ever and the worst among Florida's large districts.
Delaware's four-year graduation rate reached 88.9% for the class of 2023, its highest ever, but the state has never crossed 90%. The DOE wants 91% by 2028.
CREC magnet enrollment grew 96% since 2011 under the Sheff desegregation ruling while Hartford lost 27% of its students and dropped from largest to fourth-largest district.
Native American students face 37.3% chronic absenteeism, 13.5 points above the state average. On some reservations, the rate exceeds 60%.
Milwaukee's 46.2% chronic absenteeism rate means 28,355 students miss too much school, 22% of all chronically absent students statewide.
Only Wayne, Carbon, and Juab districts have returned to pre-COVID chronic absenteeism rates. The other 38 carry an average excess of 11.3 percentage points.
The ratio of kindergartners to 12th graders has collapsed from 1.41 to 1.10 in a decade, signaling years of accelerating enrollment decline ahead.
Students who are currently homeless in SC have a 48.7% chronic absenteeism rate that has barely budged in four years, while students in foster care are getting worse.
Black chronic absenteeism in Paterson hit 45.9% in 2023-24, still 10.7 points above pre-COVID levels and 4x the statewide white rate.
One in five NH districts posted their lowest graduation rate on record in 2025, including the capital, second-largest city, and affluent suburbs.
Maine lost 2,134 students in 2025-26, the worst non-COVID year on record. Three years of losses have erased the post-pandemic bounce.
White enrollment fell to 40.2% in Louisiana public schools, down from 47.1% in seven years. Seventy of 74 parishes lost white students.
Native American students cut their chronic absenteeism rate from 32.8% to 21.3% over four years, far outpacing every other racial group in Idaho.
Delaware cut chronic absenteeism from 25.7% to 17.1% in three years, with each year's improvement larger than the last.
Alabama's largest district has declined for 10 straight years, shedding 11,829 students since 2016. No year in the streak brought a gain.
Memphis-Shelby County Schools posted a 30.2% chronic absenteeism rate in 2024-25 while every other major Tennessee district improved. The gap is widening.
Nebraska's chronic absenteeism rate has fallen only 2.4 percentage points from its 2022 peak, with 21,515 more students chronically absent than before COVID.
St. Louis Public Schools enrolled 43,420 students in 2001. By 2026, just 16,211 remain, a 62.7% collapse that now threatens the district's accreditation and half its buildings.
Baltimore City's 48.7% chronic absenteeism rate is 22.0 points above the state average and nearly three times Frederick County's rate.
Iowa lost 14,710 students in three years, exceeding the COVID crash. The 2026 loss of 7,670 doubled the prior year and 236 of 329 districts shrank.
Hawaii's COVID enrollment recovery reversed in 2025-26 as all four counties widened the gap from 2019. The state lost 3,425 students in a single year.
Before COVID, Georgia's Black-white chronic absenteeism gap was 2.9 points. Six years later it has ballooned to 7.5 points, still widening.
Hartford School District's chronic absenteeism rate never dropped below 22% in nine years of data — the pre-COVID baseline reveals a structural attendance emergency that the pandemic only amplified.
More than one in three Clark County students were chronically absent in 2024-25. The district accounts for 68% of all chronically absent students in Nevada.
Douglas, Sarpy, and Lancaster counties added 41,573 students since 2005 while the rest of Nebraska added just 1,976, a 6.2-point enrollment shift.
Native American students face a 39% chronic absence rate, 24 points above white peers, with reservation districts like Belcourt and Fargo reporting rates above 50%.
Hispanic enrollment rose 44.8% since 2018 while every other racial group declined. Growth spans the state but may be slowing.
Six Mississippi Delta school districts have lost 5,687 students since 2016, a 34.8% decline that is 2.7 times the statewide rate.
The state that invented charter schools 35 years ago saw its charter share stall at 8.3% in 2025-26, even as 76 of the 245 charters ever opened have closed.
Michigan public schools have lost 348,841 students over 20 consecutive years, a 20.3% decline that has erased $3.5 billion in funding capacity.
Goddard USD 265 grew every year from 2006 to 2023, adding 2,100 students. Then the streak broke, and voters rejected a $196 million bond.
Colorado Springs District 11 saw chronic absenteeism surge 16.6 percentage points in one year, the largest swing among any large Colorado district, with more than half of Black and Hispanic students now chronically absent.
Charter schools had 5.8 points lower chronic absenteeism than traditional schools at the pandemic peak. By 2025, the gap has essentially closed.
Pine Bluff was taken over by the state for failing schools. Under new leadership, the district has cut chronic absenteeism from 19% to 11% and won back local control.
Three correspondence districts added 5,880 students since 2020 while traditional districts lost thousands. Even Mat-Su's apparent growth is driven by a new virtual program.
Only 23 of 822 Illinois districts have returned to pre-pandemic chronic absenteeism rates. The rest are stuck 11 points above baseline.
Only 12 of 194 Georgia districts have recovered to pre-COVID attendance levels. The state has 131,735 more chronically absent students than in 2019.
Wisconsin lost 8,121 public school students in 2024-25, its second-largest non-COVID drop. Combined with last year's 8,802 loss, the two-year decline rivals the pandemic year itself.
After three years of steady improvement, Tacoma's chronic absenteeism rate rose 2.3 points to 36.2% in 2025 — the largest reversal among Washington's top 10 districts.
Virginia recovered less than a fifth of students lost to COVID. Five years later, enrollment is still sliding and the forces behind it are structural.
Barrington has maintained the lowest chronic absenteeism rate among large RI districts for 13 years, never exceeding 10% — even during the COVID peak.
42% of Black students in Philadelphia are chronically absent, compared to 27% of white students. The gap has tripled since pre-COVID.
CTE concentrators graduate at 97.8% in Oregon, nearly 15 points above the state average. Even CTE participants graduate above 91%.
From Clark County to Esmeralda's 69 students, traditional districts across Nevada are smaller than at any point in the last eight years as charters grow.
Arizona's COVID enrollment shock was the largest single-year loss in state data. But the 59,272 students lost since the 2022 bounce dwarf the pandemic itself.
Wyoming lost 2,483 students in 2025-26, the largest single-year decline in the state's 26-year enrollment record, surpassing even the COVID drop.
Vermont's chronic absenteeism peaked at 37.4% in 2022 and has recovered only 59% of the way back. The improvement decelerated from 10.5 points to 2.6 points in one year.
Houston ISD has fallen to 168,812 students, its lowest in 22 years, while suburban neighbors added nearly 200,000.
The Charter Institute at Erskine grew from 8,450 to 28,376 students in seven years, becoming SC's sixth-largest district.
Cleveland Municipal fell to 32,369 students, down 16.7% since 2015. The district is closing 29 schools to address a $150 million deficit.
Rochester City School District has lost 12,880 students since peaking in 2006, declining every year since 2010. No other Big Five district comes close.
McKenzie County grew 345% since 2008 as the Bakken boom reshaped western ND. Rapid growth brought teacher shortages and a graduation gap.
After tripling from 77,410 to 237,226 since 1994, Hispanic enrollment in Massachusetts fell by 1,298 in 2026. Gateway cities bore the losses.
73 charter corporations in Marion County enrolled 35,898 students in 2025-26, 1.8 times the 19,774 at IPS. The crossover came in 2020.
Hawaii's charter schools show the widest chronic absenteeism spread of any school category, from Kanuikapono PCS at 1% to Connections PCS at 59%, revealing that charter status alone says nothing about attendance.
Florida's chronic absenteeism rate sits at 31.4%, barely below its pandemic peak. At the current pace, the state won't return to pre-COVID levels until 2048.
Nearly one in three Connecticut districts is now majority-minority, double the rate in 2011. The shift has moved from cities to inner suburbs.
Arizona cut chronic absenteeism from 32% to 24%, but progress nearly stopped in 2025. At current pace, pre-COVID levels won't return until the 2040s.
After cutting chronic absenteeism by 3.2 points in 2023, Wisconsin's improvement shrank to just 0.4 points in 2025, leaving 130,131 students still missing too much school.
Charter chronic absenteeism jumped 2.8 points to 27.3% in 2025 while traditional districts edged down to 23.3%, opening the widest sector gap on record.
South Dakota's Native American enrollment barely moved in 17 years while Hispanic numbers nearly quadrupled, shrinking the Native share from the inside out.
New Jersey's chronic absenteeism rate has improved since its 2022 peak, but just 12.9% of districts have returned to pre-pandemic levels. The gap is widest in urban districts.
