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.
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.
Jeff Foertsch, a 25-year Prescott educator, takes the superintendency after helping the district avert dissolution. The recovery plan ahead.
About 22,900 students who are currently homeless in Washington are chronically absent — 51.1% — but two rural districts post rates under 10%, suggesting what intensive support can do.
Seattle has a below-average overall chronic rate of 23.4% but a 17.8-point gap between white and Black students — a disparity that widened after the pandemic.
In raw numbers, 296,544 Washington students were chronically absent in 2024-25 — 128,000 more than before the pandemic. The cumulative toll since COVID: 1.48 million student-years.
One in three Hispanic students in Washington is chronically absent, and the gap with white students has widened from 4.9 to 8.9 percentage points since the pandemic.
After three years of steady improvement, Tacoma's chronic absenteeism rate rose 2.3 points to 36.2% in 2025 — the largest reversal among Washington's top 10 districts.
After three years of improvement, Washington's chronic absence rate barely budged in 2025, leaving 296,544 students missing too much school.
After 35 years in Washington education and more than two decades in Enumclaw, Jill Burnes steps into the superintendent role as the district hits record enrollment and builds a $65M school.
Nine Washington districts report enrollment growth over 200%, but the students are virtual, the operators are for-profit, and the classrooms are empty.
Washington's Native American student count fell from 24,768 to 12,622 in 16 years. A reclassification explains part of the drop, but not the decline since.
Section 504 disability accommodations quadrupled since 2010, but affluent districts identify students at six times the rate of high-poverty peers.
More Washington school districts sit at record-low enrollment than in any year since 2010, erasing three years of post-COVID recovery.
