Who Are NYC’s 300,000 Chronically Absent Students?
While the conversation focuses on elite high school admissions, a staggering 300,000 kids are chronically absent from school.
Whenever debates over educational equity erupt in New York City, the conversation inevitably turns to the city’s specialized high schools.
But the much bigger crisis, affecting hundreds of thousands of students, is that of chronic absenteeism, which undermines children before they even finish elementary school, as my colleague Danyela Souza Egorov wrote in the Bigger Apple last week.
Attendance is not the only reason for achievement gaps or the dismally low acceptance rates of Black and Hispanic students to the city’s specialized high schools. But it is the prerequisite for every other school improvement effort — students cannot benefit from stronger curriculum or better teachers if they are not in class. Kids in classrooms with high chronic absenteeism end up behind even if they do show up.
Chronic Absenteeism Among Ethnic Groups
Since the focus of the SHSAT conversation has been on the ethnic and racial disparities, let’s look through the same lens at attendance.
In New York, one in three public school students is chronically absent from school, defined as missing 10% or 18+ school days — almost a month of classes. There are now more chronically absent Hispanic kids in NYC public schools (149,900) than chronically absent kids of all other races and ethnicities combined (140,772).
A big reason this number is so high is that Hispanic kids are by far the largest student group in the city, making up 43.2% of total public school enrollment.
But because the absenteeism rate within this group is also high, nearly 1 in 6 of all public school students in New York City (17.2%) is a Hispanic child who is missing more than three weeks of school a year.
Chronic absenteeism is a big problem across the school system, but it is especially high among Black students (40.5%) and Hispanic students (39.8%). The rates are lower for White students (24.6%) and Asian students (19%), but the gap in participation is still large.
Despite NYC public schools losing over 100,000 enrolled students (-10.5%) between 2018–19 and 2024–25, the total number of chronically absent children actually grew by over 32,000 (+12.5%), driving the citywide absenteeism rate up from 26.5% to 33.3%.
Hispanic students drove the majority of the absolute absenteeism surge (+22,418 absent children), Asian and White students experienced the highest relative spikes in absenteeism counts (+34.8% and +21.0%), while Black public school enrollment experienced a massive contraction (-22.8%), causing their raw absent numbers to drop even though their absenteeism rate remains the highest at 40.4%.
In short, the school system has shrunk substantially, but a significantly larger proportion of its remaining students is struggling with chronic attendance issues post-pandemic.
Structural Issues
Chronic absenteeism does not happen in a vacuum.
The pandemic disrupted attendance and appears to have left a lasting impact, changing the culture around attendance — that school is optional — across the board and nationally.
The recent migrant influx and increased immigration enforcement in NYC likely affected attendance among some immigrant students, but such data is not publicly available from the city’s Department of Education.1
Meanwhile, last year, 253,041 students living in poverty were chronically absent. Nearly half of NYC students in temporary housing—61,323 children—were chronically absent, and over 43% of students with disabilities missed weeks of school.
Tackling a crisis of this scale requires focused policy that builds partnerships across healthcare, social services, and the community. Schools cannot fix poverty or housing instability, but schools cannot hide behind external factors either, and there is much that can be done.2
“Chronic absenteeism will undermine all their other academic interventions such as NYC Reads and NYC Solves,” Egorov told me. “The Chancellor should set clear goals for District superintendents and principals to reduce chronic absenteeism. Elected officials should launch a public campaign to make sure that families and students understand that every day in school counts.”
The pandemic-induced change in the culture around attendance is a public conversation we should be having, and one where public messaging at all levels helps.
“When local leaders visibly support attendance in places of worship, at community meetings, in storefronts, and through local media, they help build a culture where school attendance is seen as both a personal and community responsibility,” Catherine Falconer of John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health writes.
Mayor Mamdani and his Office of Mass Engagement should get ready to start the new school year by setting high expectations and sending a strong message to kids and their families that attending school matters.
More by Manhattan Institute Fellows:
An Education Agenda for New York City: NYC Schools Need Significant Change, Not More Money
Chronic Absenteeism Is Hampering School Improvement Efforts in New York City: What Can Be Done About It?
City’s public data on absenteeism does not include reasons for chronic absenteeism even though the city collects information on reasons for absence.
Of course, the Department of Education has been working to improve attendance, but chronic absenteeism remains stubbornly high compared to both pre-pandemic levels in NYC and national averages. While the trend is gradually moving in the right direction, much more work is required to return to pre-pandemic levels.