Correction: This draft was rebuilt against the package's published attendance subgroup rows. Unsupported external numeric context and causal language were removed.

Missouri's published attendance data show a persistent difference between the chronic absenteeism rate for free and reduced-price lunch (FRL) students and the all-student rate. The FRL rate was higher in every available state year, but this package does not identify why the gap differs.

In 2014-15, the FRL chronic absenteeism rate was 14.8%, compared with 11.6% overall, a gap of 3.2 percentage points. By 2024-25, the rates were 22.1% and 17.4%, respectively, a gap of 4.7 points. The gap peaked at 5.8 points in 2021-22 and has narrowed since, but it remains 46.9% wider than it was in 2014-15.

A gap that widened across most transitions

The FRL gap widened across five of the 10 year-to-year transitions in the 2014-15 through 2024-25 panel. It was 3.2 points in 2014-15, dipped to 2.9 in 2015-16, then reached 3.4, 3.7, 3.7, 4.0 and 4.4 points in the following years. It hit 5.8 points in 2021-22, when FRL chronic absenteeism reached 26.6% compared with 20.8% overall.

Competing explanation: health, housing, transportation and family-work constraints could shape attendance differences. This analysis does not test those pathways, and the package does not establish a cause for the gap.

Three districts show large within-district gaps

In the selected district comparison, Kirkwood^↗ET's overall chronic absenteeism rate was 11.7%, compared with 33.9% for FRL students, a gap of 22.2 percentage points. Webster Groves^↗ET had an 11.3% overall rate and a 32.9% FRL rate, a 21.6-point gap. Wentzville^↗ET had a 20.5% overall rate and a 39.6% FRL rate, a 19.1-point gap.

Within Kirkwood, the FRL rate was 2.9 times the all-student rate. That is a comparison of reported subgroup rates, not evidence about the cause of the difference.

The package also contains smaller gaps

Not every complete 2025 district had a positive FRL gap. The analysis found 117 districts at or below zero. The Missouri package does not identify why those district-level gaps differ, so this article does not assign a cause.

What drives the gap

The Missouri package does not break chronic absenteeism out by race, gender or special education status at the state or district level. FRL is the subgroup comparison used here. It does not capture every circumstance that can affect attendance.

Competing explanation: FRL status may overlap with health access, housing stability and transportation reliability. This analysis does not test those pathways.

What the data can and cannot show

The attendance data cannot identify how funding policy affects the gap. What it does show is a 4.7-point difference in 2024-25 after a 5.8-point peak in 2021-22. The gap was still wider than in 2014-15 at the end of the panel.

The 2024-25 gap ranked fourth among the 11 available years in this package. The data establish the size and timing of the difference; they do not establish whether it will narrow in a future year or what intervention would change it.

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