The authors investigate why secondary school-age students are missing school and to what extent these reasons differ by age. They use data from two surveys administered to nationally representative samples of students and parents in late 2025 via the RAND American Youth Panel and RAND American Parents Panel, respectively. This report is intended for school system leaders who are seeking to better understand the reasons for absenteeism patterns.

Why Do Middle and High Schoolers Miss School?

Selected Findings from the American Youth Panel and the American Parents Panel

Melissa Kay Diliberti, Sarah Ohls

ResearchPublished Jun 17, 2026

In the immediate aftermath of the coronavirus 2019 pandemic–related disruptions to kindergarten through grade 12 (K–12) in-person schooling, K–12 absenteeism rates spiked nationally in U.S. public schools. High levels of chronic absenteeism—defined as missing at least 10 percent of school days in a given school year—matter because research has linked chronic absenteeism with poorer academic outcomes. Although absenteeism rates have declined somewhat since reaching a peak in the 2021–2022 school year, recovery appears to be stalling, with national rates still above pre-pandemic levels.

In this report, the authors investigate why secondary school–age students are missing school and to what extent these reasons differ by age. They use data from two surveys administered to nationally representative samples of students and parents in late 2025 via the RAND American Youth Panel and RAND American Parents Panel, respectively. The surveys focused largely on attitudes that are anticipated to be related to absenteeism, such as believing that not being chronically absent is important. This report is intended for school system leaders who are seeking to better understand the reasons for the absenteeism patterns that they are observing in their schools as they target interventions to get more kids back in classrooms.

Key Takeaways

  • Although heightened levels of chronic absenteeism remain a serious national problem, one-third of youth between the ages of 12 and 18 surveyed in December 2025 agreed that missing three or more weeks of school—that being chronically absent—is mostly OK. Parents were more skeptical than youth that being chronically absent is OK, but 18 percent still thought it was mostly fine.
  • Parents of older youth, especially those with children ages 17 to 18, were less likely than parents of younger youth (ages 12 to 14) to report always making their children go to school if they did not want to go.
  • Twenty-two percent to 48 percent of youth and parents perceived that reasons not related to physical health, such as going on vacation, feeling down or anxious, or simply wanting a day to rest, are legitimate reasons to miss school. The oldest youth surveyed (ages 17 to 18) were especially likely to feel that such reasons as needing to rest or catching up on schoolwork were legitimate reasons to miss school.
  • High school-age youth (ages 15 to 18) were more likely than youth ages 12 to 14 to say that their parents have allowed them to take mental health days if they did not want to go to school.

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Diliberti, Melissa Kay and Sarah Ohls, Why Do Middle and High Schoolers Miss School? Selected Findings from the American Youth Panel and the American Parents Panel. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2026. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA4742-3.html.
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