Idaho students are less likely to be chronically absent than in other states, according to data from the Associated Press, and state superintendent Debbie Critchfield says it’s largely because Idaho students spent more time in class during the pandemic. 

“We never walked away from that in-person element, and I absolutely believe it’s because of that that we are seeing the least impacts (four years later),” Critchfield said. 

Just 16.1% of Idaho’s students were chronically absent last school year, according to data released by the Idaho Department of Education. The rate was even lower than the previous year’s, which was found by AP to be one of the lowest among 42 states and D.C.

Idaho’s data has come under question because of some outliers, but it’s still worthy of review, says Critchfield, who plans to provide training as needed to shore up the reporting in the future. Read our sidebar for those details. 

Critchfield’s touting of in-person learning during the pandemic aligns with a national expert’s findings. Tom Dee, a professor and educational economist at Stanford University, said state-level increases in chronic absenteeism are “significantly higher” in states that spent more of the 2020-21 school year closed. 

That’s partly because remote learning “may have reduced the perceived value of regular school attendance among students and parents,” Dee said in a video call with journalists covering chronic absenteeism. 

But Dee cautioned that some are using this data “for a politicized relitigation of the controversial school closures that happened several years ago.” He argues that the current attendance ‘crisis’ “merits immediate attention and perhaps a little less finger-pointing.”

Other factors may be contributing to Idaho’s relatively low chronic absenteeism as well, including an uptick in four-day weeks, and attendance-based school funding — though some school leaders have reiterated that the latter is not a driving factor. 

While students are less likely to be chronically absent in Idaho than in other states, there are still nearly 46,000 students who are missing 10% of the school year or more. And chronic absenteeism rates are especially high among vulnerable students. 

But state and district leaders are finding creative solutions to the problem. 

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

Four-day weeks are on the rise and may boost attendance

More than half of Idaho school districts and charters are on four-day weeks, which are becoming more popular each school year. “We could draw some lines there, connect some dots” between the increasing short weeks and low chronic absenteeism, Critchfield said. 

Parents are able to schedule vacations and appointments with that extra weekday, and coaches work to schedule games on that day as well, which all translates to students missing less class time. 

When Ryan Cantrell was an administrator in the Bruneau-Grand View School District, which has four-day weeks, he said “we ended up saving our varsity football players 60 hours of seat time” by deliberately scheduling long trips and games on that fifth weekday. 

Many Idaho schools are rural, which is another factor that may contribute to low absenteeism, Cantrell said. “In those smaller rural settings, it’s really noticeable when a kid is gone for one or two or three days,” and it’s typical for a teacher, principal, or the superintendent to do a home visit. 

However, a scatter plot of the 2023-24 chronic absenteeism data shows that a district’s size or number of days in the week doesn’t correlate with high or low absenteeism rates. But that data may not be trustworthy.

How funding impacts attendance depends on who you ask

Education leaders statewide tend to be reluctant to discuss another potential factor: attendance-based funding. 

Simply put, better attendance equals more state dollars for local districts. During the pandemic, funding was temporarily based on enrollment numbers, but it reverted back to being attendance-based last school year — a switch that has made district budgets even tighter.

Politicians who have pushed for attendance-based funding say it’s a way to motivate school leaders to ensure good attendance. 

That’s “almost an insult," said Vallivue Assistant Superintendent Joey Palmer. “We want kids in school because we have a heart for serving students, not because we’re trying to get our hands on dollars."

“We want kids in school because we have a heart for serving students, not because we’re trying to get our hands on dollars." — Joey Palmer, assistant superintendent, Vallivue School District

Other school leaders, including Critchfield, echoed a similar sentiment: attendance-based funding is not a driving factor to keeping kids in class. 

If funding continued to be enrollment-based, Critchfield said educators would work just as hard to keep kids in class. That’s partly because of other accountability measures like statewide standardized tests. If students aren’t in class, that will show in their test scores. 

But David Carson, the superintendent at Gooding School District, recently said attendance-based funding does make a difference, and contributed to more accurate record-keeping at his district.

While chronic absenteeism rates are low, nearly 46,000 students are missing weeks of school. Here’s how districts are working to get them back in class. 

To address attendance issues, school leaders need to find low-cost solutions that are designed for their specific student population, Dee, the educational economist from Stanford University, said. He noted that districts today are facing serious financial pressures, stemming from a “sustained enrollment loss” that’s contributing to school closures, as well as expiring COVID-19 relief dollars. 

Related coverage: School closures impact vulnerable students — it’s unclear what that means for their education

In Idaho, those financial straits are compounded by the reversion to attendance-based funding.

Dee had some ideas for inexpensive but effective solutions. Engaging with families about attendance through text messages and postcards “can nurture awareness among parents and motivation to get their kids to school,” he said.

Warm, inclusive communication is more impactful than legalistic or threatening language. And comparing a student’s attendance to their peers when communicating with parents can be helpful as well, he added. 

Some Idaho school districts are already implementing these solutions.

Pocatello aims to curb absenteeism by tailoring solutions and communicating with families 

The Pocatello/Chubbuck School District launched an attendance campaign this school year that entails sending an absence-tracking magnet to every student’s household.

Addressing absenteeism requires going beyond the numbers and data and getting “down to the names, and trying to figure out how we can connect to those families,” Tonya Wilkes, the district’s director of student support services, said. 

Raina Patterson, the district’s federal programs director, said the district has also “softened” the language in letters sent to parents whose children miss five days of school. The wording used to be more punitive, but is now geared toward partnering with parents to get kids back in school. 

On top of that, the district is working on removing barriers and creating supports in a way that’s tailored to each child. Specific solutions can range from giving a child an alarm clock to connecting a family with resources for childcare so older children aren't tasked with watching younger siblings during the school day. 

It's all part of a larger effort to “create a culture where kids feel missed” when they’re gone, Courtney Fisher, the district’s communications director, said.

In the 2020-21 school year, about 35% of Pocatello/Chubbuck students were chronically absent. That figure dropped to about 17% last school year. 

At Vallivue, relationships make the difference

At Vallivue School District in Caldwell, chronic absenteeism has dropped from about 34% in 2022-23 to 20% in 2023-24.

Joey Palmer, the district’s assistant superintendent, said the district made a series of videos on why attendance matters, featuring interviews with students and teachers. One of the videos is featured prominently on the district’s homepage. 

The district also had staff members, like principals, attendance clerks, or resiliency advocates, reach out to families when a student was starting to miss days of school. If that outreach didn’t work, the district would hold a truancy hearing — which was less punitive, and more about collaborating to find solutions, Palmer said. 

From that hearing, a student-specific plan was made. That could have entailed anything from a student resource officer giving the student a ride to school everyday, to a parent withholding a gaming system unless a student attended school five days in a row. 

Over time, a trend emerged: Students were more likely to miss school if they felt disconnected or isolated. For those students, assigning an adult mentor that they checked in with daily was helpful. 

“Really, it comes down to relationships,” Palmer said. 

One school in his district tried a unique strategy: Each day, the percentage of staff that came to school was posted alongside the percentage of students that came to school. That helped start a friendly competition. 

Not every district has the ability to develop an attendance campaign complete with videos or posters, so the state recently launched an attendance toolkit with social media graphics, letters, flyers, posters, and more for districts to use. 

But Critchfield emphasized in a recent column that the responsibility to get kids to school also falls on parents: “... schools aren’t responsible to get a child up out of bed every morning,” she wrote. “When we remind kids and parents that just showing up is one of the biggest parts of school, we reinforce strong habits for life.”

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