What’s the Big Deal about Attendance?

Some parents have been baffled by the emphasis on attendance in public schools, especially when the parents want to take their child out of school for a trip that the parents view as educational.  Indeed, the compulsory attendance rules set a pretty high bar on attendance, as you can see here on the mytexaspublicschool.org site, designed to help parents get find basic information about public schools in Texas.

It is not surprising that for a student to learn best, the student must be in class.  But there is another reason Texas public schools are serious about attendance:  there is a link between attendance and funding.  If the student is not in class, the school does not receive funding to pay the teacher, keep the lights on, and fuel the buses — as explained here.