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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In order to secure the most recent State rulings on school attendance and to make the study as reliable as possible, a draft copy of the compilation of law for each State was sent to the chief State school officer. Many of the chief State school officers forwarded the drafts to the State attorneys general. The cooperation of these State officials and their staffs is gratefully acknowledged. Statistical information was provided by the Office of Education's National Center for Educational Statistics. The advice of Miss Nelda Umbeck, author of the Office of Education's 1960 publication on compulsory attendance, is gratefully acknowledged. Others who have assisted in the collection and review of State laws, regulations, or opinions are Mrs. Jean S. Frohlicher, Dr. Irvin Himmele, Mr. Daniel P. Mullarkey, Mr. Gerald P. Laughlin, and Mr. John Darcy.

Superintendent of Documents Catalog No. FS 5.223: 23044

U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
WASHINGTON: 1966

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
Washington, D.C. 20402 - Price 55 cents

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Stockton, Calif.

INTRODUCTION

The Office of Education has periodically publishea résumés of compulsory attendance laws; the first was a report of the U.S. Commissioner of Education in 188889.1 The development of law in the direction of universal compulsory education was of primary concern in the early reports. After universal compulsory education had become a reality in the United States, the focus turned to such points as the amount of education required by law, the conditions under which minors could be exempted from the laws, the degrees to which compulsory education has been extended to the handicapped, and the development of effective means of identifying the children who should be in school and of enforcing their attendance. The States' widely diverse means of treating these points in the law are especially important today, when unemployment, poverty, and lack of personal fulfillment can often be traced to lack of adequate education. The preparation of this study was given greater emphasis and a high priority by the passage of Public Law 88-368, which requires. "the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare to make a special study of the compulsory school attendance laws and of the laws

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and regulations affecting the employment of minors with a view to determining the effects of such laws and regulations on juvenile delinquency and youth offenses."

This publication provides summaries of the current law on compulsory attendance, contained in statutes, regulations, and opinions of attorneys general and courts of law, together with the citations to the sources of law. The jurisdictions whose laws are included are the 50 States, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Hereafter the latter two will be referred to as "States." This compilation should be useful for a check or comparison of the basic points of State law on any of the listed subjects. At the same time, the citations should prove useful to researchers, law revision committees, and others interested in locating the full wording of the law, opinion, or regulation which has been summarized.

This study does not examine the legalities involved in the attendance laws of the various States. In particular, this study does not indicate the current status of the socalled “anti-commingling" provisions passed in a number of southern States after the 1954 school desegregation decision. These are included in the compilations because they are part of the State statutes dealing with school attendance.

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