106 Arizona Districts Improved Chronic Absenteeism Three Years Running

Thu, 21 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Arizona's statewide chronic absenteeism picture is grim: recovery has stalled, gaps have widened, and nearly one in four students still misses too much school. But behind the state average, 106 districts have been getting better every single year since 2022-23.

These are districts where the chronic rate dropped in 2023, dropped again in 2024, and dropped again in 2025. Three consecutive years of improvement, while the state's overall pace of recovery ground nearly to a halt.

The Biggest Turnarounds

The most dramatic improvements came from districts that started in crisis:

Fort Thomas Unified, a small rural district in southeastern Arizona, cut its chronic rate by 45.1 percentage points over three years. Murphy Elementary dropped 39.4 points. Valentine Elementary dropped 36.5 points.

These are transformative changes. A district that went from 60%+ chronic absenteeism to below 20% has fundamentally altered the daily experience of its students.

Tuba City: The Signature Story

The most significant improvement streak belongs to Tuba City Unified, a Navajo Nation district that went from 57.2% in 2022 to 27.9% in 2025.

What makes Tuba City's trajectory so important is context. This is a reservation district facing the same structural barriers (geographic isolation, poverty, limited transportation, intergenerational trauma) that keep neighboring districts above 40%, 50%, even 60%. Yet Tuba City improved steadily, roughly 10 points per year, until it crossed below the state average.

Other reservation districts have not followed. Peach Springs held steady above 62%. San Carlos dropped from 75.7% to 52.5% before spiking back to 61.7%. Whatever Tuba City did differently offers a potential model for communities facing similar challenges.

Traditional Districts Too

The improvement streaks are not limited to small districts coming down from extreme levels. Large traditional districts in the Phoenix and Tucson metros show sustained progress:

Peoria Unified: 37.8% to 20.0% (-17.8pp)
Amphitheater Unified: 42.8% to 22.5% (-20.3pp)
Gilbert Unified: 24.6% to 15.6% (-9.0pp)

These are sizable districts serving diverse populations. Their sustained improvement suggests that institutional capacity, not just demographics, drives attendance recovery.

The Distribution

Among the 106 districts with active improvement streaks, the median total improvement was meaningful, not just statistical noise. The range runs from modest single-digit improvements in districts that were already relatively low to the dramatic 40+ point drops in districts that started at crisis levels.

Why This Matters

The 106 districts with improvement streaks represent roughly one-quarter of all Arizona districts with enough data to measure. That means most districts have either stalled, worsened, or oscillated rather than sustaining steady improvement.

But it also means that sustained recovery is possible across district types, sizes, and demographics. The state's overall stall (only 0.6 percentage points of improvement in 2025) is not a universal condition. It is the average of districts still improving and districts that have plateaued or reversed.

Tuba City went from 57% to 28% while Peach Springs, 75 miles away on the same reservation system, stayed above 62%. Gilbert dropped to 15.6% while Mesa, its next-door neighbor, is still above 20%. The improving districts are not a random sample. They are specific places where specific people made specific choices. Figuring out what those choices were is the obvious next step.

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

One Charter Holder Now Enrolls 17,732 Students

Fri, 01 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Part of the Arizona Enrollment Series. Updated weekly.

American Leadership Academy added 2,466 students last year. That single-year gain is larger than the total enrollment of 86% of Arizona's school districts. It is also the largest annual gain in ALA's nine years of state enrollment data, and it arrived in a year when the state as a whole lost 25,998 students.

ALA now enrolls 17,732 students across 15 campuses in the Phoenix metro area, making it Arizona's 12th-largest district-level entity. It is larger than Queen Creek Unified, larger than the Glendale Union High School District, and larger than every district in southern Arizona except Tucson Unified. Eight years ago, it enrolled 7,904.

The trajectory

The growth has not been steady. It has accelerated. Between 2018 and 2022, ALA averaged 758 new students per year. Between 2022 and 2026, that average more than doubled to 1,698 per year. The 2025-26 gain of 2,466 students, a 16.2% year-over-year jump, is the steepest in ALA's dataset.

The acceleration follows a pattern visible in ALA's finances. In October 2024, the organization closed a $201.6 million bond deal to acquire its Mesa North campus, complete construction on a performing arts center, and refinance prior debt. The bond prospectus projected enrollment reaching 25,000 by fiscal year 2028, which would require adding roughly 3,600 students per year for two more years.

At that scale, ALA would surpass Paradise Valley Unified (25,027), currently Arizona's seventh-largest district, and rival Deer Valley Unified (31,150) for fifth.

