By Stan Nicol, BCHF Data Analysis Representative
The Ohio Department of Education and Workforce Development (ODEW) defines Chronic Absenteeism as the percentage of students missing ten percent or more of the possible instructional hours. Nationally, Chronic Absence rates have improved since 2022 but are still much higher than the years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Figure 1 below shows the National and Ohio State Chronic Rates over the last four years.
 Source: Geduld, A. (2025, August 22). K–12 chronic absenteeism rates down from peak but remain persistently high. The 74. https://www.the74million.org/article/k-12-chronic-absenteeism-rates-down-from-peak-but-remain-persistently-high/ |
Attendance data collected by Buckeye Community Hope Foundation shows that more work is needed to improve attendance rates of students in our schools. Figure 2 shows the Chronic Absence rates for Buckeye Community Hope Foundation sponsored schools.
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Attendance translates to achievement. BCHF’s data show that during the 2024-25 school year, students with attendance rates of >90 Percent had an English Language Arts proficiency rate of 82.4% verses 51.5% for students reported as Chronically Absent. In Mathematics these Proficiency rates were: 63.9% and 29.8%, respectively.
Because of the importance of attendance, Ohio has joined fifteen other states committed to reducing chronic absences over the next five years.
Governor DeWine set a goal of reducing Chronic Absence rates by 50 Percent over the next five years. To assist in reaching this goal, Governor DeWine has ordered the Department of Workforce and Development to create an Attendance Dashboard. This dashboard was released on April 15th, 2026. Governor DeWine made this announcement about this new tool at his State of the State address on March 10th, 2026:
“This new tool will provide parents, the public, people in the community with simple, fast, and transparent attendance data each week for every district, for every school. This will offer early information about the effectiveness of attendance strategies, so that schools, districts, and communities can take actionable steps to improve attendance.”
— Mike DeWine, Governor of Ohio
DeWine, M. (2026, March 10). State of the State address. Tribune Chronicle. https://www.tribtoday.com/news/local-news/2026/03/dewine-highlights-education-in-state-of-the-state-speech/
The Attendance Dashboard site is active and updated on a bi-weekly basis. This site allows anyone to view the current chronic rate for any District or School in Ohio. It also allows the user to combine Schools and Districts into one view. Combining schools by management company, school type, location, etc. allows personnel to evaluate groups of schools.
The user can view data by chronic absence rate, students missing >10% of the instructional hours as well as four levels of Chronic absence ranging from Severe, Moderate, At-Risk, Satisfactory attendance.
The Attendance Dashboard can be found at: District Absences | Ohio Attendance Dashboard
The image below shows the Chronic Absence rate for all Districts and Schools in Ohio.
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Digging deeper, this site shows us that, statewide as of April 6, 2026, 22% of students are missing 10% or more of their instructional time. Ohio has 204,809 chronically absent students! The new state tool will allow all stakeholders to monitor school attendance and implement improvement strategies toward the 50% reduction goal. More information about Ohio’s improving attendance initiative may be found at: Home | Ohio Attendance Dashboard
BCHF has been closely monitoring student achievement in our sponsored schools. Our data convincingly shows that regular attendance is the cornerstone of academic achievement. For technical assistance in improving attendance outcomes at your school, please feel free to reach out to BCHF’s compliance and school improvement representatives.