CHRONICALLY ABSENT: Getting students to regularly show up at some NJ schools can be an uphill battle.

This article first ran in the acrossnj Sunday newsletter. Sign up for this free weekly newsletter at acrossnj.com.

One of the most pernicious problems facing many school districts, particularly those in areas of high poverty, is making sure students show up to school.

The New Jersey Department of Education measures each school's chronic absenteeism rate by finding each student who has an absentee rate equal to or greater than 10% of all school days and then calculating the total of all chronically absent students. That number is divided by total students to come up with a schoolwide rate.

You'll often hear state education or local district officials bring up chronic absenteeism as a problem that must be addressed. The Camden City School District, for example, has built a districtwide campaign to fire up student enthusiasm to attend school every day.

"Student absenteeism can lead to low academic achievement, dropping out of school, delinquency and gang involvement," according to the Department of Education.

» At end of this article, use our database to search for chronic absenteeism rates at every NJ school

For the 2022-23 school year, the latest year available, the median rate of chronically absent students for all district schools in the state was 14%, according to an acrossnj.com analysis of the data. For charter/renaissance schools, the median rate was 18%.

But, for some schools, the attendance track record was far worse.

Holland Middle School in the Trenton district had a chronic absenteeism rate of 77% and Eastside High School in Paterson reported 64% — or 1,268 students — as chronically absent, according to the state data.

Just 60% of the 2,362 public schools measured in New Jersey met the state rate guideline for each school. It was worse among 88 charter/renaissance schools: only 43% met their state targets.

The data are from the state Education Department School Performance Report. 

The state cautions that the 2022-23 data should be used judiciously when comparing absenteeism to former years because of the continuing impact of schools being physically closed during the pandemic. New data from the state are expected sometime in April and, with the COVID scourge further in the rear-view mirror, we will take another look.