Tucson Unified School DistrictET was making real progress. After peaking at 50.6% chronic absenteeism in 2021-22 — when more than half its students missed at least 18 days of school — the district brought the rate down to 34.6% in 2022-23 and 33.8% in 2023-24. Sixteen points of improvement. Recovery was working.

Then the 2024-25 numbers came in: 43.6%. A spike of 9.8 percentage points in a single year, erasing more than half of two years' worth of gains.

Every Subgroup Spiked

The reversal was not limited to a single population. Every major subgroup tracked by the Arizona Department of Education showed a significant increase:

• Hispanic students: 37.4% to 47.6% (+10.2 points)
• Economically disadvantaged students: 38.3% to 48.0% (+9.7 points)
• Students who are currently homeless: 45.1% to 58.1% (+13.0 points)
• White students: 24.2% to 34.7% (+10.5 points)
• Black students: 23.9% to 29.6% (+5.7 points)

Students who are currently homeless were hit hardest in absolute terms, surging to 58.1% — meaning nearly three in five students who are currently homeless in the district were chronically absent. Hispanic students, who make up the majority of TUSD's enrollment, saw their rate rise to 47.6%, approaching the level where chronic absence becomes the norm rather than the exception.

The Pattern

Tucson Unified's trajectory over four years shows a district that appeared to be recovering and then lost ground abruptly. The 2022-to-2023 improvement of 16 points was dramatic. The 2023-to-2024 change was modest, just 0.8 points, suggesting momentum was already slowing. Then 2025 brought a full reversal.

The district has faced scrutiny over attendance practices. Teachers have publicly described the district as "lax with excessive absences," and TUSD was ordered to repay $280,000 to the state for misreporting enrollment and attendance data, according to KOLD News 13.

Still Nearly Double the State Average

Even during its best recovery year, Tucson Unified's chronic rate of 33.8% was 9.5 points above the statewide average. At 43.6%, it is now 19.8 points above the state rate of 23.8%.

Arizona's second-largest district serves approximately 42,000 students. At 43.6% chronic absenteeism, roughly 18,000 of those students are missing at least 18 days of school per year. The district's challenges are not unique — high poverty, a transient student population, limited family resources — but the scale of the reversal raises questions about whether the 2023-2024 improvements were sustained by temporary measures that ran out, or whether some new factor drove the spike.

Without more granular data — school-level rates, absence reasons, geographic patterns within the district — the cause of the reversal remains unclear. What is clear is that two years of hard-won progress have been substantially undone, and TUSD is back to a chronic rate higher than all but its peak year.

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