Missing too much school will hurt a student’s test scores, no matter the school — and even in an era of online learning, when some assignments can be completed from home, researchers say after examining North Carolina data. 

Access to online assignments could only be having a marginal effect on academic outcomes, said Ethan Hutt, a University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill researcher who co-authored a recent study on absenteeism.

Researchers pursued the study amid worsening attendance rates that have school leaders, policymakers and education experts around the country concerned. They say it’s part of a cultural shift in attitudes about the necessity of daily school attendance, sparked during the Covid-19 pandemic, when students learned mostly remotely and relied on access to assignments in online student portals or, in some cases, through paper packet delivery.

“We’re seeing basically a 65% increase in chronic absence rates,” said Hutt, an associate professor in UNC’s School of Education. “We’re seeing really, really large numbers of absences.”

About one-quarter of North Carolina students were chronically absent during the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years, down from about one-third during the 2021-22 school year, according to state data. That means they missed at least 10% or more of school days. Before the pandemic, less than 16% of North Carolina students were chronically absent.

The study, published by the free-market think tank American Enterprise Institute, looked at absences and performance during the 2018-19 and 2022-23 school years in Maryland and North Carolina, at the student level. Scholars David Blazar, of the University of Maryland, College Park, and Seth Gerhenson, of American University, also co-authored the study.

Previous studies have linked chronic absenteeism and poor academic performance, and researchers wanted to see if and how the pandemic changed any of those realities. They found only that the academic consequences of chronic absenteeism are only slightly less severe — about 10% — than they were before, a phenomenon Hutt attributed to the increased availability of course materials online and other technology that can help students.

“Parents shouldn’t think, ‘Oh, well, the stuff is online. My student can catch up.’ You’re going to see the accumulative effect of these absences on student test scores,” Hutt said.

Hutt described the low attendance of students as a “cultural shift.” Low attendance in school is not merely a lingering effect of the pandemic, with high absences among students who had once attended school remotely, he said, because absenteeism is up even among kindergarteners.

Absences had a bigger impact on math scores than reading scores, researchers found. That was more true in North Carolina than in Maryland; in North Carolina, the impact on math was far worse and the impact on reading was much less.

The findings were consistent across urban, suburban and rural schools. That means the risk of worse academic performance exists for any student, regardless of the school they attend, Hutt said. Effects will be worse on lower-income schools, where attendance rates are often worse, he said.

Education leaders and policymakers should think about ways to communicate the consequences of poor attendance but also ways to help students get to school, Hutt said. For example, thinking about how a student in a rural area can get to school if they’ve missed their bus or working with organizations in communities with attendance struggles. Schools should figure out why students are missing school and put resources toward helping them get there, he said.

“This is a place where we will see a return on our investment,” Hutt said. “We know that if a student is there in school, they’re going to do better than if they’re not.”

Schools started many efforts to address attendance issues during and immediately after the pandemic, using one-time federal pandemic stimulus dollars. It’s unclear how many of those efforts remain, one year after the deadline to spend those dollars.

Some school officials told WRAL News last year they’d ramped up rewards for attendance and also punishments for failing to attend. Some districts are even referring more families to court to be held accountable for their children’s absences.

Christmas tree farmers in western North Carolina are still rebuilding from last year’s devastating Hurricane Helene, but growers are optimistic about business and the overall strength of their industry in the region.

“There’s still a lot of recovery that needs to happen, but we’re in much better shape than we were this time last year … sales are good,” Kevin Gray, owner of Hickory Creek Farm Christmas Trees in Greensboro, said earlier this month, while the buying season was in full swing.

North Carolina is the nation’s second-largest Christmas tree producer, harvesting about 4m trees, mainly Fraser firs, annually, most grown in the western part of the state. As people all over the nation thrill to the twinkling lights and accumulating gifts under the boughs this festive season, few who buy a real tree may spare a thought for where it came from.

In October, 2024, Helene tore through the region, killing at least 95 people and causing widespread damage to homes, farms, roads, land and infrastructure. Officials estimated that the storm, at one stage a category 4, caused about $125m in losses of ornamental nurseries and Christmas trees alone.

