Compulsory Education

Compulsory attendance has a long history in the United States. Horace Mann maintained that there was a connection between education and democracy, and mandatory attendance laws emerged from that belief. The Massachusetts School Attendance Act of 1852 was the first general compulsory attendance statute. Legislation in colonial Massachusetts became the model of the state's responsibility for the education and training of all children. Sixteen compulsory attendance laws were enacted in the 1870s, 22 in the 1880s, and 83 in the 1900s. There were 45 laws enacted between 1910 and 1915.

Attendance laws were also a response to immigration—education is a means of assimilation into American culture—and to the perceived relationship between illiteracy and crime. Industrialization led to greater acceptance of compulsory attendance. Preserving jobs for adult men and child labor laws increased support for compulsory attendance. The need for skill development and literacy to promote a more productive society gave further impetus to compulsory attendance laws.

The place of compulsory attendance laws in U.S. society is generally understood. The Constitution of the United States does not mention education, and the Supreme Court has held—in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez (1973)—that education is not a fundamental constitutional right. The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution provides that the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it, are reserved to the states. Thus, the responsibility for education is left to the individual states.

Education may be the most important function of state and local governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the great expenditures for education demonstrate the importance of education to democratic society. It is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right that must be made available to all on equal terms, as in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, in 1954.

One form of such state legislation is represented by compulsory education statutes. The general power of a state to enact such legislation has never been successfully challenged, and three U.S. Supreme Court cases are often cited in support of the principle that most state regulation of education, including compulsory attendance laws, is constitutionally permissible.

In Meyer v. Nebraska (1923), the Court noted that the state has the authority to both compel school attendance and regulate schools. Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925) struck down an Oregon compulsory education statute that required attendance at public school, holding that this enactment interfered unreasonably with both parental liberty interests and private school property rights and thus violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972) stands for the proposition that a state has authority to impose reasonable regulations pertaining to education, including compulsory attendance requirements. [Page 187]Each state has statutes providing for compulsory education. Each state has some statutory exemptions from the compulsory attendance requirement. Among the more common are: physical, mental, and emotional disabilities; completion of minimum education; lawful employment; suspension and expulsion; distance from school; discretion of school officials; and religious reasons.

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