NH charter schools average a 72.5% graduation rate vs. 89.3% for traditional districts. Every district below 70% is a charter.
North Carolina's chronic absenteeism rate dropped to 25% but the pace of improvement has more than halved, leaving 391,065 students missing a month of school.
Maine's second-largest district has added students three years running, driven by immigrant families remaking a former mill town even as the state hits an enrollment low.
Charter enrollment reached 12.4% of Louisiana's public school total in 2025-26, gaining 6,914 students since 2022 while traditional parishes lost 32,171.
Caldwell District's 34.1% chronic absenteeism rate is the highest among Idaho's large districts, and higher than when the state started tracking the data.
Brandywine, Christina, Colonial, and Red Clay lost 6,476 students combined while the rest of Delaware grew 20.3%. The Redding Consortium voted to merge them.
28 of 138 Alabama districts have regained pre-pandemic enrollment. The state as a whole remains 25,755 students below its fall 2019 headcount and is still falling.
Tennessee cut chronic absenteeism from its peak but the pace of improvement halved last year, leaving nearly one in five students chronically absent.
Alliance Public Schools achieved Nebraska's largest chronic absenteeism improvement: a 28.5 percentage-point drop over four consecutive years.
Missouri's 855,081 public school students in 2025-26 marks a 25-year low, with losses accelerating from 220 students per year in the 2000s to nearly 3,900 per year since 2019.
After a decade of growth, Iowa's Hispanic enrollment fell by 197 students. Des Moines and meatpacking towns drove the loss.
Hawaii enrollment hit 163,651, a new record low. Losses nearly quadrupled in two years as housing costs push families to the mainland.
In the COVID-shortened 2019-20 school year, 78 of 187 Connecticut districts hit their worst-ever chronic absenteeism rates — a preview of the spike to 23.7% that would come two years later.
SC's recovery from its chronic absenteeism peak is decelerating. The state's Be Present S.C. campaign and Charleston's $25/week incentive pilot represent divergent bets on what works.
Abbeville County is 72% economically disadvantaged, yet its 16.3% chronic rate beats Dorchester Two, Richland Two, and most affluent SC districts.
An estimated 155,000 Nevada students were chronically absent in 2024-25, with a weighted statewide rate of 32.6% -- nearly double the pre-COVID level.
Fremont voted to ban undocumented renters in 2010. Its schools are now 50.5% Hispanic and 45.2% white. The crossover happened in 2025.
Despite reopening schools faster than almost any state, North Dakota's chronic absenteeism rate has flatlined at 20% for two consecutive years, recovering just 20% of the way back to pre-pandemic levels.
Bozeman's high school district has added 687 students over eight consecutive years of growth, the longest streak in Montana, even as every other major city's elementary enrollment hits record lows.
Ten consecutive years of decline have cost Mississippi 62,661 public school students, a 12.9% drop with no reversal in sight.
St. Cloud's Black enrollment surged from 12% to 43% in 20 years, driven by Somali resettlement. The district now has more Black students than white.
White enrollment fell 31% while Hispanic and multiracial students tripled, reshaping a school system that is shrinking and diversifying simultaneously.
No Kansas district has changed more. Turner-Kansas City went from 67% white to 23% in 21 years, the largest racial composition shift in the state.
After two years of accelerating improvement, Colorado's chronic absenteeism rate ticked back up to 28.5% in 2025, putting the state's goal of 15% by 2027-28 out of reach.
Bakersfield City School District went from 51.6% chronic absenteeism to 18.9% in three years, dropping below the state average.
In 2023-24, Arkansas hit a record 27.7% chronic absence rate and 87% of districts got worse. These 30 districts went the other direction.
Montgomery Public Schools names Phillip Brooks principal of JAG High School, the former Jefferson Davis HS renamed for civil rights leaders in 2022.
Black enrollment fell from 3,317 to 2,669 since 2020, the steepest decline of any racial group and nearly eight times the statewide rate.
Wisconsin lost 150,475 white students since 2006, a 22.1% decline that dwarfs the state's total enrollment loss of 67,640.
After three years of improvement, Washington's chronic absence rate barely budged in 2025, leaving 296,544 students missing too much school.
VDOE releases 2024-25 data showing 1,261,501 students statewide, down 36,511 from peak, with only 19% of losses recovered.
Oregon's white-Black graduation gap narrowed from 20.1 to 9.1 points since 2010, driven by Black students' 25.6-point gain. It widened slightly in 2025.
Nevada's charter schools closed the racial gap with traditional districts even as charters gained 28,201 students and traditional lost 53,160.
Native American students in Colorado public schools dropped from 6,420 to 4,974 over 11 years, declining nearly twice as fast as white enrollment.
Arizona's largest district has lost nearly 10,000 students since 2019, with losses accelerating to 2,625 in the latest year alone.
WDE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing Wyoming lost 2,483 students, the largest single-year decline in 26 years of records.
Texas enrollment fell 47,195 students in 2025-26, only the second decline in 22 years and the first not caused by a pandemic.
Hispanic enrollment in SC nearly doubled in 11 years, from 60,023 to 116,754. Without that growth, the state would have lost students.
Hispanic enrollment in Ohio grew 68% in 11 years, reshaping districts from Columbus suburbs to Lake Erie nursery towns. Then 2026 hit a wall.
Nearly half of New York's 1,064 districts hit their lowest enrollment ever in 2026, including 24 of 32 NYC geographic districts.
North Dakota's four-year graduation rate has fallen every year since 2020, dropping 6.6 points as a growing cohort outpaces the system.
Massachusetts LEP enrollment nearly tripled over 30 years to a peak of 127,673 in 2025. In 2026, it dropped 5.4%, the second-largest decline on record.
Indiana's majority-minority school corporations grew from 79 to 134 in a decade, reshaping suburbs from Avon to Seymour and manufacturing towns statewide.
Immigration powered Danbury to buck a statewide enrollment collapse, but a 506-student drop in 2025-26 signals the growth engine may be stalling.
South Dakota's 147 school districts range from 20 to 24,841 students. The bottom half hold just 12% of the state's enrollment.
Manchester has posted four consecutive years of graduation rate improvement, climbing from 67.8% to 75.6% — even as the state average fell.
Black enrollment in Maine surged 50% in nine years, driven by African immigrant families in Lewiston and Portland, even as total enrollment hit a low.
Caddo Parish lost 5,611 students since 2019, a 14.8% decline that leads Louisiana and has triggered school closures.
Idaho's absenteeism rate dropped just 0.4 points last year after sharp improvements in 2023 and 2024, leaving 44,640 students still habitually absent.
15 of 41 Delaware districts set enrollment records in 2024-25 while only 3 hit lows. Sussex County growth and charter expansion drive the rare ratio.
White students hit 50.0% of Alabama enrollment in 2024-25, crossing below the majority line as Hispanic students nearly doubled over nine years.
NJ chronic absenteeism dropped from 18.1% to 14.9% since 2022, but 172 districts are worse than their pandemic peak and 47 keep getting worse every year.
DESE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 855,081 students, a 25-year low that extends an accelerating decline.
A pre-COVID trend line projected Illinois would have nearly 2 million students in 2025. Instead it has 1.85 million, a gap driven by outmigration, fewer births, and pandemic fallout.
K enrollment fell 13% since 2015 while total enrollment dropped just 1.9%. The pipeline math means Iowa's steepest losses are still ahead.
HIDOE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 163,651 students statewide, down 3,425, the largest non-COVID loss on record.
Pre-K enrollment more than tripled since 2005, now reaching 92% of kindergarten. Nearly one in three new students Nebraska gained came from expanding pre-K.
Nearly one in three Montana districts are at their lowest enrollment ever recorded, including every major city's elementary system.
Mississippi's largest school district saw Black students overtake White enrollment for the first time in 2024, completing a demographic transformation two decades in the making.
Minnesota lost 23,236 students between 2020 and 2024. Five years later, only 3,208 have returned, a 13.8% recovery rate that masks a deeper structural shift.
After losing 73% of its students over two decades, Detroit's reconstituted district posted the largest gain of any big Michigan district in 2024-25.
KSDE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 447,803 students statewide — a three-year decline of 12,539 and the lowest count since 2011.
Arkansas's state capital district pulled off a rare feat: growing enrollment by 81% while slashing chronic absenteeism from 28% to under 7% in two years.
Fairbanks lost 2,017 students in seven years, closed three schools, and still faces a structural deficit. The decline is accelerating.
