Every district in New York has to tell families when a child's attendance starts slipping, because Commissioner's Regulation 104.1 requires a written notification procedure in every comprehensive attendance policy. The letters that result cite the number every New York parent eventually hears, which is eighteen days, or ten percent of a school year. What they do not mention is that the state stopped using that number to judge schools more than a year ago.

New York replaced its Chronic Absenteeism Indicator with a new Attendance Indicator beginning in the 2025-26 school year, using 2024-25 results. The old measure sorted students into two boxes, absent enough to count or invisible. The new one scores every student in grades 1 through 8 and 9 through 12 on the share of days they actually attended, and it awards a school more credit for moving a child from ninety percent to ninety-six than for rescuing one from the old cliff edge.

The chronic absenteeism figure has not disappeared from public view. It still sits on the school report card that parents read, which is precisely why the change has gone largely unnoticed by the families it describes.

What Changed, and On Whose Authority

The sequence runs through three dated documents. The U.S. Department of Education approved amendments to New York's consolidated state plan under the Every Student Succeeds Act on January 8, 2025. The Board of Regents then took up the conforming regulation as item BR (CA) 4 on May 29, 2025, which states that "the Attendance indicator replaces the Chronic Absenteeism indicator to measure school quality and student success as reflected through student attendance with modified calculation methodologies." The Regents took permanent action on June 10, 2025, amending Sections 100.19 and 100.21 of the Commissioner's Regulations.

Jonathan Burman, a spokesman for the State Education Department, outlined the reasoning for NYSSBA when the change was still proposed: "The new lens through which we will view attendance provides a broader capture of the needs across a school community. There will still be a focus on students who are chronically absent, but the new indicator methodology highlights the opportunity to improve attendance for all students."

Scott Hale, principal of Johnstown High School, described the practical problem the old measure created for the schools furthest behind. "That's a significant improvement, and that's what we're looking for," he told the same publication. "It's really difficult to change a kid who's been absent so many times to get to that 10% threshold."

Four Levels, and Where the Cut Points Fall

Under the Regents item, each student receives an attendance rate level. Attending 85 percent or less of enrolled instructional days is Level 1. From 85.1 to 90 percent is Level 2, from 90.1 to 95 percent is Level 3, and above 95 percent is Level 4. The school's index adds Level 2 students once, Level 3 students twice and Level 4 students at two and a half times, then divides by the number of students counted.

The counting floor moved as well. Through 2024-25 a student entered the chronic absenteeism calculation after ten instructional days of enrollment. Beginning in 2025-26 a student must be enrolled for thirty cumulative instructional days before the attendance measure applies, which removes short-stay transfers from a school's number in a way the old rule did not.

The regulation states that suspensions are not counted as excused or unexcused absences under the new indicator, on the reasoning that districts must provide instruction to suspended students. That distinction did not appear in the chronic absenteeism business rules that preceded it.

The Doctor's Note That Never Helped

Here is the fact that surprises parents most, and it survived the redesign intact. New York's report card glossary counts students "absent (excused or unexcused) for at least 10% of enrolled instructional days." A week of influenza with a pediatrician's letter lands in the state's count exactly where a week of skipping does.

The excused category is not meaningless, but it is local. Commissioner's Regulation 104.1 requires every district, BOCES, charter school and nonpublic school to "adopt a comprehensive attendance policy" that includes "a determination of which pupil absences, tardiness and early departures will be excused and which will not be excused." The department confirms in its own guidance that districts make that call themselves. So a district decides what counts as excused for the purpose of credit, discipline and parent notification, and the state then ignores the distinction entirely when it grades the school.

How Attendance Reaches Your School's Designation

New York's accountability system "uses five indicators at the elementary/middle level and six indicators at the high school level to make determinations." Elementary and middle schools are measured on weighted average achievement, core subject performance, student growth, English language proficiency and attendance. High schools add graduation rate and a college, career and civic readiness measure.

