When Oregon students miss school, they miss opportunities to learn. Oregon’s serious attendance problem breeds the state’s poor K-12 performance and undermines Oregon’s future.

At least, the state is slowly focusing on attendance.

New data released by the state show Oregon had an overall rate of chronic absenteeism of 17 percent last year. Chronic absenteeism is defined as being absent 10 or more days a year.

It was not just a bad year. Oregon has had one of the worst rates in the country.

Central Oregon schools generally perform worse than the state average. Jefferson and Crook county schools had even more acute issues. High school and kindergarten students tend to have the poorest attendance. And as you might guess, students from low-income families have been more likely to be chronically absent. The loss in learning from poor attendance is believed to be one of the most significant factors in hurting a child’s ability to make it to graduation.

The Children’s Institute, a nonprofit, has been working with the state to try to tackle the absenteeism problem. It wrote in 2014 that a first step Oregon needed was to make the data available. Even that has been an issue.

In 2012, the state started keeping better track of absenteeism for sixth-graders. But this is the first year that the Oregon Department of Education planned to release the overall data on its own.

Some success has been found in districts that task staff members to specifically identify and work with students with attendance issues. Districts in Central Oregon have already been doing that. But the issues staff uncover aren’t easily solved by educators. The problem is often instability beyond the classroom. Marriages fall apart. Jobs get lost. Home can be uncertain.

State officials and local educators must intensify their efforts to figure out which practices are effective.