East Baton Rouge Parish's chronic absenteeism peaked at 33.4% in 2024 before dropping to 30.5% in 2025, but 14 schools still have rates above 50%.
Caddo Parish recovered to near pre-COVID absenteeism by 2022, then worsened every year since, hitting an all-time high of 31.0% in 2025.
MPS enrollment has fallen 28.6% since 2006, shedding 26,219 students while the state declined just 7.7%. A $46 million budget gap is forcing 260 job cuts.
After 35 years in Washington education and more than two decades in Enumclaw, Jill Burnes steps into the superintendent role as the district hits record enrollment and builds a $65M school.
Pennsylvania's chronic absenteeism rate remains at 20.4%, still 6 percentage points above pre-COVID levels. Recovery is decelerating.
Jefferson County SD 509J raised its graduation rate from 57% to 91.7% over 15 years. Its special ed rate climbed from 42% to 93%.
Nevada added 2,254 pre-K seats since 2019 even as overall enrollment fell by 27,000 students. The expansion faces a funding cliff as federal grants expire.
Idaho added 3,500 students a year for 17 years. Since 2023, it has lost nearly 5,000, and the gap between actual enrollment and pre-COVID projections widens every year.
At the current rate of decline, Hawaii will enroll fewer than 160,000 public school students within five years, 13,682 below the state's pre-COVID trajectory.
Colorado's charter schools doubled their market share in a decade, but growth has collapsed to 0.3%, raising questions about the sector's ceiling.
Hispanic students now make up 49.2% of Arizona public school enrollment, up from 45.7% eight years ago. White enrollment has fallen 18% in the same period.
White enrollment drops to 24.2% of Texas public schools, the lowest share on record, as the state's demographic transformation reaches the suburban ring.
Colleton, Darlington, Fairfield, McCormick, Marion, and Williamsburg have lost a combined 8,634 students since 2015. All six are at all-time lows.
Ohio public school enrollment fell to 1,718,829, its lowest in at least 12 years. The 19,611-student drop is the second-largest on record.
Kindergarten enrollment fell to 163,820 in 2026, down 19.2% from its 2013 peak and 7,994 students below the COVID trough — a signal that deeper declines are coming.
New Mexico kindergarten enrollment fell 20% since 2016 while 12th grade grew, inverting the pipeline that once fed the state's schools.
Kindergarten enrollment fell 13.1% from its 2020 peak. North Dakota now has fewer entering students than graduates, a first since the Bakken boom.
Massachusetts' 29 voc-tech districts grew 19.3% since 2008 while traditional districts lost 93,000 students and 8,100 seats go unfilled.
Nine Indiana school corporations lost enrollment every single year from 2017 through 2026. Six suburban districts grew every year. Combined, the losers shed twice what the winners gained.
Connecticut's 2025-26 enrollment dropped 2.1%, the largest non-COVID decline since 2007. First grade alone lost 4,322 students as the 2024 rebound proved a mirage.
Nine Washington districts report enrollment growth over 200%, but the students are virtual, the operators are for-profit, and the classrooms are empty.
White enrollment fell from 82% to 69% as Hispanic students nearly quadrupled and multiracial identification surged across the state.
187 of 541 Oklahoma districts are at all-time low enrollment in 2025-26, including Tulsa, OKC, Moore, and Union. The decline spans every size class.
Bedford and Londonderry — two of NH's wealthiest suburbs — both hit all-time low graduation rates in 2025, falling roughly 10 points from 2017 peaks.
Maine public school enrollment fell to 168,923 in 2025-26, the lowest in at least a decade, driven by three years of accelerating losses.
Hispanic enrollment rose 41% in seven years, adding 22,000 students even as Louisiana lost enrollment. Growth is spreading beyond Jefferson Parish.
Florida K enrollment fell 12.1% since 2015. The state now graduates 42,930 more students than it enrolls in kindergarten each year.
Delaware's only Greek immersion charter has grown 150% over 10 consecutive years, becoming the state's most racially diverse district in the process.
Alabama public school enrollment dropped to 714,363 in 2025-26, the lowest in at least 12 years, as the state loses students to demographics, school choice, and immigration enforcement.
ALSDE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 714,363 students statewide, a four-year decline streak and the lowest point in over a decade.
Traditional districts lost 14,955 students in 2026 as the $100M voucher program awarded 14,000 scholarships. The overlap is striking but complex.
COVID pushed NJ kindergarten chronic absenteeism past high school. Two years later, K is still 5.8 points above baseline while high school nearly back.
Suburban Chicago districts are posting double-digit sped rate increases. TSD 113 went from 15% to 34% in six years.
Iowa's second-largest school district crossed below 50% white enrollment in 2026. It is one of nine districts to flip in three years.
Since peaking at 282,309 in 2013, West Virginia public schools have shed 52,663 students with no reprieve, reaching an all-time low of 229,646.
After 15 straight growth years adding 10,000 students, LPS lost 334 in 2026. Shrinking K classes and white enrollment decline drive the reversal.
Native American enrollment fell 12.3% since 2018, nearly double the 6.4% white decline. Reservation districts lost 1,391 students across seven tribal nations.
Once Mississippi's second-largest district, Jackson Public Schools has shed 39.4% of enrollment since 2016, closed 23 schools, and dropped to third in size.
After 18 straight years of growth that doubled their numbers, Hispanic students in Minnesota declined by 137 in 2025-26.
More than a third of Arkansas districts are at their lowest enrollment since 2005, while growth concentrates in NWA suburbs and charter schools.
Twenty-nine of Alaska's districts are at their smallest enrollment ever recorded, including both Anchorage and Fairbanks. Together they hold 66% of the state's students.
Wisconsin public school enrollment fell to 805,881 in 2025-26, an all-time low capping a decade of unbroken decline that has erased nearly 70,000 students.
Oregon's graduation rate hit 83% for the Class of 2025, a 16.6-point gain since 2010. The state still trails the national average by about 4 points.
Nevada's two virtual charter schools shed 2,400 students since 2019, but for very different reasons: one was forced to close grades K-8, the other is in freefall.
CEPI releases 2024-25 enrollment data showing Michigan at 1,366,207 students, a 20-year low.
Maine DOE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 168,923 students statewide — down 2,134, the largest non-COVID loss on record.
96.5% of Idaho 9th graders now reach 12th grade, up from 87.7% two decades ago. The 9th grade retention bulge has nearly vanished.
Hawaii's public schools consistently enroll 10-17% more 9th graders than the prior year's 8th grade class, a pattern driven by the state's outsized private school sector.
Only 49 of 184 Colorado districts have returned to pre-COVID enrollment. The state is 72,839 students below its pre-pandemic trajectory.
Arizona public school enrollment has fallen every year since its 2020 peak, and the losses are accelerating. The 2026 decline alone nearly quadrupled the 2023 loss.
TEA releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 5,483,304 students statewide — down 47,195, the first non-pandemic decline in 22 years.
After fully recovering from COVID and reaching a peak of 796,780 students, South Carolina lost 7,694 in a single year. The 800,000 milestone will not be reached.
ODEW releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 1,718,829 students statewide — down 19,611, the second-largest annual loss on record.
NYC Geographic Districts 8, 9, and 10 have shed nearly a third of their enrollment since 2012, with kindergarten down 46% and no year of recovery in sight.
More than a third of New Mexico's districts are at their smallest enrollment ever recorded, including nine of the 10 largest.
West Fargo Schools has added students every year since 2009, more than doubling to 13,211. The gap with Bismarck is now just 466 students.
Framingham's white enrollment share fell 28.7 percentage points since 2015, the steepest decline of any mid-size Massachusetts district, as Hispanic students became the majority.
IPS lost a third of its students while outer suburbs hit record highs. Now the first-ring suburbs are declining too.
EL enrollment grew 80.5% over 15 years while CT lost 66,739 students. In 2025-26, 2,157 English learners disappeared from the rolls, the largest non-COVID drop on record.
Washington's Native American student count fell from 24,768 to 12,622 in 16 years. A reclassification explains part of the drop, but not the decline since.
Pre-K enrollment tripled from 1,280 to 3,284 over two decades, but most of the growth traces to a 2010 reporting rule change, not new classrooms.
Anadarko Public Schools has declined 10 consecutive years, losing 586 students and 31% of its enrollment since 2016. No Oklahoma district has a longer active streak.
New Hampshire's graduation rate fell from a record 89.2% to 87.5% in one year — the largest drop in a decade. Dropouts didn't cause it.
Traditional public school enrollment in Louisiana fell from 643,986 to 578,632 since 2019, a 10.1% decline with no year of recovery and a 2026 cliff that erased 15,424 students.
