This is true, high absentee rates make teachers’ jobs much harder. It’s the kind of thing that seems ok when it’s just your student, but if everyone behaves that way, it harms the whole class.

> you can't teach very well if 20% of the class is absent, it just creates an absurd situation for the teachers

Why is this? If true, why this problem is not appearing in private schools that pretty universally do not object to parents taking their kids away for vacations or family events as long as kids master the material.

The teacher needs to have a program of study with specific topics covered, recommended exercises for practice and required homework to check understanding for each. If a student masters the material why does anyone care if he skipped a week? And if the student does not know the material he should get a bad grade, whether he was in every class or not.

That is how the school worked where I grew up (Eastern Europe) and it seems vastly superior to the mess we have in the US today, where many public schools teach to the lowest common denominator, making capable kids bored at best and and a nuisance to the teacher at worst.

because what's going to happen is if enough students are absent, there will be a big number of them who thought they would master the material no problem, would turn out to be wrong and then would bug the teacher incessantly to let them retake or do something to avoid bad grades. in most high schools in America or in many there are multiple difficulty courses, if your kid can master it no problem even when being absent, it is likely that this kid is not taking serious enough courses.