Last school year, 16% of Idaho students were chronically absent — a relatively low number when compared to other states.

But the data behind Idaho’s rate is questionable: Some school districts are reporting rates that are either exceptionally high or exceptionally low and/or dramatically fluctuating from one year to the next. 

“We’re having conversations about how we as a department can reach out to our districts and make sure they understand … accurate numbers are a main priority,” said Scott Graf, the communications director for the Idaho Department of Education. 

State superintendent Debbie Critchfield acknowledged that the data may have inaccuracies but not “to the degree that I would say throw out everything.”

In 2022-23, Idaho’s chronic absenteeism rate of 17% was among the lowest in the nation, according to data compiled by the Associated Press. Of the 42 states and District of Columbia that track chronic absenteeism, only New Jersey had a lower rate than Idaho.

But Idaho's data also contained unusual outliers that year.  Since chronic absenteeism data was first collected in the 2020-21 school year, it's unclear how often schools and districts misreported their numbers. And without trustworthy data, it's also unclear how much of a problem chronic absenteeism is in Idaho.

The issues with chronic absenteeism data collection go back to the height of the pandemic.

Chronic absenteeism data is beset with questionable outliers

When Idaho education leaders were first asked to start reporting chronic absenteeism data in the 2020-21 school year, Ryan Cantrell — currently the state’s deputy superintendent — was leading the Bruneau-Grand View school district. 

At the time, Sherri Ybarra was the state superintendent, and there “was very little training” around how to report chronic absenteeism and why it mattered, Cantrell said. It seemed like just another addition to the to-do list, “another thing to report on.”

Fast forward four school years later, and there are enough unusual outliers in the state’s chronic absenteeism data to call the set into question. 

For example, the Council School District reported that 53.9% of its students were chronically absent in the 2022-23 school year. The next year Council reported that just 7.2% of its students were chronically absent. 

Council Superintendent Pat Griffin was unavailable for comment.

Council is not the only school district or charter with erratic chronic absenteeism data. 

The Pocatello/Chubbuck School District’s chronic absenteeism rate plummeted from 35% in 2020-12 to 0.2% and 0.3% in 2021-22 and 2022-23, respectively, before shooting up to 17% last school year.

When asked about the low figures in 2022 and 2023, Tonya Wilkes, the district’s director of student support services, said they had different data than the state. She cited rates of 7.8% and 6.8% in 2022 and 2023, respectively. Wilkes said those figures do not include school-excused absences, like for athletic events. 

According to state and federal definitions, all school-excused absences that are not instructional in nature — like for a football or basketball game — must count toward chronic absenteeism figures. Districts provide their chronic absenteeism rates to the state. 

Courtney Fisher, the communications director for the Pocatello/Chubbuck School District, wrote in an email that the state's data for 2022 and 2023 was incorrect due to an error in the district's student information system. The district "is actively working with state officials to acknowledge and correct the errors as the District's commitment to transparency and accuracy remains a top priority," she wrote.

Lance Pearson, Kellogg’s superintendent, recently looked into his district's "incredibly low" chronic absenteeism rate of 0.8%. “We’re going to try to verify exactly what’s going on,” he said in a phone call on Monday. “If we made a mistake, we apologize, but it would have been an honest mistake somewhere.”

Find out the 2023-24 absenteeism rate at your school or district here.

By Thursday, he discovered that the figure was reported incorrectly because of an issue with the district's new student data management system, "and the manner in which data is 'pulled' from the system," Pearson wrote in an email. His staff is working on tracking down correct data, but the district's actual rate of chronic absenteeism last school year was more likely in the 20-30% range, Pearson said.

Tara Lere took over the helm at Plummer-Worley School District last month. When told about the district’s chronic absenteeism rate for the 2023-24 school year (5.2%, down from more than 50% the year prior) she said: “Oh my goodness. That’s got to be wrong.”

She wasn’t sure why the rate varied so much from one year to the next. It could be in part due to new attendance staff and increased efforts to accurately track attendance, she said. 

David Carson, Gooding's superintendent, was not at the helm in 2022-23. But he thinks Gooding's unusually low chronic absenteeism rate of less than 1% that year was due to inaccurate record-keeping. "Attendance wasn't being taken as well because funding wasn't based on that." In 2023-24, when funding again became tied to attendance, record-keeping improved — and that's likely why the chronic absenteeism rate jumped up to more than 15%, he said. 

These five examples represent just some of the outliers in the chronic absenteeism data from the past two school years. The scatterplot below shows the range of absenteeism rates among Idaho districts and charters, including outliers that may have inaccurate data.

A data auditor, a new state position, may help get the data back on track

The IDE is in the process of hiring an auditor who will check school district and charter school financials and data, according to Graf.

It’s a new position, one the 2024 Legislature just allocated funds for. “This would be a tool we could use to check on the accuracy of things like chronic absenteeism numbers,” Graf wrote in an email. 

Beyond that, IDE officials said they will provide extra training as needed for school leaders. 

“If we look at the data and find that there are inaccuracies or discrepancies in the data, it’s going to become a training issue, and we’re going to go out to the districts” and explain why those figures are important, Cantrell said. 

Idaho Education News data analyst Randy Schrader contributed to this report.