Memphis schools are reducing chronic absenteeism rates this year but still lag far behind state averages and in some cases behind the district’s own goals.
In a presentation Tuesday, district leaders shared that close to 40 percent of high school students are at risk for being chronically absent this year. That means around 12,000 high schoolers would miss more than 10 percent or 18 school days in a year.
That’s around a one percentage point drop for Memphis-Shelby County high schoolers compared to last year. But it’s significantly higher than the state’s average high school chronic absenteeism rate of just over 23 percent in the 2024-2025 school year.
“This is where the work comes in,” said Stacey Davis, director of the district’s attendance team. “I’ve always said that if we address our attendance issues on the front end, that will certainly help us with truancy on the back end.”
District leaders said in the fall that they hope to have around a quarter of MSCS students hitting the chronically absent mark at the end of this year. Statewide, just over 18 percent of students were missing 18 or more school days last year.
By December, 27 percent of all MSCS students were at high risk for chronic absenteeism. That’s down from last year’s rate of 31.5 percent in June and just above the district’s target of 26.5 percent for the end of this year.
Two MSCS regions — the Northeast and Southeast — are hitting that target right now. By contrast, the two western regions also have chronic absenteeism rates higher than the district’s goal of 26.5 percent for 2025-2026.
And over 40 percent of students in the district’s CSI schools, the lowest-performing in the state, are on track to be chronically absent this year.
Less than 30 percent of MSCS students in elementary and middle school are at risk of being chronically absent this year, but no grade levels come close to the state average of 16 percent for K-8 students.
Board members did not discuss the attendance data during Tuesday’s meeting, and they didn’t define what being at “high risk” of chronic absenteeism means. MSCS leaders said in November that they were on track to reduce chronic absenteeism for the first time since 2017.
Davis said then that the district was expanding the work of attendance liaisons, who are making more daily phone calls for absent students. While some work in multiple MSCS schools, Davis said Tuesday that the district is assigning full-time and more experienced attendance specialists to each CSI school.
The district also launched a door-knocking campaign to increase attendance at the beginning of the year. Davis said Tuesday that she hopes to meet with members of the MSCS student congress to learn more about the factors preventing high school students from showing up to class.
Bri Hatch covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Bri at bhatch@chalkbeat.org.
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.