Buffalo
97% of Sizable New York Districts Remained Above Their 2019 Absence Rate
Among 571 New York districts with at least 500 students in both 2018-19 and 2023-24, only 17 had a chronic absenteeism rate at or below their 2019 rate in 2024. That was 3.0% of the fixed district uni...
Pre-K Grew 26% While Kindergarten Hit a 22-Year Low
For every kindergartner who disappeared from New York's public schools over the past 14 years, the state added a fraction of a Pre-K student to replace them. That fraction never came close to one-for-...
Rochester Has Declined 17 Straight Years
In 22 years of New York State enrollment data, Rochester has grown exactly twice: once in 2006, by 238 students, and once in 2009, by 49. Every other year the district shrank. Since that last blip of ...
475 New York Districts at All-Time Lows
In a typical year, a few dozen New York school districts touch their lowest enrollment on record. In 2026, 475 did.
Rochester's Absenteeism Crisis Has Plateaued at 63%
Rochester City School District improved its chronic absenteeism rate from 67.7% in 2022 to 63.0% in 2023. Then it stopped. In 2024, the rate was 63.1% — essentially unchanged, a rounding error's diffe...
One in Six NYC Students Now Attends a Charter School
In 2005, New York's 61 charter schools enrolled 18,414 students, a rounding error in a system of 2.8 million. Twenty-one years later, 349 charter schools serve 190,105 students, 7.8% of the state's pu...