Tacoma
The Hispanic-White Attendance Gap Nearly Doubled After COVID in Washington
Before the pandemic, the attendance gap between Hispanic and white students in Washington was modest and stable. In the 2018-19 school year, 18.3% of Hispanic students were chronically absent compared...
Tacoma's Attendance Recovery Reversed: Chronic Absenteeism Jumped Back to 36%
For three years, Tacoma Public Schools was one of Washington's attendance recovery stories. The chronic absenteeism rate dropped from a catastrophic 40.4% in 2021-22 to 37.6%, then 33.9% — a steady, e...
Gender X Grew 6,300% in Washington Schools, Then the Count Reversed
In 2014-15, Washington's public schools counted 77 students who identified as neither male nor female. By 2023-24, that number had reached 4,979, a 6,362% increase that made Washington one of the most...
1 in 25 Washington Students Was Homeless Last Year
In the 2024-25 school year, 43,542 students in Washington's public schools were identified as experiencing homelessness. That is 3.9% of total enrollment, or roughly one student in every classroom of ...
Six Years Later, 63% of Washington Districts Haven't Recovered
Washington's public schools enrolled 1,146,882 students in 2019-20. That was the peak. Six years and a pandemic later, only 37% of the state's school districts have climbed back to that waterline, and...
Seattle Spent a Decade Building. Six Years Erased It.
Between 2010 and 2020, Seattle Public Schools did something almost no large urban district in the country managed: it grew. Not modestly. The district added 8,993 students over a decade, swelling from...
White Students Now 47% of Washington's Schools
In the fall of 2022, for the first time in recorded history, white students made up less than half of Washington's public school enrollment. The threshold was crossed quietly: 49.9%, a fraction of a p...