Attendance has not bounced back since the pandemic. A University of Chicago Consortium on School Research team led by Elaine Allensworth followed more than 360,000 Chicago Public Schools students in Grades 6 to 11, before and after the pandemic. Average attendance in the middle grades fell from 95 to 91 per cent, and in high school from 90 to 84 per cent. The paper, released in November 2026 as EdWorkingPaper 26-1631, also cites national US estimates: chronic absenteeism, meaning missing 10 per cent or more of school days, rose from about 15 per cent of students before the pandemic to over 28 per cent in 2022, and was still about 22 per cent in 2024-25 (Allensworth et al., 2026).
A companion paper from the same group, released in October 2026 as EdWorkingPaper 26-1628, looked closely at four Chicago high schools with better attendance than expected. They shared four habits: frequent and timely outreach to families, close monitoring of attendance data, chances to recover missed work paired with clear expectations for effort, and deliberate work to give students a voice in a safe, supportive climate. Across the district's high schools, quick contact with the family after an absence was linked to better attendance (Antony et al., 2026). Both are US working papers that have not yet been peer reviewed, and they describe associations rather than proven causes.