The Causal Effect of Student Absences Post Pandemic: Evidence from Three School Systems

May 2026

Researchers, educators, and policymakers have long worried about the consequences of student absences for educational achievement and attainment—concerns that have grown with the significant rise in absenteeism during and following the Covid-19 pandemic. Using administrative data from Maryland, North Carolina, and a large urban school district, we find that the impact of absences on test scores was modestly (about 5 to 20%) smaller in 2022-23 than in 2018-19 but still practically and statistically significant. Consistent with prior research, these harmful effects of absences are approximately linear and exhibit little heterogeneity across race and gender pre-Covid. In Maryland, the impact of tenth-grade absences on high-school graduation and 2-year college enrollment was much (about 40%) smaller after the pandemic than before, but the impact of absences on any (2- or 4-year) college enrollment increased slightly. Post-Covid reductions in the harmful effects were larger for white students on test scores and larger for Black students on graduation.

Keywords

chronic absence, attendance, learning loss, education production function

Education level

K-12 Education

Topics

Student Learning