Pasco County added students every year for a decade. In 2026, the streak broke with a loss of 350, a sign Florida's growth corridors have hit a ceiling.
Christina's special education rate hit 29.5% as enrollment fell 21.8% over a decade, creating a structural mismatch between growing service needs and a shrinking revenue base.
Park City School District's enrollment fell 15.3% since 2019 as housing costs push working families out of the resort community.
The gap between where Oregon's enrollment was heading and where it actually is grew by nearly 12,000 students in a single year, and the forces driving the divergence are accelerating.
High school enrollment fell for the first time in a decade, joining K-8 in decline. The pipeline that sustained Maryland's secondary schools has run dry.
Illinois identified nearly 50,000 students who are currently homeless in 2024-25, a six-year high. The steepest rates are in rural southern Illinois, not Chicago.
Of 223 Iowa districts that lost students during COVID, 164 are now below even their pandemic lows. Iowa is losing students faster than during COVID.
Braxton, Pocahontas, and Roane counties have lost students every single year for 15 straight years, the longest active decline streaks in West Virginia.
NH kindergarten enrollment fell to 10,727 in 2025-26, the lowest non-COVID year on record. The private-school buffer that once padded first grade is fading.
Nebraska's meatpacking corridor has transformed: Grand Island crossed majority-Hispanic in 2013, Schuyler hit 88%, and second-wave towns are following.
After a decade of growth, Montana's public school enrollment has fallen for three straight years to a 9-year low, erasing the gains of the growth era and costing districts millions.
MDE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 424,534 students statewide, down 10,725 from the prior year.
MDE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 873,175 students statewide, 3,208 above the post-COVID trough, with a 13.8% recovery rate.
Bryant School District's white enrollment share fell 44 percentage points in 21 years, but total enrollment grew 43%. It is the largest growth-driven demographic shift in Arkansas.
Three rural districts host correspondence programs enrolling 14,379 students statewide. As traditional schools close, this parallel system keeps growing.
More than 40% of Oregon's school districts enroll fewer than 500 students, but they collectively educate just 16,195 children — while virtual charters quietly reshape the rural map.
Providence, Cranston, Pawtucket, Warwick, Woonsocket, and East Providence all remain below pre-pandemic enrollment, a combined loss of 7,589 students.
RI public schools have lost students every year since 2019-20. The six-year streak erased 9,728 students and shows no sign of ending.
Portsmouth and South Kingstown each posted 15 consecutive years of enrollment decline, losing a combined 2,002 students since 2010-11.
English learners now make up 15.2% of Rhode Island enrollment, up from 5.9% in 2011-12, even as growth nearly stopped in 2025-26.
Rhode Island's special-education share hit 19.2% in 2025-26, nearing one in five students, as the state added 3,328 students to the rolls since 2020-21.
Hispanic enrollment in Rhode Island climbed to 42,974 students in 2025-26, reaching 32.1% of the student body after 14 years of nearly unbroken growth.
Thirty-two of Rhode Island's 64 districts now enroll fewer than 1,000 students, up from 22 in 2010-11, raising questions about fixed costs and long-term viability.
Rhode Island's economically disadvantaged share leapt from 44% to 54% in a single year, raising questions about whether the jump reflects real hardship or a reporting change.
In 2025-26, 22 Rhode Island districts sit at all-time enrollment lows while 16 are at all-time highs, revealing a state where averages mask diverging realities.
Cumberland is the only large non-charter district in Rhode Island at an all-time enrollment high, reaching 4,919 students in 2025-26.
Rhode Island's smallest districts gained students during the 2020-21 pandemic shock while its largest lost thousands, a size paradox that complicates statewide planning.
Rhode Island lost 2,149 public-school students in 2025-26, the steepest single-year decline since the pandemic shock five years earlier.
DPI releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 805,881 students statewide, down 8,121, continuing a decade of unbroken decline.
Clark County School District is 48.9% Hispanic and 18.7% white. The district lost a third of its white students in seven years as Nevada's demographic transformation accelerates.
Idaho's public preschool enrollment grew 65% since 2002 despite zero state funding, driven entirely by district-level decisions and federal special education dollars.
Hawaii enrolled 167,076 students in 2024-25, breaching the 170,000 floor for the second year running. Honolulu accounts for 92% of the loss.
District 27J in Brighton grew 42% since 2015, making it Colorado's fastest-growing traditional district even as the state lost nearly 18,000 students.
ADE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 1,073,531 students statewide, down 25,998 from the prior year.
South Carolina crossed the majority-minority threshold in 2019 and the shift is accelerating, driven by a 94.5% surge in Hispanic enrollment and a 14.9% drop in Black students.
After a one-year migrant-driven reprieve in 2024, New York's enrollment plunged by 37,176 students, the worst non-COVID drop since 2012.
The flagship Albuquerque charter has posted 10 straight years of growth, but the three-campus network just recorded its first enrollment decline.
After adding 23,192 students since 2009, North Dakota's enrollment declined in 2026 for the first time outside a pandemic year, signaling a structural shift.
Cape Cod school enrollment has fallen from 30,970 to 18,925 since 1999, nearly six times the state's rate of decline, as vacation homes replace year-round families.
South Bend Community School Corp has declined every year for a decade, losing 5,829 students and falling from Indiana's 5th- to 11th-largest district.
Connecticut kindergarten enrollment has fallen 21% since 2011, losing 8,431 students. First grade is down 25%. The pipeline feeding the state's schools is collapsing from the bottom up.
Section 504 disability accommodations quadrupled since 2010, but affluent districts identify students at six times the rate of high-poverty peers.
South Dakota's third-largest district added 4,682 students since 2007 without a single down year, but the growth rate is falling fast.
K-3 enrollment has fallen 12.2% since 2016, losing 26,484 students. High schools are still growing, but the shrinking cohorts will arrive there by 2030.
LDOE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 578,632 traditional public school students, down 15,424, the largest non-COVID loss on record.
Only 37% of Florida districts have returned to 2019 enrollment. Recovery peaked in 2023 and is now reversing, with the largest districts hit hardest.
Delaware added 7,893 English learners in 10 years, a 69.5% surge that accounts for more than two-thirds of the state's total enrollment growth.
Utah enrolls 17,532 more boys than girls, a ratio that has barely moved in 13 years. The gap tracks biology, not policy, but niche charters amplify it.
Rhode Island charter enrollment hit 13,441 students in 2025-26, crossing 10% of public-school enrollment for the first time as traditional districts shed 20,664 students.
Oregon kindergarten enrollment fell to 34,490 in 2026, down 18.5% from 2020. The shrinking pipeline locks in at least a decade of further decline.
Maryland's westernmost district has lost students every year since 2020, the longest active decline streak in the state, with no grade level spared.
Only 155 of 865 Illinois districts have recovered to pre-pandemic levels. The losses are concentrated in the largest districts, where 92% remain underwater.
White enrollment in Iowa public schools fell from 396,263 to 346,681 since 2015, an unbroken 11-year decline that accelerated 3.6x in recent years.
Excel Academy RI grew from 117 to 444 students in three years, leading the state in gains even as Rhode Island lost 9,728 students.
Nine West Virginia county school systems are under state takeover or emergency. All nine have declining enrollment. The financial crises follow the students out the door.
New Hampshire added 1,230 pre-K students since 2012 even as the state lost 30,483 K-12 students. But growth has stalled, and half of districts still offer no program.
Nebraska grew enrollment during COVID and recovered fully by 2025. But 2026 brought the first post-recovery decline, and more than half of districts never came back.
OPI releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 142,071 students statewide — down 8,502 from peak, the lowest in nine years of records.
Multiracial enrollment grew 408% since 2010, making two-or-more-races the fastest-growing demographic group in Arkansas schools by a wide margin.
Alaska Native enrollment fell from 27,709 to 26,356 since 2020, a 4.9% decline that accounts for 41% of the state's total enrollment loss.
Nevada added 9,224 special ed students since 2021 while total enrollment fell, pushing the IEP rate to 14.8% and straining a system short on staff.
Eastern Idaho's largest district added 5,943 students over two decades. Three consecutive years of decline signal the growth era is over.
With enrollment down 19,774 from its 2014 peak, Hawaii's DOE faces 34 schools below the 250-student funding floor. Redistricting comes first; closures wait until 2028.
Colorado lost 7,400 white kindergartners since 2016 while Hispanic K enrollment barely moved, collapsing a 13,000-student gap to 6,174.
