The U.S. Department of Education has failed in its oversight of chronic absenteeism just as the problem remains at crisis levels in American schools, according to a new federal watchdog report, "K-12 Education: Actions to Improve Oversight of Key Federal Programs and Address High Chronic Absenteeism". At least one quarter of K-12 students were estimated to be chronically absent in recent years, defined by the Department of Education as missing 10 percent or more of school days. In 2026, the Department of Education discontinued its most comprehensive monitoring of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, as amended (ESEA), covering both programmatic and fiscal requirements, the very mechanism designed to hold states accountable for how they spend federal education dollars.
Title I fiscal requirements account for approximately two-thirds of the nearly $27 billion in ESEA funding in fiscal year 2025, and GAO warns that without active oversight, those funds face heightened risk of undetected fraud, waste, or abuse. Compounding the oversight gap, GAO found that the way Education calculates chronic absenteeism rates is itself unreliable, producing figures that are, in some cases, statistically impossible.
Chronic absenteeism has remained elevated following the COVID-19 pandemic, and Education itself cited it as a key challenge as recently as February 2026, even as it suspended the monitoring mechanism most relevant to tracking it. All states receiving Title I funding under ESEA are required to develop statewide accountability systems, and 36 states have chosen to include chronic absenteeism indicators within those systems. The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) is the most recent reauthorization of ESEA and the nation's main federal K-12 law.
The ESEA provision intended to improve oversight of funds does not explicitly direct Education to monitor grantees, nor does it include specific requirements regarding the method or frequency of monitoring activities, a statutory gap that GAO says Congress should address. GAO reviewed Education's guidance and relevant monitoring reports going back to 2019, when Education fully implemented its main ESEA monitoring strategy, and analyzed school year 2022-2023 chronic absenteeism data, the most recent available at the time of the study.
Education requires states to report the number of chronically absent students over a full school year, but requires total enrollment to be reported based on a single date. That mismatched timeframe produces unreliable and, in some cases, implausible chronic absenteeism rates, including rates exceeding 100 percent. GAO's school-level analysis found that over 30 percent of low-performing schools and shared-time schools, such as those housing career and technical education programs, had implausible rates, compared to under 2 percent for other schools.
GAO issued one matter for congressional consideration and three recommendations for executive action, all currently listed as open. The matter for Congress calls on lawmakers to clearly articulate ESEA monitoring requirements to ensure compliance and deter waste, fraud, and abuse. The three executive recommendations direct the Secretary of Education to promptly resume more comprehensive ESEA monitoring, fix the enrollment-reporting mismatch that produces unreliable absenteeism rates, and issue guidance on how states should report data for shared-time schools.
Education agreed with one of the three recommendations and disagreed with two. The Secretary of Education characterized the monitoring gap as part of a "transition year," stating: "While we were in a transition year and have not carried out consolidated monitoring, we continue to monitor across ESEA programs." GAO explicitly rejected that framing, stating it "continues to believe these actions are necessary."
All three GAO recommendations to the Department of Education and the one matter for congressional consideration remain open, meaning actions to satisfy their intent have not been taken or are being planned.
Because the ESEA provision intended to improve oversight does not explicitly direct the Department of Education to monitor grantees, nor does it include specific requirements regarding the method or frequency of monitoring, GAO has recommended that Congress consider clearly articulating those monitoring requirements to help ensure compliance and deter waste, fraud, and abuse. Whether Congress moves to codify monitoring requirements, and whether Education reverses course on its suspended oversight, will determine how much visibility the federal government retains over one of its largest domestic spending programs.
Track the status of these open recommendations at app.legis1.com.
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