In this series: West Virginia Chronic Absenteeism.

Independence Middle School in Raleigh County^↗ET posted an 87.1% attendance rate in 2024-25. Independence High School posted 88.3%. Together, the two Independence schools anchor the bottom of Raleigh County's attendance rankings.

Raleigh County as a whole fell to 90.6% in 2024-25, its lowest attendance rate on record. The county is the 6th largest traditional school district in West Virginia with 9,156 students and one of only three traditional counties — alongside Kanawha and Logan — at all-time lows.

WV Explorer describes Beckley as Raleigh County's county seat.

One of five that worsened

Raleigh is among the five counties whose attendance in 2024-25 is worse than at the 2021-22 pandemic trough. The county posted 90.8% at the trough, edged up to 91.5% in 2023-24, then fell back to 90.6%. The trajectory is not a failure to recover — it is a recovery that reversed.

The 2018-19 rate of 92.7% now looks like it belonged to a different county. Raleigh has lost 2.1 percentage points since then, translating to roughly 3.8 additional missed days per student per year. Across 9,156 students, that is approximately 35,000 lost student-days annually.

Eight schools below 90%

Eight of Raleigh County's 26 schools posted attendance below 90% in 2024-25. Independence Middle (87.1%), Independence High (88.3%), and Liberty High (88.5%) are the lowest. Woodrow Wilson High School, the county's largest school at 1,199 students, managed 90.3% — barely above the threshold.

Shady Spring High posted 91.2%, and most of the county's elementary schools were higher still. Direct evidence: the county's attendance problem is not evenly distributed across its schools; it is concentrated in a set of secondary schools and lower-attendance elementary schools.

Three counties at record lows

Only three traditional counties in West Virginia posted all-time low attendance in 2024-25 (excluding the anomalous 2021): Logan (87.9%), Raleigh (90.6%), and Kanawha (91.4%). All three rank in the state's 15 largest traditional districts, and all three are among the five counties that worsened since the trough.

The pattern is striking because it runs counter to the statewide narrative. West Virginia's overall attendance improved from 90.9% to 92.3% between 2022 and 2025. Kanawha, Raleigh, and Logan counties all moved the other direction.

Raleigh County, at 90.6%, is above the four coal counties that fall below 90% (McDowell, Logan, Boone, Wyoming) but below 48 of the state's 55 counties.

Suggestive context: Beckley is often described as southern West Virginia's largest city and a regional center for shopping, health care, higher education, tourism, and government, according to WV Explorer. The county's rate suggests that regional-center status does not insulate a district from the attendance challenges that have defined post-pandemic West Virginia.

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