SCDE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 789,086 students statewide, down 7,694 from a record high, the first non-COVID decline in a decade.
New York's charter sector grew from 18,000 to 190,000 students in 21 years while traditional schools lost 567,000. But growth has stalled below 2% annually.
English learner enrollment grew 4.3% since 2019 while total enrollment fell 11%. Permian Basin immigration and post-Yazzie reforms drive the gap.
NDDPI releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing a 233-student decline, ending a 16-year growth era driven by the Bakken oil boom.
Massachusetts special education hit an all-time high of 21.3% in 2025-26 as the state added 27,158 students to IEP rolls while overall enrollment fell.
Nearly one in three Indiana school corporations enrolled fewer students in 2025-26 than in any year since 2016, including seven of the state's 10 largest systems.
White enrollment fell 35.9% since 2011, transforming suburbs like East Haven and South Windsor from 75% white to below 50%. Fifteen districts crossed the majority-minority threshold.
More Washington school districts sit at record-low enrollment than in any year since 2010, erasing three years of post-COVID recovery.
Karen refugees and Hispanic workers made Huron South Dakota's most diverse district. Enrollment up 41.6% as white share fell from 80% to 38%.
Inner-ring OKC metro districts lost 19,694 students in a decade while outer-ring suburbs gained 8,469, reshaping the metro's school map.
Florida's only majority-Black county lost 27.1% of enrollment since 2015, the steepest decline of any sizable district in the state.
Sussex County's beach district added 2,217 students in a decade, outpacing every traditional district in Delaware. The high school is already over capacity.
Grade 12 enrollment now exceeds kindergarten by 10,463 students, completing a 20,000-student swing that took just 12 years.
Rhode Island gained just 7 English learners in 2025-26 after adding 1,930 the year before. What a sudden freeze means for staffing and services.
Oregon's 9th-to-12th grade cohort survival rate fell below 100% for the first time on record, signaling the end of a longstanding senior enrollment bump.
Every year, thousands more students enroll in Maryland's 9th grade than left 8th grade. The gap peaked at 13,775 during COVID and remains above 9,000.
Four Illinois districts declined for 15 consecutive years, the longest streaks in the state. All four finally broke in 2023-2025, but three have already resumed losing students.
Iowa's suburban donut effect in one metro: Des Moines lost 4,650 students since 2015 while 14 surrounding suburbs gained nearly 14,000.
Berkeley and Doddridge are the only West Virginia counties with more students than in 2019. The other 53 are still falling, and 52 are falling faster.
Farmington's enrollment fell from 1,379 to 698 in 14 years, the steepest decline among mid-size NH districts, raising viability questions.
Hispanic enrollment in Nebraska more than doubled over 22 years, adding nearly 45,000 students. In 2026, the growth reversed.
More than half of Arkansas's 259 school districts enroll fewer than 1,000 students, but together they educate only 17.7% of the state's children.
Anchorage shed 4,530 students in seven years, exceeding the entire state's enrollment decline. Three schools will close and 300 teaching positions will be cut.
Kindergarten enrollment fell from 35,834 to 30,490 since 2019 while 12th grade grew 11.5%, creating a pipeline inversion that guarantees years of declining enrollment ahead.
Gem Prep grew from a single Pocatello charter to Idaho's first multi-campus network in nine years, now enrolling 12% of all charter students statewide.
Elementary enrollment has fallen 10.5% while high school holds steady. A 2014 policy change and declining births created a demographic wave now reshaping every level.
81 of 186 Colorado school districts recorded their lowest enrollment in 12 years in 2025-26, including Jefferson County, Douglas County, and Cherry Creek.
NYSED releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 2,447,074 students statewide — down 37,176, the largest non-COVID loss since 2012.
White students now represent just 19.6% of New Mexico's public school enrollment, the first time the share has fallen below 20%.
Massachusetts Black enrollment reached 93,651 in 2026, an all-time record, driven by Haitian immigration into gateway cities even as Boston lost 3,057 Black students since 2019.
White enrollment fell from 69% to 61% of Indiana's public schools since 2016 while every other racial group except Native American grew.
Hartford dropped from Connecticut's largest district to fourth in 15 years, losing 5,802 students as CREC magnets nearly doubled and kindergarten enrollment was cut in half.
Lake Washington grew 30% since 2010, climbing from 6th to 2nd largest in Washington. Asian students now outnumber white in a district reshaped by tech.
Nearly one in six South Dakota school districts is at its lowest enrollment ever recorded, including the state's second-largest district, Rapid City.
Thirty-six Oklahoma districts enroll fewer than 100 students combined, serving just 0.3% of the state's children while lawmakers debate consolidation.
More than half of Florida school districts now enroll fewer white students than students of color, a threshold crossed in 2025.
Delaware's 9th-grade classes are 18% larger than their 8th-grade cohorts, a structural anomaly driven by the state's unique vo-tech choice system.
Utah added 23,009 special education students over 12 years while total enrollment grew by a fraction of that rate, pushing SpEd to 13.7% of all students.
After a near-flat year hinted at a floor, Rhode Island lost 2,149 students and dropped below 135,000 for the first time.
David Douglas, the most racially diverse district in Oregon, has lost 2,219 students since 2010. White enrollment fell 44%, but the district grew more diverse as it shrank.
Maryland kindergarten enrollment has fallen 8.8% in a decade, with 20 of 24 districts below pre-COVID levels and no recovery in sight.
White students account for 92% of Illinois's enrollment decline. The south and southwest suburbs are transforming fastest.
Iowa's Pacific Islander enrollment grew 276% since 2015, concentrated in six meatpacking towns. The growth traces to Marshallese families.
Of 55 West Virginia districts, only three have grown since 2011. Berkeley County added 1,996 students while the state lost 52,484. But 2026 brought the first crack.
New Hampshire has 44 districts with fewer than 100 students, yet those districts serve just 1.5% of enrollment. A look at the state's extreme fragmentation.
Bennington Public Schools has grown every single year for 21 consecutive years, adding 3,942 students and climbing from 68th to 12th in statewide rankings.
Fueled by Walmart's economic engine, Bentonville has doubled in size since 2005 while Little Rock lost a quarter of its students. The crossover happened last year.
Alaska public school enrollment fell to 125,317 in 2025-26, a new low in the dataset, as 29 of 53 districts hit record-low enrollment and outmigration enters its 13th year.
Pinecrest Academy of Nevada grew 91.6% since 2019, closing in on Somerset as the state's largest charter. Five Academica-managed brands now enroll nearly half of all charter students.
Hazard Independent dropped from 43.2% to 22.5% chronic absenteeism in two years — the biggest turnaround in Kentucky, in the heart of Appalachia.
Vallivue has grown 175% since 2002 as Boise lost 4,604 students. The Treasure Valley's suburban donut is reshaping Idaho education.
Honolulu enrollment fell to 103,985 in 2024-25, its lowest on record. At the current pace, it drops below 100,000 within three years.
Three virtual operators now enroll more students than Colorado Springs 11, reshaping state enrollment data and raising oversight questions.
New Mexico lost 16,782 students during the pandemic. It has lost another 19,996 since. Only 31.6% of districts have returned to 2019 enrollment.
Massachusetts enrollment fell to 900,490 in 2026, the lowest level since 1995 and just 490 students above a threshold the state hasn't breached in more than three decades.
Charter enrollment grew from 29,906 to 56,675 since 2016 as 72 new schools opened. The sector now enrolls 5.5% of students, serving a far more diverse population than traditional schools.
Connecticut's public school enrollment dropped to 497,760 in 2025-26, crossing below 500,000 for the first time since the early 2000s after 15 years of nearly unbroken decline.
Washington, one of few states tracking nonbinary students, saw Gender X enrollment surge from 77 to nearly 5,000 before declining two years running.
Most states lost students during COVID. South Dakota added 2,275. Three years later, the growth era is over and decline is accelerating.
Oklahoma's headline enrollment dipped just 0.9% since 2016. Strip out virtual charters and the picture is five times worse.
32 of Florida's 67 regular school districts enrolled fewer students in 2025-26 than in any year since 2015.
Delaware added 11,728 special education students in a decade, pushing its IEP rate to 22% while the national average sits at 15%.
Utah's only majority-Hispanic traditional district has lost students every year since 2019, with Hispanic and white families leaving in near-equal numbers.
White students fell below 50% of Rhode Island enrollment for the first time as the state posted its steepest drop since the pandemic.
Beaverton is closer to overtaking Salem-Keizer than at any point in at least 17 years. Both districts are losing students, but on very different terms.
