MSD Warren Township: From 64% to 21% in Four Years

Tue, 29 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT

In the 2020-21 school year, MSD Warren Township^↗ recorded a chronic absenteeism rate of 63.6%. Nearly two in three students — 7,710 of 12,127 enrolled — met Indiana's chronic-absence threshold. Among Marion County's township districts, Warren had the worst rate that year.

The Indiana Department of Education defines that threshold as missing one-tenth or more of school days, including excused and unexcused absences.

Four years later, Warren Township's rate stands at 21.4%. The drop of 42.2 percentage points is the largest 2021-to-2025 decline among Indiana school corporations enrolling at least 10,000 students in 2025. Only 5 of those 33 large corporations posted the same unbroken four-year improvement pattern.

The descent, year by year

The improvement has been continuous. After the 63.6% peak in 2021, Warren fell to 37.1% in 2022, then 25.8% in 2023, 23.6% in 2024, and 21.4% in 2025. Each year was better than the last, without exception.

The pace of improvement did slow. The first drop, from 2021 to 2022, was 26.5 points. The subsequent annual drops were 11.3, 2.2, and 2.1 points. Suggestive context: the smaller later drops do not prove a specific intervention worked, but they show that the recovery did not end after the initial post-2021 reset.

Still not recovered

The optimistic framing ends at 21.4%. Warren Township's pre-COVID chronic rate ranged from 10.1% to 18.8% over the 2013-2019 period, with the 2019 figure of 18.8% itself the high point in that pre-pandemic window. The current 21.4% remains 2.6 points above that already-elevated 2019 baseline and 4.2 points above the district's 2017-2019 average of 17.2%.

Warren has recovered 94.2% of the gap between its 2021 peak and its 2019 rate. The statewide comparison is not a perfect mirror because Indiana's statewide peak came in 2022, not 2021, but the state had recovered 43.9% of its 2022-to-2019 gap by 2025. Warren's recovery also outpaces every other Marion County township district. Still, 21.4% means that more than one in five of the district's 12,814 students is chronically absent. In 2025, that was 2,743 students.

The peer comparison

Warren Township's recovery stands out against its Marion County peers. MSD Wayne Township^↗, which enrolled 17,753 students in 2025, posted a 22.1% rate — close to Warren's current level, but Wayne moved from 24.1% in 2023 to 25.7% in 2024 and 22.1% in 2025 rather than following Warren's uninterrupted descent. MSD Pike Township^↗ sits at 19.5%, while MSD Decatur Township^↗ is at 24.4%.

None of these townships achieved the kind of dramatic, sustained improvement that Warren did. The next-largest Marion County township drop was MSD Lawrence Township^↗ at 11.5 points, from 30.9% in 2021 to 19.3% in 2025. Warren's drop was nearly four times as large.

Competing explanation: Warren's 2021 spike was extreme. The district went from 18.8% in 2019 to 63.6% in 2021, a 44.8-point jump, so some recovery could reflect regression from an unusually high peak. Direct evidence: even with that caveat, Warren's four consecutive years of improvement and statewide large-district rank are real in the Indiana data.

What 21.4% means going forward

Warren Township's next phase of recovery will be harder to read than what came before. The first 42.2 points of improvement brought the district from a crisis-level spike back near other Marion County township districts. The next 4.2 points — the gap between 21.4% and Warren's 2017-2019 average of 17.2% — would move the district closer to its own late pre-pandemic baseline.

The district's four-year trajectory gives it credibility that few large Indiana corporations can claim. Whether it can translate that momentum into a fifth year of improvement, pushing below 20% for the first time since 2020, will be the next test of Warren Township's recovery.

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

MSD Warren Township - EdTribune IN - Indiana Education Data

MSD Warren Township: From 64% to 21% in Four Years

The descent, year by year

Still not recovered

The peer comparison

What 21.4% means going forward