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Idaho's Chronic Absenteeism Recovery Has Nearly Stalled

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 12:00:00 GMT

In this series: Idaho 2024-25 Chronic Absenteeism.

The numbers told a recovery story for two years. Idaho's chronic absenteeism rate fell from its pandemic peak of 20.6% in 2021-22 to 17.1%, then 15.0% — steep, reassuring drops that suggested the attendance crisis was resolving itself.

Then the floor went soft.

In 2024-25, Idaho's rate fell just 0.4 percentage points, to 14.6%. That deceleration — from a 3.5-point improvement to a 2.1-point improvement to barely any movement at all — is the pattern that should concern state leaders more than the rate itself. The state still has 44,640 students missing at least 10% of school days, and the trajectory suggests this number may not shrink much further without new intervention.

The deceleration is the story

Idaho's 14.6% rate looks modest compared to states like Oregon (33%) or New Mexico (30%+). State Superintendent Debbie Critchfield has pointed to Idaho's emphasis on in-person learning during the pandemic as a factor in the state's relatively lower rates.

But the year-over-year trajectory undermines the optimism. The improvement from 2022 to 2023 was dramatic: 3.5 percentage points, representing roughly 10,700 fewer chronically absent students. The next year delivered 2.1 points. This year, 0.4 points — equivalent to about 1,600 fewer students. At this pace, Idaho would need more than a decade to reach 10%, a threshold many attendance researchers consider healthy.

The pattern is not unique to Idaho — national data from Attendance Works shows similar deceleration across many states as the "easy" post-pandemic recovery gains run out and harder structural barriers remain.

Nearly half of districts are going the wrong direction

The state average obscures a deeper split. Of 135 districts with multi-year data, 65 — 48.1% — have higher chronic absenteeism now than when data collection began in 2020-21. That baseline was itself a COVID-affected year, making these increases especially troubling.

The worsened list includes some of the state's largest districts. Mountain Home^↗ jumped 13.7 percentage points, to 24.9%. Coeur d'Alene^↗ rose 7.4 points, to 20.7%. Moscow^↗ nearly doubled, from 8.6% to 16.1%. Boise^↗, the state's largest district with 21,623 students, sits at 21.0% — three points above its 2021 level.

Who recovered, who didn't

The subgroup data reveals a sharp divide. Native American students — Idaho's most-improved group — dropped 11.5 percentage points, from 32.8% to 21.3%. Black students improved by 6.2 points. Homeless students, despite still facing a 30.6% rate, improved by 5.7 points from their 2021 level.

But foster care youth moved in the opposite direction: their rate rose from 24.2% to 27.1%, making them the only student group where chronic absenteeism is still climbing. White students, who make up 72% of Idaho's enrollment, barely budged — down just 0.1 points to 12.9%.

The pattern suggests the easiest gains came from the groups with the highest rates and the most obvious pandemic-related disruptions. The remaining 14.6% reflects attendance barriers that predate COVID and resist the kind of broad-based interventions — return-to-school campaigns, attendance awareness weeks — that drove the initial recovery.

What the plateau means

Idaho funds schools based on Average Daily Attendance, meaning each absent day costs districts approximately $45 per student. With 44,640 students chronically absent — each missing at least 18 days per year — the cumulative cost runs into the tens of millions in lost state funding, separate from the academic consequences.

The state has no statewide attendance intervention program comparable to those in Connecticut or Oregon. Individual districts have launched campaigns. Caldwell^↗ ran an "Every Day Matters" initiative. Boise has partnered with community organizations. The results have been uneven.

The deceleration from 3.5 points of improvement to 0.4 points suggests that whatever was working has largely run its course. Idaho has not yet decided whether 14.6% is the new normal or a plateau worth fighting through.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

Idaho Is 17,871 Students Below Its Growth Curve

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 12:00:00 GMT

For 17 years, Idaho's public schools grew like clockwork. From 2002 to 2019, the state added an average of 3,522 students every year, a pace so steady that a simple line drawn through the data explained 98.6% of the variation. The state's enrollment rose from 246,184 to 307,228, a 24.8% gain that tracked Idaho's reputation as one of America's fastest-growing states.

If that line had continued, Idaho would have enrolled 331,968 students in 2025-26. Instead, 314,097 showed up. The gap between where Idaho was headed and where it landed is 17,871 students, and it has grown every single year since the pandemic.

Three years, twelve times the speed

The raw totals obscure how quickly this shift happened. Idaho peaked at 318,979 students in 2022-23 and has declined every year since. But the pace of loss has accelerated sharply: 319 students in 2023-24, 593 in 2024-25, then 3,970 in 2025-26, a loss nearly seven times larger than the year before and triple the COVID-year dip of 1,338.

In 2025-26, 125 of 190 districts lost students. Only 60 gained.

The gap from projection tells the structural story. In 2020-21, the first full pandemic school year, Idaho was 3,707 students below its trend line. That deficit partially closed in 2021-22 and 2022-23 as students returned. But starting in 2023-24, the gap began to widen again, from 2,424 to 6,265 to 10,379 to 17,871. The trajectory is not recovering. It is diverging.

