In this series: West Virginia Chronic Absenteeism.

West Virginia has 55 county school systems. Fifty reported higher attendance rates in 2024-25 than in 2021-22. Five did not. Pocahontas County^↗ET had the largest shortfall.

Pocahontas County posted 91.6% attendance in 2021-22, 90.1% in 2022-23, 90.3% in 2023-24 and 90.2% in 2024-25. The small rebound in 2023-24 did not hold, leaving the county 1.4 percentage points below its 2021-22 rate.

That 1.4-point shortfall was the largest among the five counties whose 2024-25 rate remained below 2021-22.

Five schools, 791 students in the attendance denominator

Pocahontas County's ESSA full-academic-year attendance denominator covered 791 students in 2024-25, down from 927 in 2017-18. These are the students included in the attendance-rate calculation, not official enrollment totals. Its five reported schools ranged from 88.1% attendance at Pocahontas County High School to 92.2% at Hillsboro Elementary School.

Marlinton Middle reported 90.4%, Marlinton Elementary 91.1%, and Green Bank Elementary-Middle 91.6%. Those school-level figures show the range inside the county in 2024-25; they do not, by themselves, identify a cause for the countywide change.

Among the five anti-recovery counties

Pocahontas's 1.4-point decline was the largest among the five counties that worsened. Brooke County and Kanawha County were each down 0.5 points, Raleigh County was down 0.3, and Logan County was down 0.1.

The longer comparison points in the same direction: Pocahontas reported 92.5% in 2018-19, making its 2024-25 rate 2.3 points lower. The attendance data establishes the size and persistence of the shortfall, but it does not explain why the county has not recovered alongside most of the state.

Attendance data comes from the West Virginia Department of Education.

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