In this series: West Virginia Chronic Absenteeism.

Most West Virginia high schools are holding the line. 92 of 117 posted attendance rates at or above 90% in 2024-25, including Oak Glen High School in Hancock County^↗ET at 96.2% and George Washington High School in Kanawha County^↗ET at 95.2%. The state's high school average sits at 91.4%, up from the 2021-22 trough.

The 25 schools that fell below 90% are concentrated, not scattered. All 10 of the lowest are in five southern coal counties, and the deepest case (Man Senior High School in Logan County^↗ET) sits at 84.7%, meaning that on any given day, roughly one in six students is absent.

The level gap

Elementary schools averaged 93.2% attendance in 2024-25. Middle schools: 92.2%. High schools: 91.4%. That 1.8-point gap between elementary and high school is not new (it was 1.7 points before the pandemic), but the pandemic blew it open to 2.9 points at the 2021-22 trough, and it has not fully compressed.

The difference translates to days. An elementary student missed about 12 days on average in 2024-25. A high schooler missed 15.5 days, three additional days per year of instruction that a student approaching graduation did not receive.

Among elementary schools, 4.8% were below 90% attendance. Among middle schools, 10.6%. Among high schools, 21.4%. The pattern is consistent and steep: at each level transition, the share of struggling schools roughly doubles.

Coal country's concentration

All 10 of West Virginia's lowest-attendance high schools are in five southern counties: Logan (two schools), McDowell^↗ET (two), Boone^↗ET (three), Wyoming^↗ET (two), and Wayne^↗ET (one).

River View High School in McDowell County posted 85.2%. Mount View High, also McDowell, posted 85.7%. Scott High in Boone County: 86.1%. Westside High in Wyoming County^↗ET: 86.4%. These are schools where a student misses roughly one month of instruction per year.

The geographic concentration means these schools share a set of underlying conditions: economic decline from the contraction of the coal industry, limited transportation infrastructure, higher rates of poverty and substance abuse, and the cascading effects of enrollment decline that have thinned school staffs and programming. Research on attendance in Appalachian communities consistently points to transportation as a primary barrier. West Virginia spends more per student on transportation relative to instruction than any other state.

The exceptions prove the pattern

Not all high schools in economically distressed areas struggle. Tolsia High School in Wayne County posted 87.6%, still below 90% but up from 77.8% at the 2022 trough, a 9.8-point gain that represents one of the largest single-school turnarounds in the state. Wayne County as a whole gained 5.1 points since the trough, the fastest county-level recovery in West Virginia.

At the top of the spectrum, Oak Glen High School in Hancock County^↗ET posted 96.2%, and Weir High School, also in Hancock, hit 95.4%. These Northern Panhandle schools demonstrate that high school attendance rates above 95% are achievable within the state's public system.

George Washington High School in Kanawha County^↗ET, a large school with 1,085 students in the state capital, posted 95.2%, even as Kanawha County overall hit an all-time low. The within-county variation suggests that school-level factors matter at least as much as county-level conditions.

The dropout risk threshold

The 90% attendance threshold is not arbitrary. The WVDE Balanced Scorecard uses chronic absenteeism (missing 10% or more of enrolled days) as a key accountability metric. A school averaging below 90% attendance is, by definition, a school where the typical student is chronically absent.

For high schoolers, chronic absenteeism is a leading predictor of dropout. Students who are regularly attending score 48% proficient in ELA and 39.5% in math on state assessments. Among students who are chronically absent, those figures fall to 34.6% and 21.5%, respectively.

Twenty-five high schools, educating thousands of students who are within a few years of either graduating or not, have an average attendance rate that flags every student as chronically absent by definition. Huntington High School in Cabell County^↗ET, one of the state's largest at 1,458 students, is on that list at 88.2%.

The state's SB 568, which shifted truancy enforcement to a multi-tiered support model in 2024, and its Truancy Diversion Specialists now deployed in 27 counties, represent the legislative response. Whether those interventions reach the high school students in coal country who are missing a month of school each year is the test.

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