Twelve Maryland districts that gained students last year reversed to losses in 2025-26, leaving Kent County as the state's sole gainer.
Cook County posted back-to-back enrollment gains after losing 111,000 students. English learner growth is the engine. The rest of Illinois kept falling.
131 Iowa districts hit 12-year enrollment lows in 2026. Among the 10 largest, only Waukee grew while seven scraped their all-time floor.
In Clay County, 33.5% of students are classified as homeless under federal law, eight times the state rate and a window into rural WV's housing crisis.
Berlin has declined every year since 2011-12, the longest unbroken streak in New Hampshire, and now enrolls fewer than 1,000 students.
Nebraska kindergarten enrollment fell to 21,275 in 2025-26, essentially matching the 2005 trough after a four-year decline. Grade 12 hit a record 26,008.
Springdale enrolls 2,922 Pacific Islander students, 13.9% of its total and 56.8% of all PI students in Arkansas, driven by the largest Marshallese diaspora community in the continental US.
DEED releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing Alaska at a seven-year low of 125,317 students.
49 of 70 Nevada school districts now have student bodies where white students are less than half, up from 30 of 52 seven years ago.
Kentucky's 54,712 English learners have a 22.7% chronic absence rate — below the state average. EL enrollment grew 22% while attendance improved.
Three Creek enrolls 5 students. Two more districts have single digits. Idaho now has 17 districts under 100 students, the most in 25 years.
Hawaii's 38 charter schools added 1,198 students since 2020 while traditional schools across all four counties lost 15,210. Charter share hits 7.8%.
Colorado's second-largest district has declined every year since 2016, closing 21 schools and facing a $49 million deficit.
Espanola Public Schools shed 1,475 students over the past decade, a 37.3% decline that ranks second-worst among mid-size New Mexico districts.
Charter enrollment grew 11% since 2019 while traditional public schools lost 55,933 students. The gap widened during COVID and never closed.
IPS shed 1,281 students in 2025-26, the steepest non-pandemic drop in a decade of decline. Marion County charters now enroll nearly double.
CSDE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 497,760 students statewide — down 10,640, the largest loss since 2007.
Washington's student who is currently homeless count tripled to 43,542 over 15 years before a suspicious 28% drop in 2026 that may reflect funding cuts, not improvement.
South Dakota's kindergarten enrollment has fallen from 12,082 to 10,954 since 2022, the sharpest sustained decline on record. The shrinking pipeline foreshadows years of total enrollment loss.
Five years after the pandemic, only 136 of 515 Oklahoma districts have recovered to 2019 levels. The state's brief rebound masked a deeper structural decline.
St. Johns County added 17,222 students over 11 years, but its growth rate collapsed from 7.8% to 0.3% in 2026, the lowest in its streak.
Hispanic enrollment grew 45% in a decade, adding 9,633 students and accounting for 83% of Delaware's net growth. Sussex County districts are transforming fastest.
Wallace Stegner Academy went from 624 to 2,848 students in seven years, becoming Utah's third-largest charter by opening campuses in majority-Hispanic neighborhoods.
RIDE releases October 2025 enrollment data showing a 2,149-student drop, the steepest decline since COVID upended the 2020-21 school year.
Only 28% of Oregon districts have returned to pre-pandemic enrollment. The non-recovery is accelerating, and zero large districts have bounced back.
Baltimore County Public Schools fell to 104,031 students in 2025-26, its lowest on record. The 1,913-student drop was the steepest in five years.
Suburban Chicago HSDs built for monolingual instruction are absorbing triple-digit EL growth. Joliet 204 went from 494 to 1,642 English learners.
Postville's Hispanic share surged from 48.5% to 74.8% in 11 years, making this meatpacking town Iowa's most Hispanic district.
Seven coal counties once enrolled 13,372 more students than three Eastern Panhandle counties. Fifteen years of divergent trajectories have nearly erased that lead.
Of 173 traditional public school districts in New Hampshire, 148 have lost students since 2012. The 21 that gained added just 895 students combined.
OPS was 46% white in 2005. It was 20.3% in 2025-26. Hispanic students now outnumber white students two to one in Nebraska's largest district.
Arkansas's two virtual schools enrolled 11,559 students in 2025-26, nearly tripling since 2020 and capturing 42% of all enrollment growth statewide.
Esmeralda County enrolled just 69 students in 2025-26, a new all-time low. The district has lost 28% of its enrollment since 2019 in a county of 710 people.
Bowling Green Independent, a diverse refugee-rich district of 5,229, posted a 12.6% chronic rate — less than half Kentucky's 25% average.
Vallivue has nearly tripled since 2002, climbing from Idaho's 20th to 6th largest district while neighbors Nampa and Caldwell shrink.
Honolulu, Hawaii County, Maui, and Kauai all hit all-time enrollment lows simultaneously in 2024-25, while charter schools reach a record high.
Colorado public schools lost 10,272 students in 2025-26, the largest non-COVID drop on record, pushing enrollment to its lowest point in more than a decade.
New Mexico's charter sector lost 508 students in 2025-26, its first enrollment decline since at least 2019, as brick-and-mortar charters contract.
Massachusetts white enrollment share has fallen every year for 33 years, from 79.3% to 50.8%. At the current pace, the state crosses below 50% in 2027.
Hispanic enrollment surpassed Black enrollment statewide in 2020 and the gap has widened to 16,163 students. Then growth stopped.
Only 117 of 316 Washington school districts have recovered to pre-COVID enrollment levels. In 2026, even the recovery stalled.
South Dakota's second-largest district has lost nearly 2,000 students since 2012 while the state grew. The kindergarten pipeline is collapsing.
Tulsa Public Schools has shed 8,417 students since 2016. The suburbs ringing it have absorbed thousands, creating a metropolitan donut pattern that is reshaping school funding across the region.
White enrollment fell 6.9% since 2024, accounting for 86% of the state's total student loss. The decline is three times faster than the pre-COVID rate.
Delaware's COVID enrollment dip lasted a single year. The state bounced back 2.4x its losses and hit an all-time high, but Wilmington-area districts never recovered.
Multiracial enrollment grew 108.5% since 2014, the fastest-growing racial category in Utah schools. But after a decade of gains, growth stalled in 2025.
Multiracial students grew 25.3% in a decade, but 2026 marks the first decline. What the plateau reveals about identity and enrollment forms.
Grade 3 lost 2,470 students in 2025-26, more than any other grade. The pandemic's kindergarten disruption is now a rolling wave reshaping Maryland schools grade by grade.
Illinois has lost 229,000 students since its 2007 peak. Four in five large districts are shrinking. The outer suburbs are the only exception.
236 of 329 Iowa school districts lost enrollment in 2025-26, matching the COVID-year share. Four districts have declined every year for 11 straight years.
Kindergarten enrollment fell 27.2% since 2010-11, far outpacing the state's overall 18.6% decline. The pipeline is collapsing from the bottom up.
New Hampshire's capital city has shed 1,087 students over 15 years, declining in 13 of 14 years. The state's seat of government is shrinking faster than the state itself.
Nebraska hit an all-time enrollment high of 330,136 in 2025. Then 1,988 students disappeared, driven by losses in both white and Hispanic enrollment.
Four Northwest Arkansas districts grew from 9.8% to 14.2% of state enrollment since 2005, gaining 21,488 students while the Delta lost nearly as many.
Five years after the pandemic, 26 of 51 Nevada districts remain below 2019 enrollment. Nearly every traditional county district is among them.
Seven large districts show Black students with lower chronic absenteeism than white students — a reversal of the national pattern that raises questions about what drives racial attendance gaps.
Idaho's enrollment split: charter and suburban growth masks accelerating losses at the state's largest and oldest school districts.
Hawaii's 2014 kindergarten age cutoff change wiped out a third of K enrollment overnight. Ten years later, only 15% of the gap has been recovered.
White students fell below 50% of Colorado public school enrollment for the first time in 2024-25, as the state's demographic transformation reshapes classrooms from Denver suburbs to the Western Slope.
New Mexico lost 8,333 students in 2025-26, the second-largest annual drop on record, as post-COVID losses now run 2.3 times faster than the old normal.
Boston Public Schools enrolled 44,416 students in 2026, its lowest total in 33 years of data. The district has lost 19,346 students since its 1998 peak.
Indiana lost 11,724 students in 2025-26, erasing last year's surprise gain and pushing enrollment below its pandemic low for the first time.
