The trend of school-year travel is on the rise, with more parents than ever pulling their kids out of school for vacations and educational experiences. But is this trend undermining the education system, and what are the implications for students and families?
Walk around Disneyland or Dollywood during a weekday in, say, early November, and you’ll see school-age children seemingly everywhere. With no school holidays in sight, how could this be? Are they playing hooky? School trip? Nope: It’s parents pulling their kids out of school — and picking experiences and good deals over perfect attendance.
More parents than ever (myself included) take their kids out of school multiple times per year in order to travel. For me, it’s not about theme park trips; it’s about education that goes far beyond the boundaries of our school zone or even our state.
A 2025 report from the travel company Zicasso found that more families than ever are booking trips (largely educational ones) during the school year. Requests for family trips in May, for example, more than quadrupled between 2023 and 2025, according to their data.
But school-year travel isn’t just for enrichment; it’s also because the modern school calendar has become financially (and, frankly, emotionally) unsustainable for many parents. With peak holiday airfare and hotel costs pricing families out of travel during school breaks, many find that a midweek break in early February might be the only affordable option. A spring break trip in 2025, for example, cost an average of $8,306, more than twice the price in 2019, according to Bloomberg.
The Logic Behind Attendance Rules
Hezekiah Herrera, who holds a doctorate in education and works as a K-12 special education teacher, tells Yahoo that truancy laws were created to protect children from being forced to work, often in exploitative conditions, “and to ensure that children from marginalized communities were not quietly removed from the educational system.”
Why Parents Pull Kids Out of School to Travel
While attendance regulations are in place for good reason, parents and educators alike agree that there should be exceptions. For example, no student should be penalized for taking mental health days or having a chronic medical condition that necessitates multiple absences.
The Downsides
Of course, there are pitfalls to this approach, many of which are practical: Editor and mom of two Sarah Stocking says her school-year kid trips mean that they’ve “missed fun school events that weren’t scheduled yet when travel was booked.”
Finding a Middle Ground
So, with so many of us feeling conflicted on the benefits vs. pitfalls of school-year travel amid rising costs, where do we go from here? Hezekiah Herrera has some ideas. “Rather than blaming parents for seeking out ways to travel affordably, districts should explore balanced school calendars (e.g., 45 days of school followed by 15 days off),” he suggests.
Ultimately, the decision to pull kids out of school for travel is a complex one, with both benefits and drawbacks. As parents and educators, it’s essential to weigh the pros and cons and consider what’s best for each individual child. By finding a middle ground and exploring alternative solutions, we can create a more balanced and equitable education system that works for everyone.
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