Four in Ten Mississippi Districts Reported Chronic Absence of at Least 30%

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT

High chronic absence was not confined to a handful of Mississippi school systems in 2025.

57 of the 143 district rows in the state's latest report had chronic-absence rates of at least 30%. That is 39.9% of reporting districts. The median district rate was 26.7%.

The Mississippi Department of Education counts excused absences, unexcused absences and suspensions in the measure. Chronic absence describes how many individual students missed a substantial share of their enrolled school days, rather than a district's average daily attendance, according to the department's chronic-absence report.

A wide upper tail

The 30% threshold was not the end of the distribution. 31 districts reported rates of at least 35%, and 13 reached at least 40%.

Claiborne County^↗ reported the highest district rate at 46.6%. Moss Point^↗ followed at 44.0%, and Forrest County Agricultural High School^↗ reported 43.6%.

Those figures describe reported attendance, not school quality or student effort. The public file includes total-student results but does not break out the reasons students missed school, so it cannot show whether transportation, health, housing, discipline or another barrier produced a district's rate.

The pattern crossed district sizes

The threshold result was similar among small and midsize systems. 12 of 29 districts enrolling fewer than 1,000 students reached 30%, a 41.4% share. Among the 93 districts enrolling 1,000 to 4,999 students, 39 reached the threshold, or 41.9%.

Of the 19 districts enrolling at least 5,000 students, 6 reached 30%, a smaller but still substantial 31.6% share.

Looking at student enrollment leads to the same broad conclusion. The 57 districts at or above 30% represented 41.5% of enrollment across the 141 district rows with known positive denominators.

The file contains 2 special-purpose systems that published rates but had suppressed enrollment counts. They remain in the 143-district rate distribution, but the enrollment share and size-band comparisons exclude them. Neither had a rate at or above 30%, so the threshold count remains 57 in both universes.

What the file can and cannot answer

MDE recommends strategies including mentoring, family engagement, health partnerships, alternatives to suspension and prompt personal outreach after an absence. Those are statewide recommendations, not evidence that the same mechanism explains results in every district.

The distribution is a screening signal: it shows how widely high reported absence extends and where more local investigation is needed. District-level information about why students were absent would be required to choose or evaluate a response.

This analysis uses the Mississippi Department of Education's 2024-25 district-level chronic absenteeism table, available through the department's public reporting archive. The statewide summary in the report does not reconcile to the district table, so this article excludes statewide numeric claims and limits its findings to the reported district rows.

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

Claiborne County Cut Absence After Its Peak, but Port Gibson High Remains an Outlier

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Claiborne County^↗'s chronic-absence rate has improved from its pandemic-era peak. The latest result still leaves the district with Mississippi's highest reported rate.

The district moved from 7.3% in 2017 to 46.6% in 2025, an increase of 39.3 percentage points. Port Gibson High School sits at the center of that change: 351 of its 390 students, or 90.0%, met the state's chronic-absence definition in the latest report.

The Mississippi Department of Education defines a student as chronically absent after missing a specified share of the days in which the student was enrolled, whether the absences were excused, unexcused or tied to suspensions. The measure is different from average daily attendance, which can hide how many individual students cross that threshold, according to the department's chronic-absence report.

A partial recovery, then another increase

Claiborne County's rate reached 57.7% in 2022. It fell to 34.8% in 2023 and 31.5% in 2024 before rising again in 2025.

That path matters because the endpoint alone can obscure the district's partial recovery. The latest rate is below the peak, but the direction changed again after two reporting years of improvement.

Enrollment also contracted across the longer window. Claiborne County reported 1,540 enrolled students in 2017 and 1,137 in 2025, a decline of 403 students. The absence data cannot show whether that enrollment change altered the mix of students served, so it cannot explain the rate increase.

One campus separates from the others

The district's three reported schools occupy very different positions. Port Gibson High's 90.0% rate compares with 34.1% at Port Gibson Middle School and 19.5% at A. W. Watson Elementary School.

The gap identifies where the district's attendance work is most concentrated. It does not identify why students missed school. The public file contains total-student results only and does not break the rate out by grade, race, disability, economic status or reason for absence.

MDE's report recommends a menu of responses for districts, including mentoring, family engagement, alternatives to suspension, health partnerships and quick personal outreach after an absence. Those are statewide recommendations, not evidence that any one cause or remedy explains Claiborne County's result.

The statewide outlier

Among 141 district rows with a positive enrollment denominator in 2025, Claiborne County ranked first by chronic-absence rate. Moss Point^↗ and Simpson County^↗ followed at 44.0% and 43.5%, respectively.

That comparison keeps the finding specific. It describes reported absence, not school quality or student commitment. The next MDE release will show whether Claiborne County's latest increase was a one-year reversal or the start of a longer change.

This analysis uses Mississippi Department of Education district- and school-level chronic absenteeism reports for 2017 through 2025, available through the department's public reporting archive. No reports were collected for 2020 or 2021. The statewide summary in the latest report does not reconcile to its district table, so this article excludes statewide numeric claims and uses only district and school rows that match the source tables.