Pasco and Richland both grew 30% since 2010 while most of Washington lost students. Then all three Tri-Cities districts declined in the same year.
Hispanic enrollment nearly quadrupled in 17 years, reshaping schools from Huron to Sioux Falls and closing in on Native American enrollment statewide.
350 of 539 Oklahoma districts shrank in 2025-26, the broadest non-COVID decline on record, with losses distributed far beyond the largest urban systems.
88% of Florida's regular school districts declined in 2025-26, matching COVID-era breadth without a pandemic. Every size tier lost ground.
Delaware's fastest-growing district gained 39.9% enrollment in a decade, climbing from sixth- to third-largest while its white share dropped from 64% to 45%.
After seven years of Granite District losses, Jordan has overtaken its Salt Lake County neighbor for the first time, a crossover that exposes the valley's deepening geographic divide.
Portland SD 1J dropped to 42,106 students in 2026, its lowest in at least 17 years, accelerating a decline that has erased all growth since 2010.
Frederick County, Maryland's only large district consistently adding students, lost 123 in 2025-26, joining 22 other districts in decline.
Nearly half of Illinois public school students are economically disadvantaged. The rate gap between the richest and poorest districts spans 98 points.
Davenport lost students every year for 11 straight years, shedding 3,325 while neighbors grew. Charters now add pressure.
West Virginia's poorest county lost 1,484 students since 2011, the steepest decline of any county in the state. Kindergarten enrollment has been cut in half.
New Hampshire's virtual charter school grew from 63 to 539 full-time students in 14 years, even as statewide enrollment fell 16%.
NDE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing Nebraska's first non-pandemic enrollment decline in 20 years.
White student share has declined every year for two decades in Arkansas, from 69.4% to 56.5%, as Hispanic enrollment surged 162% and the multiracial category grew fivefold.
SPCSA's 70,534 students surpass Washoe County's 63,655, making the charter authority Nevada's second-largest school system in a single year.
JCPS chronic absenteeism dropped to 33.1% but 32,670 students still miss too much school. The Black-white gap reaches 10.4 points.
Idaho Home Learning Academy appeared in 2025 with 7,504 students, a $47.8M budget, and test scores trailing the state by 18 points in math.
Every Hawaii county has fewer students than before the pandemic. The post-trough losses since 2021 are nearly double the initial COVID hit.
CDE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 870,793 students statewide — down 10,272, the largest non-COVID loss on record.
New Mexico's Permian Basin oil boom drove Carlsbad enrollment up 32%, then a bust erased most of it. The district is still the state's only large gainer.
Massachusetts lost 15,442 students in 2025-26, erasing all post-COVID gains and pushing enrollment 10,975 below the pandemic trough to a 31-year low.
IDOE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing an 11,724-student loss that erased last year's rebound and pushed Indiana to a new low.
White enrollment in Washington fell every year since 2010, a decline larger than Seattle, Spokane, and Tacoma combined. The pandemic doubled the pace.
After adding 18,000 students from 2007 to 2019, South Dakota public schools have lost 2,568 from their 2022 peak. The decline quadrupled in 2025.
Tulsa quietly overtook Oklahoma City in 2022 as the state's largest school district. The lead has widened to 1,346 students, but both are shrinking.
Pinellas County has lost students every year since 2016, shedding 20,194 in the longest active decline streak in Florida. The losses are accelerating.
Delaware's charter sector grew 73% in a decade to 15,056 students, nearing the 10% threshold, while traditional schools also gained enrollment.
Four urban districts lost 18,061 students since 2019 while Alpine and Jordan held steady, reshaping the Wasatch Front's educational geography.
Oregon's 26 virtual charters enroll 21,161 students, nearly matching the COVID peak. The growth is structural, and it is distorting rural district data.
Eleven of Maryland's 24 school systems hit their lowest enrollment on record in 2025-26, spanning every region from suburban I-95 to rural Appalachia.
Yorkville CUSD 115 grew 128% in 20 years while 82% of Illinois districts shrank. Now the district is asking voters for $275 million to keep up.
Seven Iowa districts now top 50% Hispanic enrollment, up from four in 2015. Meatpacking towns from Postville to Storm Lake drove the shift.
West Virginia's special education rate has climbed to 21.2%, the highest on record, even as the state lost 52,484 students since 2011. The funding formula has not kept up.
Nearly half of New Hampshire's school districts are at their lowest enrollment ever recorded, including all 10 of the state's largest.
Arkansas's capital city district lost 6,774 students since its 2008 peak as Northwest Arkansas boomed and charter schools multiplied.
Nevada lost 35,047 white students since 2019, a 22% decline that accounts for more than the state's entire enrollment drop. In Clark County, white share fell below one in five.
Kentucky's 21,832 students who are currently homeless have a 42.7% chronic absence rate. Foster care students barely improved at all.
Idaho's 12th grade enrollment has surged 43.7% since 2002 while kindergarten grew just 13.1%, creating a pipeline imbalance that guarantees years of further decline.
The Lahaina wildfire accelerated Maui's enrollment decline to its worst single-year loss on record, with the county now down 13% from its 2014 peak.
New Mexico's special education rate hit 20.5% in 2025-26, crossing the one-in-five threshold as total enrollment fell 11% since 2019.
DESE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 900,490 students statewide — down 15,442, erasing four years of post-COVID recovery in a single year.
Washington's English learner population nearly doubled in 16 years to 159,472. The growth reshaped suburban districts and agricultural communities alike.
SD DOE releases 2024-25 enrollment data showing 138,861 students statewide — down 1,726, the largest single-year loss since the state started growing in 2007.
Seven virtual charter schools serve 37,249 students, 5.4% of statewide enrollment. The sector nearly quadrupled in a decade and claims 1 in 10 high schoolers.
In 11 years, Lee County swung from white-plurality to Hispanic-majority, a 15-point shift that mirrors Florida's broader demographic transformation.
Delaware's second-largest district shed 21.8% of its enrollment in a decade while the state hit an all-time high, raising existential questions about its future.
After a decade of unbroken growth, Utah's English learner enrollment fell 5% in 2026. The data points to reclassification, not departures.
Oregon's second-largest district lost 7,645 white students in a decade while Hispanic enrollment grew by 2,351, reshaping schools across the Willamette Valley.
Five years after pandemic losses, 20 of Maryland's 24 school systems remain below 2019-20 enrollment. The gap is widening, not closing.
307 of 860 trackable Illinois districts are at all-time enrollment lows, outnumbering those at record highs by 6 to 1. The biggest districts are hit hardest.
Iowa public school enrollment dropped to 496,617 in 2025-26, crossing below 500,000 for the first time. The three-year loss now exceeds the COVID crash.
Only six of West Virginia's 55 county school districts avoided record-low enrollment in 2026. Just one is growing.
NH's second-largest district dropped below 10,000 students in 2023 and kept falling, losing 20% of enrollment since 2012 as COVID accelerated the decline.
Only 57 of 216 comparable Arkansas districts have recovered to their 2019-20 enrollment levels. The state lost 8,916 students in 2026 alone.
Nevada public school enrollment has fallen 5.4% from its 2020 peak while charter schools nearly doubled their share to 14.9%, reshaping the state's education landscape.
150 of 174 Kentucky districts recorded their lowest chronic absenteeism rate in 2024-25. Only six districts got worse.
Idaho's capital city school district has been shrinking every year since 2017, losing 17% of its enrollment as families move to suburbs and birth rates fall.
Only one year since 2014 briefly interrupted Hawaii's decline. The state has lost 19,774 students, driven by outmigration, birth declines, and housing.
APS fell from 92,152 to 72,573 students over the past decade, accounting for nearly half of New Mexico's total enrollment loss.
Washington kindergarten enrollment fell 13,609 from its 2020 peak while Grade 12 hit a record 98,754. The pipeline inversion signals decline through 2032.
Oklahoma enrolled 3,533 fewer kindergartners than 12th graders in 2025-26, a first in at least a decade. The inversion locks in years of continued decline.
If pre-pandemic growth had continued, Florida would have 3 million public school students. Instead it has 2.79 million, and the gap grew 70% in one year.
Delaware hit an all-time enrollment high in 2024-25, growing 8.3% over a decade while most states shrink. Hispanic and multiracial growth offset white losses.
Salt Lake City School District's enrollment fell 21.2% from 2019 to 2026, the steepest decline among Utah's large districts, as gentrification and falling birth rates hollow out the capital's classrooms.
More than a third of Oregon school districts are at record-low enrollment in 2026, including seven of the state's 10 largest. The decline is accelerating.
