Why Were You Absent? Students’ Reasons for Missing School Before and After the Pandemic

In the United States, chronic absenteeism—defined as missing 10 percent or more of the school year—dramatically increased during the pandemic and remains stubbornly high, affecting nearly a quarter of K–12 students.1 Reducing absences is a nationwide priority, with 17 states pledging to reduce chronic absenteeism by 50 percent in the next five years.2 Achieving this goal requires tackling the underlying causes of absenteeism. An important source of data on why students are absent can be found in the reasons students themselves report.

In this report, we leverage data from Rhode Island to analyze the percentage of students in grades three through 12 who have reported particular reasons for their absences and evaluate how that percentage has changed over time. In particular, we focus on changes that occurred between the pre-pandemic (2019–20) and post-pandemic (2023–24) school years. We also examine how the prevalence of reasons differed across students by gender and race and ethnicity and across schools by achievement levels and proportions of students in poverty, minority students, and chronically absent students.

Among the 11 reasons students reported for missing school, four stood out due to their high rates or their post-pandemic increase: illness, lack of sleep, boredom, and safety concerns.

Illness was the most common reason for missing school, reported by nearly 75 percent of students across all grades during the pre-pandemic school years (2017–18 to 2019–20) and 77 percent of students in the post-pandemic school years (2021–22 to 2023–24). Rates fell sharply during the pandemic, down to 55 percent in the 2021 school year (henceforth, school years are referred to by their spring year) but rebounded to their pre-pandemic levels a year later. Absences due to illness remained elevated in 2024 relative to 2020, up by 3.6 percentage points for elementary students, 2.4 percentage points for middle school students, and 3.2 percentage points for high school students.

Lack of sleep was a common reason for missing school, reported by 24 percent of students across all years and grades. Notably, rates were highest among high school students (33 percent), followed by middle school (23 percent) and elementary (15 percent) students. Post-pandemic increases varied by grade. For elementary students, rates declined but remained higher than pre-pandemic levels. For middle school students, rates were just over 4 percentage points higher in 2024 versus 2020. Finally, for high schoolers, the prevalence declined pre- to post-pandemic.

Although absences due to boredom remain a low-incidence reason reported by only 11 percent of students overall, there was a slight post-pandemic uptick in 2024 versus 2020 among elementary students (1.4 percentage-point increase) and middle school students (1.7 percentage-point increase). In contrast, fewer high schoolers reported being absent due to boredom post-pandemic (1.8 percentage points lower in 2024 versus 2020).

Roughly 5 percent of all students reported safety-related absences, with middle schoolers and students in high-poverty schools consistently reporting the highest rates. Concerns for issues including feeling unsafe, bullying, and embarrassment increased among elementary and middle school students post-pandemic. In contrast, high school students reported slightly lower rates of safety-related absences, which remained largely stable from pre- to post-COVID.

Results by gender show that reports by elementary students of absences due to lack of sleep were more common for males by an average of 1 percentage point. In contrast, among secondary students, more females reported they missed school due to lack of sleep, and the gap increased post-pandemic to about 7 percentage points. By race and ethnicity, white students more frequently reported absences due to illness than other racial and ethnic groups. At the same time, white students reported lower rates for all other reasons.

When examining reasons by school characteristics, the reported rates of all reasons in the 2024 school year, except for illness and not doing homework, were higher in schools with lower achievement levels, higher concentrations of students experiencing poverty, higher concentrations of minority students, and higher concentrations of chronically absent students. For example, reports of sleep-related absences were nearly twice as high in schools with the lowest (29 percent) versus the highest (16 percent) achievement levels. However, absences due to illness were more commonly reported in schools with higher achievement levels and schools with lower proportions of students in poverty, minority students, and chronically absent students.

Overall, the findings from this report point to both continuity and change in the reasons for students missing school from pre- to post-COVID, with illness and lack of sleep remaining the most common challenges reported by students. Although post-pandemic increases in many of the reported reasons are small relative to their initial pre-pandemic levels (increasing by less than a percentage point), some increases, like reports of being absent due to illness, point to a potential pattern in the drivers of absences that schools should closely monitor to ensure they do not continue to increase. Further, rising rates of disengagement, particularly among elementary and middle school students, and growing safety concerns among both groups suggest deeper and more systemic challenges that should be addressed.