Nine Louisiana Parishes Hit All-Time High Chronic Absenteeism in 2025, Even as the State Improved

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Louisiana's statewide chronic absenteeism rate dropped 2.1 percentage points in 2025, the first improvement in two years. But that headline number obscures what happened in nine parishes moving in the opposite direction.

Winn Parish^↗, Franklin Parish^↗, St. Landry Parish^↗, Caddo Parish^↗, Vermilion Parish^↗, Evangeline Parish^↗, Lafourche Parish^↗, Richland Parish^↗, and Cameron Parish^↗ all recorded their highest chronic absenteeism rates on record in 2025, their worst year in the six years of available data.

Two in five students absent in Winn Parish

Winn Parish leads the group at 40.8%, meaning two in five students missed at least 10% of the school year. The rural North Louisiana parish of about 1,500 students was already above the state average before COVID at 24.3%, but the rate has climbed relentlessly since, from 24.5% in 2022 to 35.5% in 2023, 36.9% in 2024, and now 40.8%.

That's nearly double the statewide average of 22.5%.

Franklin Parish (31.4%) and St. Landry Parish (31.2%) also sit above 30%, alongside Caddo Parish at 31.0%. Four of the nine (Winn, Franklin, St. Landry, and Caddo) are now above the crisis threshold where nearly one in three students is chronically absent.

Caddo Parish: a recovery that evaporated

Caddo Parish tells the most instructive story among the nine. Home to Shreveport, the parish actually recovered to 19.6% chronic absenteeism by 2022, nearly back to its 2019 rate of 19.0%. It looked like a success.

Then the rates climbed every year: 27.9% in 2023, 28.2% in 2024, and 31.0% in 2025. Caddo's chronic absenteeism rate is now 12 percentage points above its pre-COVID level.

The parish had a recovery in hand and lost it: a microcosm of Louisiana's broader W-shaped attendance story, but more severe.

Diverging paths

What makes these nine parishes stand out isn't just that they worsened. It's that they worsened while 50 of Louisiana's 65 traditional parishes improved in 2025. The state's overall improvement was real and broad-based, making these parishes' continued deterioration all the more conspicuous.

The nine parishes span the state geographically: from Cameron on the Gulf Coast to Richland in the northeast, from Caddo in the northwest to Evangeline and Vermilion in Acadiana. There's no single regional explanation. Rural poverty, transportation barriers, and the lingering effects of hurricanes Laura and Ida may contribute in some parishes, but each faces its own combination of challenges.

Against the tide

The contrast between the state trend and these parishes raises a question that aggregate data cannot answer: what separates the 50 parishes that improved from the nine that got worse?

The LDOE's "Power of Presence" attendance initiative launched in 2025, and the state's overall improvement suggests it may be gaining traction. But these nine parishes, including some of the state's most chronically underresourced communities, appear to be falling outside that progress.

At 40.8%, Winn Parish is closer to having half its students chronically absent than to the state average. That gap isn't closing. It's growing.

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Franklin Parish - EdTribune LA - Louisiana Education Data

Nine Louisiana Parishes Hit All-Time High Chronic Absenteeism in 2025, Even as the State Improved

Two in five students absent in Winn Parish

Caddo Parish: a recovery that evaporated

Diverging paths

Against the tide