Fewer FWISD students missed too much school last year. But the news isn’t all good.

The Fort Worth Independent School District saw a sharp decline in the number of students who racked up large numbers of absences last year, district attendance figures show. But that number was still drastically higher than it was before the pandemic.

The district isn’t alone: Across the country, students have been absent at record rates since school buildings reopened, according to a new analysis of nationwide enrollment data.

Experts say when students miss more than 10% of a school year — a trend called chronic absenteeism — they’re less likely to read proficiently by third grade or graduate on time, and more likely to drop out before finishing high school.

During the 2022-23 school year, 21,673 students were absent at least 10% of the time, according to district figures. That’s a 25% decline from the previous school year. But it’s more than four times the number of students who missed school 10% of the time or more during the 2019-20 school year, the year the pandemic began, district figures show.

Notably, the number of students who were absent less than 5% of the time grew by 31% between last year and the year before, meaning fewer students are edging toward chronic absenteeism. That trend also indicates that enrollment declines don’t completely account for the drop in the number of students with excessive absences.

District leaders are quick to acknowledge that attendance rates are still nowhere near where they want them to be. During a conversation with the Star-Telegram’s editorial board earlier this year, Fort Worth ISD Superintendent Angélica Ramsey described the district’s attendance rates as “atrocious,” noting that most school districts across the country have struggled to get students to come back to school consistently after school closures ended.

“It’s very difficult to get parents and students to understand you have to come to school five days (a week),” she said.

One of the district’s key strategies for improving attendance was hiring family engagement specialists, staff members who make calls to parents when students are absent and meet with families who are struggling to get their kids to school. District officials have attributed a large part of the improvement in attendance rates to those specialists.

But those positions are funded by federal COVID relief money. School districts nationwide have a deadline to spend that money: The second round of funding must be allocated by the end of next month, and the third round must be spent by September 2024. Once that money is gone, district officials will be left with the choice of ending those programs or finding another way to pay for them.

In an emailed statement, Wendy Teer, the district’s coordinator of attendance and credit recovery, said the district offered regular training for administrators, data clerks and attendance clerks on how to improve attendance rates. School leaders also gave students opportunities to make up absences, including by coming to school on Saturdays, she said.

Nationwide, schools report more students with too many absences

School districts across the country reported a sharp uptick in the number of students who were chronically absent during the 2021-22 school year, the most recent school year for which nationwide data is available. More than a quarter of students missed more than 10% of that year, according to an analysis of state level attendance data by Stanford University education professor Thomas Dee in partnership with The Associated Press. The analysis, which was released Friday, includes data from 40 states, plus Washington, D.C.

In Texas, 25.7% of students missed more than 10% of the 2021-22 school year, up from 11.4% during the 2018-19 school year, which was the last full school year before the pandemic began. The state had the 14th largest increase in chronic absenteeism of the 41 jurisdictions included in the analysis. Texas hasn’t yet released attendance data for the 2022-23 school year.

Nationwide, the percentage of students who were chronically absent during the 2021-22 school year was nearly twice as high as it was before the pandemic, according to the analysis. That equates to about 6.5 million more students who were chronically absent. Absences were most common among Black, Latino and low-income students.

During an online call with journalists this week, Dee said the educational jurisdictions included in the analysis collectively serve about 92% of all public school students in the United States.

In analyzing attendance data, Dee also looked at other factors that could have contributed to the uptick in chronic absenteeism, including COVID infection rates, school enrollment declines and state mask policies. Although those factors had an effect, none of them could completely explain the increase, he said. It’s likely that other barriers are keeping students out of school, including transportation issues, access to mental and physical health services and “the deterioration of students’ psychological engagement in their own learning.”

Dee said the ongoing high rates of absenteeism nationwide will likely hamper efforts to help students make up the ground they lost during the pandemic. Districts have adopted a number of strategies for helping students catch up. When students rack up large numbers of absences, not only do they not have access to that extra support, they also miss out on the instruction they would have gotten in their regular classes.

“Our most prominent efforts at academic recovery from the pandemic involve in-school activities such as tutoring and extended learning time and supports that involve you being in the building,” he said. “And if students aren’t there, that’s really going to affect what we’re trying to do.”