Dade County Schools Emphasize Attendance In 2025
By LYDIA BERGLAR
News Editor
In the 2023-2024 school year, over a quarter of the students enrolled in Dade County Schools were chronically absent. Per the U.S. Department of Education, chronic absenteeism is when a student misses ten percent of the school year. For Dade, that’s 18 days, and 26.8 percent of Dade students missed 18 or more days last school year.
In 2017-2018, Dade’s chronic absenteeism was only 15.5 percent. The following year, it increased to 16.5 percent. COVID-19 disrupted the next few years of data, but now that it’s been several years since education returned to normal after the pandemic, schools across the nation are looking for an answer to the million-dollar question: Why are more parents letting their kids miss more school?
While excused absences don’t count toward chronic absenteeism, it’s worth noting that this is still missed education. Too many sporting events, school trips, and sick notes can negatively impact a child’s learning.
Chris Davis (director of academics/testing) and Josh Ingle (superintendent) sat down with the Sentinel to talk about the problem of chronic absenteeism and how the schools are addressing it. Davis noted that all of Dade’s school administrators are on board with focusing on attendance. “It’s been all hands on deck. We’ve got great things going with instruction and programs, but attendance is what we’re missing.”
While the elementary schools take attendance once a day, the middle school and high school take attendance each class, meaning a student could be chronically absent from one class but still be counted present for overall attendance. Ingle said, “At the secondary level, you really have to break it down by class period.”
Georgia’s state average for chronic absenteeism was 11.8 percent before 2020. Last school year, it was 20.7 percent. Both before COVID-19 and after, Dade has been falling behind the state average.
Nationally, Georgia tends to stay in the middle. Specifically because of the national problem of attendance, the online “Return to Learn Tracker” website compiles data from 2017-2022. According to the website, in the 2017-2018 school year, the state with the best attendance was Idaho with three percent chronic absenteeism. The national average was 15 percent, and Alaska was the worst at 26 percent—just below where Dade is today.
In 2021-2022, Alabama and New Jersey tied for the best attendance at 18 percent chronic absenteeism. The national average was 28 percent, and Arizona was the worst at a whopping 48 percent. (Interestingly, Alabama’s chronic absenteeism was also 18 percent in 2017-2018. It was the only state that did not see an increase in absences.)
As Davis said, “It’s a national issue, but that’s not our excuse because it’s our issue with our kids here.”
Next, Davis shared some numbers comparing Dade to our next-door neighbors. This year, Chattooga County’s chronic absenteeism is 31.9 percent, Walker’s is 29.9 percent, and Catoosa’s is 19.2 percent. Davis and Ingle haven’t yet talked with Catoosa to find out what might be driving that better performance.
Alabama’s most recent data is from 2022-2023. DeKalb County was at 19 percent, and Jackson County had only 15 percent.
Tennessee’s data is also from 2022-2023. Hamilton County was at 21 percent, and Marion County was at 32 percent.
Davis speculates that Alabama’s better attendance comes down to each state’s attendance laws: Georgia students can legally drop out at age 16, but Alabama students can’t drop out until 18.
Looking at a breakdown of Dade’s data, attendance is the worst in kindergarten and high school. Davis believes that attendance laws are also at the root of this. Georgia requires attendance between a child’s sixth and sixteenth birthday, so some parents might view kindergarten as optional, and by tenth grade, dropping out is a legal option.
Davis added, “Kids start working in high school, they start driving and have other focuses instead of just school.”
Poverty seems to negatively impact attendance. Dade’s economically disadvantaged students had higher rates of chronic absenteeism than Dade’s overall average in both 2017-2018 (20 percent) and in 2023-2024 (31.8 percent).
Davis said, “There are lots of variables, and we can speculate on a lot of different things, but that doesn’t fix it. Awareness is the number one step to fixing it.”
Therefore, each of the schools have started various initiatives to encourage attendance, such as rewards/recognition for perfect attendance, discussing the importance of attendance at parent events, and hearing from student councils about potential causes and solutions.
Davis and Ingle both noted that extracurricular activities and involvement at school can keep kids engaged. Davis highlighted how teachers and Dade County High School’s career tech program work to keep kids engaged.
Ingle added, “The older kids get, the more opportunities they have to be involved. Whether it’s a club, athletics, the arts, or something else, get involved in something. To participate in these things, you have to be at school.”
Part of the attendance problem goes back to how our nation handled the COVID-19 pandemic. Davis said, “We’ve had a cultural shift regarding attendance since the pandemic. During the pandemic, a relationship with the school became optional.”
For several years, there was no state-wide testing. Ingle noted that messaging from the state in the pandemic era was “compassion over compliance,” but somehow, our culture hasn’t returned to an emphasis on standards and achievement goals.
However, Davis wants parents and guardians to know, “They’re in the driver’s seat regarding their student’s attendance. Most parents just don’t know what chronic absenteeism is and the impact it has on students overall. If they did, I don’t think we’d be having this issue in Dade County.”
While he thinks some parents would be surprised at how many days of school their kids have missed, he believes the bigger issue is that parents don’t realize what their students are missing by being absent.
First, he highlighted the social and behavioral impact. “Chronic absenteeism and truancy often lead to disengagement from studies and disconnection from peers and the school community. This isolation can negatively impact a student’s well-being and hinder the development of essential social skills and friendships. Isolation is the worst punishment, even in prison, and it creates mental health issues. When kids are not in school, they’re being isolated.”
Second, there’s the obvious impact on absent students’ academic performance, but it extends to the rest of the class as well. Davis said, “Classmates also get behind because teachers slow down overall instruction while trying to teach the class and catch the absent student up. It’s hard to provide the rigor the class needs to keep moving forward when you’re just trying to catch people up.”
Lastly, Davis highlighted the character trait of dependability. “Every employer has one major soft skill they want us to instill in our kids: the ability to show up. That’s it, just show up. This starts at home. We preach it to kids in school, but that’s got to start at home.”
Ingle confirmed that local employers are desperate for reliable employees. “They have a hard time getting people to show up on time and, when they are at work, to stay off their devices.”
Ingle noted that there is still grace for sickness, saying, “I don’t want to send the message to send sick kids to school. We want them to stay home and get well so they come back refreshed.” However, he noted that not feeling well or a light headache here and there is different from running a fever. He added that while teachers often send assignments home for sick students to complete, this doesn’t replace the missed classroom instruction.
Davis added, “Compassion is still there for absences. We know life happens, and kids get sick, but we’re trying to figure out what’s causing all of these other absences with an unknown reason.”
Ingle concluded, “When kids are here, they’re learning. As our attendance improves, our test scores will improve as well.”
