While high school attendance may not be an exciting topic of conversation, it is extremely important for our students. Attendance is crucial for student success at any level.
Poor attendance can affect many areas of the student’s academic career as well their life beyond high school. There are many factors involved in why students miss school and this is why we use a multi-system approach to work with students and families in order to correct these issues.
We offer education and counseling on the importance of good school attendance as well as class incentives to foster a positive climate for student success. We work not only with the student but families as well in order to help better understand why attendance is important. The Texas attendance laws can be a little confusing so hopefully we can shed a bit of light on the subject.
There are two main at tendance rule s/ laws that sometimes get misunderstood. The first one is the compulsory attendance law which states that students ages 6-19 must attend school each day that instruction is provided.
The second attendance rule/law is the 90% rule. This states that students have to be in class at least 90% of the time in order to receive class credit. The average school year is roughly 180 days. So students can only miss 18 days of a specific class before the 90% rule affects their class credit. These absences can be either excused or unexcused. Both count towards the 90% rule with unexcused absences also counting towards truancy.
This is why it is very important for students to bring a doctor’s note if they miss school to ensure they are not truant. If a student's attendance falls below 90%, measures are put into place in order to bring that student’s attendance back into compliance with the State of Texas.
The bottom line is good school attendance is vital to student success in and beyond high school.
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