This article was originally published in Indiana Capital Chronicle.
Indiana’s top education officials applauded the state’s improved chronic absenteeism rates on Wednesday but conceded that too many Hoosier students are still missing a “significant” number of school days.
The latest attendance numbers released by the Indiana Department of Education reported that 17.8% of K-12 students — roughly 219,00 kids — were “chronically absent” during the most recent 2023-24 school year, meaning they missed at least 18 days.
It’s the second year in a row that the number of chronically absent students went down, dropping from 19.2% in 2023, and 21.1% in 2022.
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“It’s an improvement — and we always want to celebrate improvements and data moving in the right direction— but we still have some work to do,” said John Keller, IDOE’s chief information officer, during Wednesday’s State Board of Education meeting.