Correction: This article was updated to reconcile its district and subgroup figures with current New York State Education Department data and remove explanations the published record could not support.

In 2019, Yonkers City School District^↗ET had a chronic absenteeism rate of 19.7%. New York's published statewide rate was 18.6%, putting Yonkers 1.1 points above the state.

Five years later, Yonkers' rate was 44.8%. The district reported 22,010 enrolled students and 9,867 students who were chronically absent in 2024. The rate was more than twice its 2019 level, although it had declined from a 49.0% peak in 2022.

From average to outlier

Yonkers' rate increased 25.1 percentage points from 2019 to 2024, the largest change among the five named New York city districts in this comparison: Buffalo, Rochester, Yonkers, Syracuse and Albany.

The pattern was not a single-year spike. Yonkers rose to 49.0% in 2022, then eased to 45.1% in 2023 and 44.8% in 2024. The two later declines reduced the peak by 4.2 points, but left the 2024 rate 25.1 points above 2019.

In 2024, Yonkers was 17.5 points above New York's 27.3% statewide rate. The comparison chart shows the district's earlier near-state position and its later divergence.

A district-wide pattern in the published groups

Among five published race, economic and language groups, chronic absenteeism ranged from 31.4% for White students to 48.2% for Black students: a 16.8-point spread. The rates were 48.0% for students identified as economically disadvantaged, 47.5% for Hispanic students and 43.1% for English learners.

The published data show elevated rates across each of these groups, but they do not identify which local conditions or interventions caused the change. The mechanism remains unresourced in this analysis.

Yonkers improved in each of the two releases after 2022, but its 2024 rate remained far from its near-state position in 2019.

The figures come from New York State Education Department chronic-absenteeism data; the NYSED accountability data portal provides the public source.

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