Data-Driven Education Journalism for the Evergreen State
Education News & Data
Local education reporting from every corner of Washington, grounded in Washington Department of Education data.
Washington's chronic absenteeism rate fell two tenths of a point in 2025, but 60 districts enrolling 500 or more students cut their rate in each of the past three years.
Doug Dearden returns to lead Trout Lake, watching high school enrollment as students weigh Running Start, online school and work-based programs.
Washington's English-learner four-year graduation rate fell 3.2 points from its 2022-23 peak to 2024-25 as the LEP cohort grew 134.2% from 2015-16.
After narrowing for most of a decade, the white-Hispanic graduation gap widened 1.6 points in two years. A growing cohort makes the stall costlier.
Washington's Class of 2024 graduation rate rose from 82.8% after four years to 85.1% after five, with larger gains for students with disabilities, foster students, and English learners.
Washington's foster-care four-year graduation rate was 51.3% in 2025, 31.4 percentage points below the all-student rate.
Nineteen Washington school districts with at least 500 students moved from chronic-absence rates of at least 40% in 2022 to below 30% in 2025.
Washington produced record graduates in 2025, but the rate fell for the second straight year as the cohort grew faster than the diploma count.
Low-income students are chronically absent at 35.4% vs. 19.0% for their peers — a 16.4-point gap that has grown by a third since the pandemic.
Washington's attendance recovery follows a nearly perfect gradient by age — younger students are bouncing back while high schoolers remain stuck near their pandemic peak.
Washington's 3,777 foster youth have seen their chronic absence rate flatline at 41% for three straight years, even as other vulnerable groups continue recovering.
From a 2022 peak of 41 majority-absent districts, Washington has cut the count by more than half. The 18 that remain are concentrated in tribal communities and tiny rural schools where the barriers to attendance are structural.
Native American chronic absenteeism reached 45.6% in Washington, with tribal school districts reporting rates above 60% and a widening gap with white students.
A 4,480-student district on the Olympic Peninsula has stayed below the state average for 11 straight years, with a 2025 chronic rate one-sixth of the statewide norm.
Elementary schools have recovered nearly half their COVID attendance losses, but high school chronic absenteeism remains within 1.5 points of the pandemic peak.