MCPS shed 2,808 students in a single year, falling below its 2016 baseline. Declining births and a collapse in newcomer enrollment are converging.
The smallest enrollment decline in 17 years masks a deeper split: non-EL enrollment is still falling by 30,000 a year while English learner growth papers over the gap.
Des Moines lost 40% of its white students since 2015 as Hispanic enrollment became the district's largest group, reshaping Iowa's capital city schools.
Multiracial enrollment grew nearly ninefold since 2011, overtaking Black students in 2023. West Virginia remains 84% white, but the margins are shifting fast.
New Hampshire lost 8,259 public school students in the 2020-21 COVID year, nearly three times the next-largest annual drop. Five years later, three in four districts have not recovered.
Charter and virtual schools tripled their share of Arkansas enrollment in a decade, reaching 5.9% in 2025-26. Two virtual schools alone account for 42% of the sector.
Clark County lost 14,451 students in 2025-26, its worst year on record, exceeding even COVID. CCSD faces $50M in cuts and 1,200 staff surpluses.
Black students improved less than white students on chronic absenteeism, widening the gap from 5.5 to 6.6 points. But 7 districts reversed the pattern entirely.
Idaho's charter enrollment jumped 53% in a single year when a virtual school converted from traditional to charter status, masking a brick-and-mortar plateau.
Charter enrollment hit a record 13,094 while traditional schools fell to a 15-year low, widening a divergence that accelerated during the pandemic.
New Mexico enrolled 298,353 public school students in 2025-26, crossing below 300,000 for the first time after losing 41,260 students over a decade.
Seattle added 9,000 students over a decade, then lost 5,153 since 2020. A shrinking kindergarten pipeline and $87M budget gap signal structural decline.
OKCPS dropped from 45,577 to 31,104 students since 2016, losing its No. 1 ranking to Tulsa and closing 32 campuses as virtual charters and suburbs absorbed families.
Miami-Dade shed 14,325 students in 2025-26, the biggest single-year drop in its history, as foreign-born registrations collapsed 82%.
In a decade, Delaware went from 41% to 77% majority-minority districts as white enrollment dropped 8 percentage points and Hispanic enrollment surged 45%.
Charter enrollment grew 4.2% while traditional districts lost 14,955 students in 2026, the starkest sector divergence in Utah's history.
White enrollment fell 59,505 in a decade, accelerating post-COVID. Oregon is on track for a majority-minority K-12 system by 2037.
Maryland enrolls 66,244 fewer students than pre-COVID trends predicted. The gap grew by 16,171 in one year, and 23 of 24 districts lost students.
Black enrollment in Illinois fell 16.7% since 2013, with Chicago Public Schools accounting for more than four-fifths of the decline.
Iowa DOE releases 2025-26 certified enrollment data showing a 7,670-student loss, Iowa's worst non-COVID year and a breach below 500,000.
West Virginia's largest district has declined every year since 2014. The 2026 loss of 997 students was the worst single year on record.
NH charter schools grew from 10 schools and 1,097 students to 35 schools and 6,242 since 2012. Traditional districts lost 35,628 students.
Arkansas enrollment fell by 8,916 students in 2025-26, the largest single-year drop on record and 39% larger than the COVID-year loss, as vouchers and falling birth rates converge.
NDE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing a 9,251-student loss, the largest non-COVID decline in state history, as charters double their share.
14 Appalachian districts still exceed 40% chronic absenteeism despite dramatic improvement. Harlan County leads at 51.6%.
After 18 years of growth adding 65,807 students, Idaho enrollment has fallen three straight years. The 2026 drop of 3,970 is the steepest on record.
Honolulu County enrollment has fallen every year since 2014, losing 18,210 students in an 11-year streak driven by housing costs and out-migration.
Native American students fell below 10% of New Mexico enrollment for the first time, dropping to 9.9% as the state lost 5,602 since 2020.
After three years of post-COVID recovery, Washington's K-12 enrollment reversed course in 2025-26, dropping by the most since the pandemic year itself.
Oklahoma's 10,640-student drop in 2025-26 is the largest single-year loss in the dataset, surpassing the pandemic. The state is now 7,395 students below its COVID floor.
Hispanic students overtook white students as the largest racial group in Florida public schools in 2023. By 2026 the gap is 5.3 points, but a sharp reversal hints at trouble.
DDOE releases 2024-25 enrollment data showing 150,591 students statewide, an all-time high, up 1,267 from the prior year.
Granite District quietly became majority-minority as white enrollment fell from 50.2% to 42.9%, while the district lost nearly 10,000 students.
Salem-Keizer SD has lost 5,257 students since 2018, hitting an all-time low of 36,661. Beaverton is just 93 students behind.
After three years of apparent stabilization, Maryland's public schools lost more students in 2025-26 than in any year except the first year of COVID.
Back-to-back enrollment gains at CPS are driven almost entirely by English learner growth. The district remains 21% below its 2005 level.
The 2025-26 school year delivered West Virginia's second-largest enrollment drop ever, eclipsed only by the pandemic. Fifty-two of 55 counties lost students.
New Hampshire's largest district fell from 15,536 to 11,712 students over 14 years, closing schools as per-pupil costs soar.
Arkansas's Hispanic student population declined by 1,157 in 2025-26 after two decades of unbroken growth, with losses concentrated in the NWA poultry corridor.
Kentucky's chronic absenteeism dropped from 30% to 25% in two years, but one in four students still misses too much school and the pre-COVID baseline remains distant.
West Ada overtook Boise by 9 students in 2003. Twenty-three years later, the gap has exploded to 16,202 as suburban sprawl reshapes the Treasure Valley.
Hawaii's K-to-G12 ratio fell below 100% in 2025, a historic inversion driven by a 2014 age cutoff change that permanently shrank kindergarten classes.
A virtual school contract termination stripped 3,342 students from Gallup-McKinley County Schools, exposing how phantom enrollment masked real decline.
White enrollment fell below 50% in 2022 and keeps dropping. Hispanic, multiracial, and Asian growth reshaped the state over 16 years.
Epic Charter Schools grew from 6,037 students to 59,445 in five years, becoming Oklahoma's largest district. Then came the scandal, the collapse, and 500 layoffs.
Florida public schools lost 66,756 students in 2025-26, just 616 fewer than the COVID-era drop. Unlike 2021, there is no pandemic to blame.
After a decade of steady growth, Utah K-12 enrollment peaked in 2023 and has since fallen 2.7%, with the 2026 drop the largest in 25 years.
Oregon lost 9,262 students in 2026, nearly four times the prior year's loss, pushing K-12 enrollment to an all-time low of 535,826.
MSDE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing a 9,385-student statewide drop, the largest non-COVID decline in the past decade.
Illinois lost 135,959 students in six years but the decline is decelerating. English learners grew by 83,371 even as overall enrollment fell.
West Virginia lost 21,253 public school students since the Hope Scholarship launched. Decline nearly doubled; 49 of 55 counties hit all-time lows.
NH public schools shed 30,483 students since 2012, a 16% decline. The Josiah Bartlett Center ranks it as the steepest percentage drop in the nation.
Nine Arkansas Delta school districts have shed 13,769 students since 2005, with Helena-West Helena down 69% and five districts below 1,000 students.
KDE releases 2024-25 chronic absenteeism data showing a 25.0% statewide rate, down nearly 5 points in two years but still 7 points above the pre-COVID baseline.
Idaho SDE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing a 3,970-student decline, the steepest drop in 25 years of records.
HIDOE releases 2024-25 enrollment data showing 167,076 students statewide, down 2,232, continuing the state's near-unbroken decline since 2014.
NM PED releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 298,353 students statewide — below 300,000 for the first time, down 8,333 from the prior year.
OSPI releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing a 9,099-student loss that erased three years of post-COVID recovery.
OSDE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 686,718 students statewide — down 10,640, the largest single-year loss on record.
FDOE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing Florida lost 66,756 students in a single year, nearly matching the COVID-era decline.
USBE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing an 11,479-student loss, Utah's largest single-year decline in 25 years.
ODE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing Oregon lost 9,262 students, its steepest non-pandemic drop on record.
ISBE releases 2024-25 enrollment data showing 1,848,560 students — a ninth consecutive year of decline and the state's lowest enrollment in two decades.
WVDE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 229,646 students statewide — down 7,693, the largest non-pandemic loss on record.
NH DOE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 160,322 students statewide, down 2,337 from the prior year.
ADE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 465,421 students statewide — down 8,916, the largest single-year loss on record.