Washington state has ‘chronic absentee rate' among students

The problem of students habitually missing school varies widely from state to state, with about one-third of students in the nation's capital absent 15 days or more in a single school year, according to an Associated Press analysis of government statistics.

Washington state and Alaska had chronic absentee rates hovering around one-quarter of students with that level of absences.

At the other end of the spectrum, Florida had the lowest rate of chronic absenteeism, 4.5 percent in the 2013-2014 school year.

Overall, the national average of chronic absenteeism was 13 percent, or about 6.5 million students, the Education Department said.

"Chronic absenteeism is a national problem," Secretary of Education John B. King Jr., said in a statement on Wednesday. "Frequent absences from school can be devastating to a child's education."

Bob Balfanz, a research professor at Johns Hopkins University and director of the Everyone Graduates Center, called the numbers disturbing.

According to AP's analysis, girls were just as likely as boys to habitually miss school. Nearly 22 percent of all American Indian students were reported as regularly absent, followed by Native Hawaiians at 21 percent and black students at 17 percent. Hispanic and white students were close to the national average of 13 percent.

Students are regularly missing school for lots of reasons, Balfanz says. Many are poor and could be staying home to care for a sibling or helping with elder care. Others are avoiding school because they're being bullied or they worry it's not safe. And then, there are some students who simply skip school.

Schools should be creating welcoming environments to make students feel wanted each day, Balfanz says. They also need to build relationships with the kids who are regularly absent to figure out what's keeping them away, he said.

As part of its Civil Rights Data Collection, the department surveyed all public schools in the country, covering over 95,000 schools and 50 million students. Roughly one in seven of all K-12 public schools nationwide reported having not a single chronically absent student that year.

Chronic absenteeism is one of several topics covered in the data collection. It also looked at school discipline and high-rigor course offerings.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

Cox Media Group