A lot of Americans and Westerners in general seem to ignore that reality, and will fall behind.
There absolutely is a small subset of parents like that, though being in the Bay Area, access to abortion has been fairly common for decades, especially given the affluence of the district and the relative lack of stigma, so I don't see that as playing a significant factor.
https://datacenter.aecf.org/data/tables/43-children-in-pover...
[2] https://archive.is/dXpQf/fba33991824e68e9b1ecfbde5c773bcbe92... (from [1])
EDIT: This is for Sweden where we are talking about the same issue. But I do not think we have the same numbers here.
This is a valid reason to be absent, and school administrators, teachers, and statistics take that into account.
My comment was aimed specifically at students who don't have valid physical or mental issues.
My mom's school district does not enforce suspensions for chronic absenteeism due to a subset of very affluent and litigious parents.
> This is for Sweden
Makes sense. There is no point comparing the Swedish or "American" system, as there are 13,187 different American systems that all have different norms and rules besides a handful stipulated by the DoE.
Even inter-US comparisons don't make sense for that reason.
As of 2022, Middle schools can start at 8am at the earliest, and number of school districts transitioned to a 8.30-9am start time. Some affluent school districts already did this transition in the late 2000s and early 2010s.
The US has roughy 13k school districts. Each one has it's own different sets of rules, regulations, and local political culture, and aside from limited State and Federal DoE regulation, implement their policies based on local political constraints due to the School Board and PTA.
Some School Boards and PTAs are apolitical in nature. Others are hyper-political and used as a stepping stone to enter local and state level politics (eg. Mayor, City Council, State Assembly, Congress) as donors won't donate without a proven electoral track record. Most younger (< 60yrs) Congressmembers started their political careers this way.
The brutal truth is a subset of parents just don't care too much about education. It doesn't matter if it's an affluent or a working class district - there will always be a subset of parents that are either unable to (fairly common among impoverished parents sadly) or uninterested to (fairly uncommon among more affluent parents sadly) become much more involved parents
Basically, teachers assume parents will intervene in their students lives to give structure. Parents in the other hand assume teachers will intervene to give their children structure in their lives. And neither side will budge.
Some autonomy for kids is critical, but there also needs to be some amount of structure as well. You can't be 100% disciplinarian nor 100% free roaming. A happy balance is needed, and sadly, a handful of bad apples among both teachers and parents have deteriorated that relationship among these critical caregivers.