The population paradox

Idaho's population surpassed two million in 2024 and continues to grow at 1.5% annually, seventh-fastest in the nation. Between 2020 and 2024, 74% of that growth came through domestic migration. The state is getting bigger. Its schools are getting smaller.

The explanation lies in who is moving to Idaho. According to Idaho Department of Labor data, youth (19 and under) contributed just 9.3% of the state's population growth between 2020 and 2024, the smallest share of any age group. Seniors grew 17.4% over the same period. Ada County, home to Boise, actually lost 891 youth during those four years even as the county's total population surged.

The Boise School District has pointed to rising housing prices, gentrification, and the fact that the district is "attracting older adults, i.e., retired individuals" rather than families. Boise Independent^↗ enrolled 26,321 students in 2002, its highest mark in the dataset. By 2026, that number had fallen to 21,717, a loss of 4,604 students over 24 years. The district has declined every year since 2020-21, six consecutive years.

Rising housing costs are a direct mechanism. Since 2020, Ada and Canyon counties have gained new residents and lost public school students at a rate of nearly 14 to one.

Big districts bleed, small ones grow

The losses are not evenly distributed. Idaho's seven largest districts (those enrolling 10,000 or more students in 2019) collectively lost 9,124 students between 2019 and 2026, a 7.3% decline. Only one of the seven, Bonneville Joint^↗, grew. West Ada^↗, the state's largest district, lost 1,588 students. Nampa^↗ lost 1,504. Coeur d'Alene^↗ lost 1,208.

Meanwhile, districts enrolling fewer than 500 students collectively grew 7.4%. Small districts (500 to 2,000) grew 5.3%. The pattern is a near-perfect inversion: the bigger the district, the worse the decline.

Only 46.3% of districts that existed in both 2019 and 2026 have recovered to their pre-pandemic enrollment levels. Among large districts, the recovery rate is 14.3%, meaning six of seven are smaller than they were before COVID.

Vallivue School District^↗ is an outlier. Located in Caldwell, in Canyon County, Vallivue grew from 9,090 to 10,700 students since 2019, a 17.7% gain, making it one of the few mid-size districts still expanding.

The kindergarten signal

Kindergarten enrollment offers a forward-looking indicator, and in Idaho, it points down. The state enrolled 20,184 kindergartners in 2025-26, down 6.1% from 21,487 in 2018-19 and well below the 2012-13 peak of 22,537. At the other end of the pipeline, 12th grade enrollment reached 25,316, up 15.9% from 2019. Idaho's schools are graduating large cohorts built during the growth era while receiving smaller ones shaped by declining birth rates and housing affordability.

The K-to-12th-grade spread has implications for where the gap goes next. Each year's graduating class is roughly 5,000 students larger than the incoming kindergarten class. Unless kindergarten cohorts reverse course, the structural arithmetic favors continued decline.

The funding squeeze

Idaho funds schools through an attendance-based formula that distributes resources by "support units," a calculation tied to average daily attendance rather than enrollment. That formula amplifies the enrollment decline: when students leave, dollars follow, and districts that fall below attendance thresholds lose funding faster than they can cut costs.

The Idaho School Boards Association warned that the shift back to attendance-based funding after pandemic-era enrollment-based formulas could cost districts $162 million statewide:

"We knew and made our best attempts to warn state leaders that shifting back to attendance would bring a dramatic drop in how state funding is distributed." — Quinn Perry, Idaho School Boards Association, Idaho Education News

The 2025-26 enrollment decline alone reduced state funding by approximately $24 million. Bonneville Joint District Superintendent Scott Woolstenhulme told Idaho Education News in February 2026 that his district faces a $5 to $6 million shortfall: "We are cutting our budget. I think that's probably true of almost every district in the state."

Nampa closed four elementary schools in the summer of 2024. Administrators in Coeur d'Alene, Middleton, Kellogg, and Grangeville have all reported weighing budget cuts. Idaho ranks last in the nation for cost-adjusted per-pupil funding, leaving districts with little cushion when enrollment drops.

$170 million in ghost students

The 17,871-student gap is not abstract. At roughly $9,500 per student in state and local funding, it represents approximately $170 million that Idaho's funding formula was built to distribute but never will. That money was supposed to pay for teachers, bus routes, and building maintenance in a growing state. The growth stopped. The buildings remain.

Idaho does not officially track private school or homeschool enrollment. An estimated 18,000 students attend private schools, and a $50 million tax credit program now subsidizes their families' costs. Without data on how many new credits go to students leaving public schools versus those already outside, the competitive pressure remains unmeasured.

Bonneville Joint's superintendent told Idaho Education News in February that his district faces a $5 to $6 million shortfall. "We are cutting our budget," Scott Woolstenhulme said. "I think that's probably true of almost every district in the state." Sixty-one districts have now declined three consecutive years. Idaho ranks last in cost-adjusted per-pupil funding. The gap between the schools Idaho built and the schools Idaho needs widens by another 3,500 students each year.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.