A school bus leaves Desert Hills Elementary in Las Cruces Wednesday, July 31, 2024 to start dropping children off at home. (Photo by Leah Romero / Source New Mexico)

The rate of chronic absenteeism in New Mexico schools dropped in the last school year, but the state continues to report some of the highest rates in the country since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Missing at least 10% of school days in an academic year, or 18 days in a 180-day school year, is how state and national experts define chronic absenteeism. Since 2020, New Mexico has been one of the states with the highest rates in the country, with only Washington D.C. and Alaska reporting higher rates.

“Chronic absenteeism has a direct correlation to graduation: Students who are chronically absent in pre-K through 1st grade have a harder time reading at grade level by 3rd grade, which results in lower achievement scores in middle school. In high school, these students are more likely to drop out. Simply put, you cannot learn if you’re not in school,” said Kelly Jameson, spokesperson for Las Cruces Public Schools.

Jameson said the LCPS Board of Education adopted Policy JHB in 2020 to ensure the district complies with the state’s Attendance for Success Act, an effort to address the high number of students missing school. The policy established an “early warning system” allowing the district to identify absent students early to prevent and intervene in individual cases before a student became chronically absent. 

“In LCPS, 30% of our students were considered chronically absent last semester, which is better than the state average. More importantly, we are making progress – that number is down from the end of 2023, which was 34%,” said Jameson.

One factor in the state’s high absenteeism is inconsistency in how attendance is reported, according to a Legislative Finance Committee analysis. The Public Education Department was instructed in 2019 through the signing of the Attendance for Success Act to collect attendance data and confirm school districts are reporting “consistently and correctly.” 

Guidance from the state department has been slow to reach districts.

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The New Mexico Public Education Department released data this week showing the absenteeism rate in the state dropped to 32.8% in the 2023-2024 school year. This is an almost 7 percentage point drop compared to the previous year. 

The highest rate New Mexico has reported in the last several years was 40.73% in the 2021-2022 school year. 

“We will continue to build on this momentum to foster an environment where consistent attendance is the norm, not the exception,” said Public Education Deputy Secretary Candice Castillo.

Only a handful of states have released data for the 2023-2024 school year and New Mexico so far leads with the highest rate.

Earlier this summer, state lawmakers received an update from Legislative Finance Committee analysts which showed New Mexico had the largest increase in students missing school between 2019 and 2023. The state’s rate jumped by 119% while the national increase was 71%.

Jameson said prevention and intervention efforts in Las Cruces also include the statewide partnership with the national organization Graduation Alliance and community partnerships with New Mexico State University social workers who provide attendance data, interns managing family caseloads and home visits with parents of absent students who were unreachable three times.

According to the Public Education Department, efforts to address chronic absenteeism statewide also include the department’s “Be Here NM” campaign to spread awareness of the issue and training for districts and charter schools.

The department also noted the change from tracking “habitual truancy” to “chronic absenteeism,” which was meant to create better support for students and families struggling with attendance rather than punishment.

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