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Absences and Achievement After the Pandemic: Evidence from Maryland and North Carolina
AEI
2025.10.14
Common sense and a growing academic literature suggest that student absences harm achievement. Public schools have witnessed a conspicuous surge in student absenteeism since the COVID-19 pandemic.

We investigate whether student absences have become more or less harmful in the post-COVID landscape using administrative data from Maryland and North Carolina.

The impact of absences on math and reading test scores in both states was about 10 percent smaller in the 2022?23 school year than in 2018?19, though it remains sizable: 10 absences reduced elementary and middle school math scores by about 6 percent of a test-score standard deviation.

The 10 percent reduction in the harm of absences was not large enough to offset the roughly 65 percent increase in absenteeism that followed the pandemic. Accordingly, absenteeism should remain a focal point for school, district, and state policymakers.