Correction, August 9, 2026: The analysis now uses one published all-students row per stable district ID for each district and year. The list and table below reflect that corrected universe.

Nine of Missouri's 560 districts had chronic absenteeism at or above 50% in 2024-25. In those districts, at least half of the students met the state's chronic-absence threshold.

Hogan Preparatory Academy led the list at 69.9%. KIPP: Endeavor Academy was at 60.5%, The Biome at 59.1%, Riverview Gardens at 57.1%, St. Louis City^↗ET at 53.7%, Kansas City^↗ET at 51.1%, Missouri Schools for the Severely Disabled at 51.0%, Lee A. Tolbert Community Academy at 50.7%, and Normandy Schools Collaborative^↗ET at 50.4%.

The latest high-rate list

The 50% line is a screening threshold, not an explanation. The attendance records show the size of the problem in each district; they do not identify one cause shared by all nine.

Hogan's trajectory shows how quickly a district can move across the line. Its chronic-absence rate was 14.0% in 2014-15 and 33.1% in 2019-20. It fell to 22.6% in 2020-21, then rose to 56.1% in 2021-22, 67.0% in 2022-23, and 73.4% in 2023-24 before easing to 69.9% in 2024-25.

The Biome followed a different path. Its rate was 100.0% at the start of the available panel, fell to 7.9% in 2018-19, and reached 59.1% in 2024-25. The series records the changes; it does not establish why they occurred.

Riverview Gardens was already at 22.9% in 2014-15. Its rate rose to 65.3% in 2021-22 and stood at 57.1% in 2024-25, still above the screening line after the later decline.

Where the 50% line sits

The 560 districts in the 2024-25 file fall into six rate tiers:

Tier	Number of districts
0-10%	115
10-20%	290
20-30%	106
30-40%	19
40-50%	21
50%+	9

The highest-rate list is not a ranking of school quality or a diagnosis of any community. It is a snapshot of published chronic-absence rates, with the latest values sitting on top of a longer and uneven record.

Missouri Schools for the Severely Disabled is one example of that variation. Its published rate ranged from 39.1% to 80.5% across the available panel and was 51.0% in 2024-25. That spread is a reason to read the current value alongside the history rather than treat the threshold as a complete explanation.

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