The National Center for Rural Education Research Networks (NCRERN) was founded to expand the use of evidence-based decision-making in rural education. NCRERN partners with networks of rural school districts to generate and evaluate strategies for improving student outcomes. This brief describes trends in student absenteeism and the relationship between absenteeism and achievement for students in rural districts in New York and Ohio in the years prior to districts' involvement in NCRERN. Descriptive analyses demonstrate that NCRERN districts in New York saw increases in absence rates between 2015-16 and 2018-19, while absence races in Ohio fluctuated slightly year to year. We also see that absenteeism is not driven solely by chronically absent students, that absence rates are higher among students in upper grades, and that each day absent predicts lower academic achievement, particularly in math.