Nearly Half of Native American Students in Washington Miss Too Much School

Fri, 22 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT

At Muckleshoot Tribal School, southeast of Auburn, 64.4% of the 483 students enrolled in 2024-25 were chronically absent. At the Lummi Nation's schools near Bellingham, the rate was 69.4%. At the Suquamish Tribal Education Department on the Kitsap Peninsula, it was 74.1% — meaning three out of four students missed 18 or more school days.

These are not outliers. They are the extreme end of a crisis affecting Native American students across Washington at a scale that dwarfs every other demographic group.

45.6%: Nearly one in two

Statewide, 45.6% of Native American students were chronically absent in 2024-25. That is nearly double the overall state rate of 27.1% and 21.4 percentage points above the white student rate of 24.2%. Among Washington's 12,651 Native American students, roughly 5,769 missed at least 18 school days.

The gap between Native American and white students has widened since the pandemic. In 2018-19, the difference was 17.5 points (30.9% vs. 13.4%). By 2024-25, it had grown to 21.4 points. Native American students recovered 9.4 points from their 55.0% peak — the largest absolute improvement of any racial group — but started so far above everyone else that the recovery still leaves them closer to majority-absent than to the state average.

Washington ranks fifth-highest nationally for Native student chronic absenteeism, behind only New Mexico, Alaska, Montana, and Oregon — all states with large tribal populations and significant reservation communities.

The tribal school crisis

Seven tribal school districts in Washington have chronic absenteeism rates above 50%. In these communities, regular school attendance is the exception.

The highest rates cluster along a corridor from the coast to the foothills: Suquamish (74.1%), Lummi (69.4%), Muckleshoot (64.4%), Cape Flattery (59.3%), Taholah (58.1%), Chief Leschi (57.2%), and WA HE LUT (56.7%). These are sovereign educational entities operating under federal trust relationships, serving communities that face compounding challenges: rural isolation, intergenerational poverty, housing instability, and health disparities that predate COVID by centuries.

Non-tribal districts where Native American students are concentrated show the crisis too. At Marysville School District — which borders the Tulalip Reservation — 71.0% of the district's 507 Native American students are chronically absent, even as the district's overall rate is 35.5%. La Conner, near the Swinomish Reservation, reports 60.8% for its 166 Native American students.

A gap the pandemic widened but did not create

The pre-pandemic gap was already severe. In 2015, when the state's overall chronic rate was 14.5%, Native American students were already at 30.9%. The pandemic spiked their rate to 55.0% — a 24.1-point increase, compared to a 16.8-point increase for white students. Both groups were hit hard, but the blow to Native communities was proportionally larger, and the recovery has been slower in relative terms.

The structural barriers to attendance in tribal communities are distinct from those in urban or suburban districts. Transportation on reservations can mean long distances on poorly maintained roads. Housing instability on tribal land operates differently from urban homelessness — overcrowded multigenerational homes rather than shelters. Health access is often limited to Indian Health Service facilities that may be hours away. And the historical relationship between Native families and formal schooling carries a weight that attendance-nudge interventions were not designed to address.

The shrinking denominator

Washington's Native American student population has declined 19.3% over the past decade, from 15,673 in 2015 to 12,651 in 2025. The combination of declining enrollment and rising absenteeism means that the number of Native American students consistently attending school is shrinking faster than the enrollment numbers alone suggest.

If 45.6% of 12,651 students are chronically absent, approximately 6,882 are attending regularly. A decade ago, with 30.9% chronic absence and 15,673 enrolled, roughly 10,830 were attending regularly. That is a 36% decline in the number of regularly attending Native American students — a collapse in consistent school participation that compounds every other educational challenge these communities face.

What recovery would require

Bringing Native American chronic absenteeism back to pre-pandemic levels (30.9%) would require a 14.7-point reduction from the current rate. At the pace of recovery observed in 2023-2025, that would take more than a decade. Closing the gap with white students entirely would require an additional 6.7 points beyond that.

The scale of the problem suggests that school-level interventions alone will not be sufficient. The districts with the highest Native American chronic rates are the same ones dealing with underfunded tribal infrastructure, limited healthcare access, and housing conditions that make regular attendance physically difficult. Solving the attendance crisis in tribal communities will require addressing the conditions that cause absence, not just tracking who is absent.

Data source

Data from the Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction via waschooldata. Analysis covers 2014-15 through 2024-25. The 2019-20 school year excluded due to COVID-related attendance tracking anomalies. Tribal school districts are identified by name; Washington does not have a formal tribal school flag in its data system.

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