Attendance is therefore one of five levers on an elementary school's designation. The Regents item that created the indicator carries the decision tables the department runs those levels through, stating that "a school shall be preliminarily identified for CSI if it meets scenario 1 or 2 of the decision table below," with attendance sitting among the measures those scenarios read. A school whose attendance index lands at Level 1 is carrying a large body of students who attended 85 percent or less of the days they were enrolled, which in a 180-day calendar is twenty-seven days missed.

The consequences run along a ladder that the department published in February, moving from Target District through Local Support and Improvement, Potential Targeted Support and Improvement, Targeted Support and Improvement, Additional Targeted Support and Improvement, and Comprehensive Support and Improvement. In that release the department extended the Potential Targeted tier from one year to two so schools could "fully implement new strategies, allow them to take hold, and generate positive change," with the result that no new schools entered the Targeted tier this year. Seventeen schools were newly identified for the receivership model and three will exit receivership at the end of the 2025-26 school year. Commissioner Betty A. Rosa's framing in that release was compact: "Accountability is a powerful catalyst for meaningful change and stronger outcomes for students."

The Numbers, With Their Years Attached

The most rigorous statewide accounting remains the October 2024 report from the Office of the State Comptroller, and its figures are only usable when each one carries its school year. Roughly 18 percent of New York students were chronically absent in 2018-19. That rose to 24.1 percent in 2020-21 and peaked at 32.6 percent in 2021-22. In 2022-23 the statewide rate was 29.1 percent, with high schools at 34.1 percent and elementary and middle schools at 26.4 percent, and New York City at 43.1 percent.

Thomas P. DiNapoli, the State Comptroller, attached the stakes to those numbers when the report was released. "Chronic absenteeism has been linked to lower grades, lower standardized test scores, and increased risk of dropout," he said. "Students who chronically miss classroom time often fall behind."

Those figures are three years old, and the department's more recent public statements put the statewide rate lower. NY State of Politics reported in July 2026 that the State Education Department places the figure at 27 percent, though that account attaches no school year to it and the state's published data runs roughly a year behind. Chalkbeat reported in August 2026 that about a third of New York City students were chronically absent in 2024-25. A parent who wants the current number for one specific building does not have to wait for either, because it is published.

What a Parent Can Look Up Tonight

The department's guide to understanding the parent dashboard defines chronic absenteeism as the share of students "absent 10 percent or more of the days they were enrolled in school" and student attendance as the share who "attended school on the days the school was open." Both appear on the school report card at data.nysed.gov, alongside suspension rates, average class size, test results, graduation rate and the school's accountability designation, each broken out by student subgroup.

The useful move is to read the attendance rate rather than the absenteeism rate, because the attendance rate is now the number the state acts on. A building sitting at 88 percent average attendance is carrying a large share of students in Levels 1 and 2 no matter how ordinary the chronic absenteeism figure beside it looks.

Whether the Redesign Is an Improvement

Melissa Lyons, an assistant professor of public administration and policy at the University at Albany's Rockefeller College, argued that the change sharpens what the system is asking districts to do. "We don't want to focus on moving kids from 10% absent to 9% absent," she said. "We want to move the needle, period." She also named the cost, which falls on families. "The challenge will be that if you're just telling people, 'You know, your kid has been attending school 78% of school days,' that may not mean all that much on its face."

Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works, pressed the opposite concern in the same reporting. "You don't want to lose the ability to quickly look at a dashboard and understand how many kids are chronically absent and where they are." Michael Hansen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's Brown Center on Education Policy, took a third position: "I don't think we necessarily need to incorporate every important measure into our accountability system."

The obligation underneath all of it is older than any indicator. Education Law 3205 requires that "each minor from six to sixteen years of age shall attend upon full time instruction." Attendance is also the precondition for every other right a family holds in the system, from the same-day enrollment a district owes a child in temporary housing to the diploma pathway the Regents voted on this month when they moved to sunset the assessment requirements behind a New York diploma. Level 4 begins at 95 percent, which across a 180-day calendar allows a child nine absences.