In 2024-25, over 380,000 North Carolina students were chronically absent, meaning they missed 10% or more of the school year. That equates to a month or more of missed instruction, daily routines, and peer connection.
While North Carolina continues to face a serious attendance challenge, schools across the state are also showing that significant improvement is possible. The problem is statewide, but the solutions are local.
That was the central message Dr. Shaun Kellogg, senior director of NCDPI’s Office of Research and Promising Practices, shared in a recent presentation to the North Carolina State Board of Education on a new AttendNC Bright Spots analysis and interactive dashboard, which uses statewide data to identify schools making unusually strong progress reducing chronic absenteeism.
“Too often, statewide data are used only to describe the size of the problem,” Kellogg said. “But those same data can also help us find solutions that already exist in our schools. The goal of this work is to identify places where attendance is improving in meaningful ways, learn what educators and communities are doing differently, and help other schools adapt those lessons so they can experience the same success.”
A Context-Sensitive Look at Bright Spots
Rather than looking only at raw improvement, the analysis estimates the chronic absenteeism rate expected for each school given its structural and socioeconomic context. The model considers factors such as the share of economically disadvantaged students, school enrollment, grade configuration, beginning teacher share, the school’s own 2021-22 absenteeism rate, and district context.
That matters because schools do not serve the same students under the same conditions. A rural school serving a high-poverty community faces different barriers than a larger suburban school with fewer economic challenges. A fairer comparison asks not only whether a school improved, but whether it performed better than expected given its context.
How Schools Were Identified
Bright spot schools had to meet two criteria:
- Better than expected: its observed 2024-25 chronic absenteeism rate had to be meaningfully below what the model predicted for a school with similar characteristics.
- Genuine recovery: it also had to reduce chronic absenteeism by at least five percentage points from its 2021-22 peak.
Together, those two criteria help distinguish schools that are improving in absolute terms from schools that are also outperforming expectations after accounting for context.
National attendance leaders like Hedy Chang, CEO and President of Attendance Works, have also emphasized the value of using bright spots to shift the conversation from documenting the problem to learning from places where improvement is already occurring.
“Identifying bright spots is an important strategy for demonstrating that change is possible and finding effective strategies that could be adopted by other schools and districts,” said Chang. “We are delighted to see this thoughtful approach undertaken by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. It is an inspiring example of how state departments of education can make a real difference.”
What the Analysis Found
Open the Bright Spots Dashboard
The analysis identified 310 bright spot schools across 62 counties and 75 public school units in North Carolina’s 2024-25 school year. Among traditional public schools, bright spots were distributed across 66 of North Carolina’s 115 school districts.
The median school in the bright spot group reduced chronic absenteeism by 19.2 percentage points from its 2021-22 peak, and the median share of economically disadvantaged students in these schools was 59%.
That pattern is important. By accounting for context, the model recognizes meaningful attendance improvement in schools and communities that are often overlooked when improvement is measured only through raw rates or simple statewide thresholds.
Bright spots are also geographically diverse. They span rural, suburban, and urban communities from the mountains to the coast. No single region dominates the list, and no single district accounts for an outsize share of identified schools.
Overall, the findings suggests there is not one attendance solution for North Carolina. Instead, there are likely many locally developed solutions that can be studied, adapted, and shared across similar contexts.
Designed for Learning, Not Labeling
The AttendNC Bright Spots dashboard is designed as a learning tool, not a scorecard. It is not a ranking of the “best” schools, and it does not claim that a specific program caused a school’s improvement.
Attendance trends can shift for many reasons, including enrollment changes, student mobility, reporting practices, transportation access, health needs, community conditions, staffing patterns, or the mix of students served. The model helps narrow the field to schools for closer study, but it does not replace local validation.
That is why the most important question is not simply which schools appear on the dashboard. The more useful question is what changed in those schools, what stayed consistent, and what educators and community members did differently to help improve attendance.
Building Infrastructure for Local Solutions
The bright spots work is part of AttendNC Counts, an Office of Research and Promising Practices initiative to help reduce chronic absenteeism. AttendNC Counts brings together researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to elevate promising attendance practices and support data-informed improvement in student attendance and engagement.
A key premise of the work is that education bright spots are often hidden in plain sight. Statewide data systems can make those patterns visible, but data alone are not enough. The goal is to build the infrastructure that surfaces local solutions and helps other schools learn from them.
That infrastructure follows a practical sequence: define and identify bright spots using data; discover what works through fieldwork in bright spot schools; design practical strategies with schools; discern improvement through ongoing data and feedback; and disseminate promising practices through tools and supports that help similar schools.
This approach also aligns with the broader research base on chronic absenteeism. Research suggests that absenteeism is a multi-causal challenge, not a single student behavior problem. Effective responses usually combine relationship-centered strategies with practical barrier reduction, including family outreach, early warning routines, mentoring, transportation supports, health and mental health connections, and coordinated student support systems.
What Comes Next
The next phase of the bright spots work will move from identification to validation and learning. NCDPI, in partnership with NC State University, will work with schools and districts to confirm that strong attendance recoveries reflect real, sustained improvement rather than temporary anomalies or data artifacts.
From there, the work will focus on positive deviance fieldwork: learning directly from bright spot schools, documenting the routines and conditions that may be contributing to stronger attendance outcomes, and translating those insights into practical action plans and implementation tools that other schools can adapt.
“Bright spot schools give us an opportunity to move beyond asking whether improvement is possible and start asking how it is happening,” said Dr. Callie Edwards, senior director at the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation at NC State University. “The next phase of this work is about learning directly from educators, students, families, and communities so we can better understand the daily practices, relationships, and local conditions that are helping students attend school more consistently.”
This is the essential shift. The dashboard does not end the attendance story. It creates a disciplined starting point for inquiry, site visits, peer learning, and continuous improvement.
For a state still working to reconnect students to school, North Carolina’s attendance bright spots offer something valuable: visible evidence that improvement can happen, and a practical path for learning from the schools already demonstrating it.
Related Resources
AttendNC Bright Spots dashboard