After a post-pandemic spike in the number of students who are regularly missing from school in New Jersey, chronic absenteeism has dropped but remains a bigger problem than it was nearly 10 years ago, state records show.

Data from the state Department of Education shows that the chronic absenteeism rate was 15% for the 2023-24 school year, the last for which the data is available. That means more than 190,000 of the state’s roughly 1.4 million public school students missed 10% or more school days that year, including absences that were excused and unexcused and those related to disciplinary action.

The rate had reached 18% in the 2021-22 school year. For the 2016-17 school year, the figure was 10%.

The data is more alarming when broken out into demographic groups.

More than 21% of Blac

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