A single entity outpacing whole networks

What makes ALA unusual is not just its size but its organizational structure. Legacy Traditional Schools, the largest charter network in Arizona by combined enrollment, serves 20,585 students, but it does so across 21 separately chartered entities. BASIS Schools operates 22 entities enrolling 14,828 students combined. ALA's 17,732 students flow through one charter holder operating 15 campuses.

As a single charter holder, ALA accounted for 12.7% of all enrollment growth among Arizona's 211 growing districts between 2018 and 2026. One entity, one-eighth of the growth. Its share of total state enrollment has risen from 0.71% to 1.65% in eight years.

Who ALA enrolls

ALA's student body is 62.9% white in a state where white students make up 32.3% of total enrollment, a 30.6 percentage-point gap. Hispanic students, who represent 49.2% of Arizona's enrollment statewide, account for 24.4% of ALA's students.

The gap is narrowing. ALA's white share has fallen 12.7 percentage points since 2018, when it stood at 75.6%. Its Hispanic enrollment has quadrupled from 1,079 to 4,321 students, a 300.5% increase that far outpaces the network's overall 124.3% growth rate. But the convergence is slow: at the current pace, ALA's white share would not reach the state average for decades.

ALA's demographic profile resembles the East Valley suburbs where its campuses cluster. Queen Creek Unified is 61.9% white. Higley Unified is 58.9% white. Gilbert Unified is 55.4% white. ALA's 62.9% falls within the range of its host communities, which suggests the network's demographics partially reflect geography rather than selective enrollment.

Separately, ALA's service populations tell a different story. Students who are English learners make up 1.9% of ALA's enrollment compared to 10.3% statewide. Students with special needs account for 10.8% versus 14.3% statewide. Students who are economically disadvantaged represent 36.3% of ALA's enrollment versus 52.1% across Arizona. (The statewide figure jumped roughly 11 percentage points in 2024-25 due to a Community Eligibility Provision reporting change, so the gap may be overstated.) These gaps are common among high-growth charter operators and can reflect differences in the families who seek out charter schools, differences in identification practices, or both. The data does not distinguish between the two.

How ALA fits into Arizona's school choice landscape

ALA's growth is happening inside a school choice ecosystem unlike any other in the country. Arizona's Empowerment Scholarship Account program has grown to 92,362 participants as of September 2025, with a projected cost exceeding $1 billion in fiscal year 2026. The ESA program primarily draws families already outside the traditional public system: roughly 71% of universal ESA participants were previously in private school or homeschool, not public school.

The families choosing ALA are making a different choice. They are staying within the public system but selecting a charter operator that, according to its founding mission, provides education "in a moral and wholesome environment." ALA is tuition-free and open-enrollment, operating under the same state testing and accountability requirements as any traditional district.

The growth also coincides with East Valley suburbanization. Queen Creek's population grew 8.1% between 2023 and 2024, the fastest rate in the East Valley. New rooftops mean new families, and ALA has been opening campuses to meet them. But population growth alone does not explain why ALA is growing while Queen Creek Unified, in the same geography, grew 117.2% over the same period. Both are absorbing the suburban boom. ALA is doing it under a single charter.

Research on Arizona charter demographics has found persistent patterns.

"Enrollment data show the schools don't match the school age demographics of the state and, in many cases, their neighborhoods." -- Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, Feb 2016

ASU researcher Jeanne Powers has documented that Arizona school segregation has increased over the past 25 years even as the student population has diversified, with white students attending schools that are disproportionately white relative to their share of total enrollment. That pattern is not unique to charters. It mirrors residential sorting across the Phoenix metro, where housing prices and development patterns concentrate demographic groups by community.

What the data shows and doesn't

The data shows ALA growing fast and enrolling a whiter, more affluent, and less linguistically diverse student body than Arizona's average. It does not show why individual families choose ALA over their neighborhood school. The network's low English learner rate (1.9% vs. 10.3% statewide) could reflect that non-English-speaking families are less likely to navigate the charter application process, that ALA's campuses are located in areas with fewer immigrant families, or that ALA's instructional model does not prioritize bilingual services. All three are plausible; none is confirmed by the enrollment data alone.

The bond market, at least, is confident. ALA's October 2024 bond sale attracted more than 50 investors and achieved what Baird described as "the lowest interest rate spreads to the tax exempt market index achieved for a non-rated charter school bond nationwide since January 2023." Whether ALA reaches 25,000 students by 2028, as its financials project, depends on whether the East Valley keeps building and whether families keep choosing a single charter operator over the traditional districts next door.

Arizona lost 72,026 students between 2020 and 2026. ALA gained 7,767 over that same span. One entity, one-eighth of the growth, in a system that is contracting everywhere else.