The Contributions of School and Neighborhood Factors to Student Attendance Following the COVID-19 Pandemic

November 2026

Student attendance remains well below pre-COVID pandemic levels, yet districts lack evidence about which levers are most influential. Whether school and neighborhood contexts still account for meaningful variation in attendance, especially for students with weaker attendance histories, is an open question. Using a longitudinal database of over 360,000 Chicago Public Schools students in grades 6-11 before and after the pandemic, we estimate the relative contributions of school, neighborhood, and individual factors using cross-nested hierarchical linear models. We find that school-level differences in attendance substantially outweigh those observed between neighborhoods, and school context matters more for students who had lower attendance in the past. Teacher-parent trust in the school shows a particularly strong relationship with attendance in high schools. The findings indicate that schools retain meaningful leverage over attendance in the post-pandemic era, including for the students furthest from regular attendance, and point to where districts can most efficiently direct limited resources.

Keywords

attendance, chronic absenteeism, school contexts, neighborhood contexts, school climate

Education level

K-12 Education

Topics

Student Well-Being