A year later, while full recovery for some farms is still distant, many growers said their sales before the holidays were lively.

At Avery Farms, a 200-year-old family operation in Avery county, Helene ripped out about 80,000 of their Christmas trees, wrecked fields, equipment and buildings, and destroyed the home of manager Graham Avery’s parents.

That fall, the family sold what they could to the customers: a limited number of trees, wreaths, boughs and improvised tabletop trees fashioned from salvaged tops.

This year has been focused on rebuilding. Avery’s parents’ home was rebuilt with help from “lots of people donating their time” and they moved back in just a month ago. The family bulldozed damaged fields, fertilized the soil and planted about 20,000 trees this spring, a long-term project to regain pre-Helene output, as Christmas trees take from six to 12 years to mature.

“It’s going to be a while, but that’s the whole game that we play doing Christmas trees. It’s a very long-term investment,” Avery said. “We are set up to do it, and we will continue to do it.”

Even with significantly reduced inventory, Avery said, this season’s sales have been “very, very good” and the farm has doubled its wreath output and is shipping them nationwide.

“With what inventory we do have, we’ve had no issue selling,” Avery said.

Jennifer Greene, executive director of the North Carolina Christmas Tree Association, said the industry remained strong despite the devastation to some growers.

The 2025 growing season also offered some relief. “We had a great spring with April rainfall,” she said, noting the trees “have actually had a great growing season”.

“We’re in the middle of a great season, we’re happy to not have a hurricane and we’ve had good weather for harvest. So things are looking good,” she said.

Dee Clark, owner of Christmas Corner and C&G Nursery in Avery county, shared similar optimism, despite retail sales plummeting last year when a road washed out and remained closed until summer.

“Early indications look promising,” Clark, 63, said, earlier in December. He added that his son had developed social-marketing efforts to boost sales.

A third-generation grower, Clark said Helene destroyed much of his farm’s infrastructure and damaged roads and culverts, triggering landslides that cost about 1,000 trees and stripped vital nutrients from the soil.

Clark, who said the storm “almost put us out of business”, has focused on repairs, replanting and restoring the land. He expects it will take years to replace lost trees, and knows many growers face a similar, long climb. But, he said: “The Christmas tree industry in western North Carolina as a whole is probably the best shape it’s ever been in as far as the supply of trees right now.”

At Cartner’s Christmas Tree Farm, owner Sam Cartner said he felt fortunate no lives or homes were lost in the flooding, but said landslides destroyed up to 10,000 trees.

“We probably won’t ever be able to plant those areas back, because the topsoil slid off,” he said. “We’ll have to find other areas to plant if we recover that number of trees.”

The Cartners worked quickly, and made enough repairs to have a “relatively normal harvest” last fall, he said, despite the major damage to roads, bridges and culverts on the property.

One of their trees was even selected last year to be displayed at the White House.

For many in the region, the Cartners’ White House tree became a symbol of resilience. Jamie Bookwalter, an extension specialist at North Carolina State University, recalled attending its send-off ceremony in Avery county.

“That Christmas tree represented a lot of people problem-solving,” she said, “which I think is what this area of the country is kind of known for: resiliency, problem-solving and self-reliance.”

Will Kohlway IV, a Christmas tree production extension specialist also at NC State, said the Cartners’ ability to harvest and deliver the tree, despite everything the region had dealt with, exemplified “the spirit of the mountains and also Christmas tree growers”.

They called the tree “Tremendous”, he said, because “it was really a tremendous effort”.

Bookwalter visited some of the hardest-hit farms immediately following the storm. “Helene was a terrible event, but farming in general is just becoming more difficult as temperatures become more unpredictable and we get wetter periods – the wetter periods are wetter, the drier periods are drier,” she said. “We’re all just kind of learning day by day.”

She said researchers are working to develop trees more resilient to the changing climate.

Kohlway said that the public’s support for the region’s growers and farms had been “humbling”.

“Buying a tree supports a North Carolina farmer,” he said. Even if purchased at a big-box store, the tree, Bookwalter added, “really represents probably a pretty small farmer”.