A report published in the New York Times states that kids in Harlem, Brooklyn and the Bronx missed the equivalent of a months worth of school last year due to chronic absenteeism; And that was just the elementary school students. The older grades missed as much as 40% of the state mandated educational hours. The absences are often the result of simple problems like inclimate weather as in ” it was raining.” As someone who worked in the city’s schools, I know that parents will excuse their child’s absences with everything from “I didn’t wake up on time” to “we took a 3 week vacation to the D.R.” — in the middle of the school year mind you.
I remember when I was a student in school the only acceptable reason we were absent was if we were actually sick (and we had to bring a doctor’s note or a note from home) or we had a doctor or dentist appointment. We never missed school for funerals, vacations, eye appointments, or rainy days. I remember in high school the truant officers were very visible and knew the names of all the chronic cutters (i.e., bad kids). According to the Times, the problem now is that attendance monitors are “badly outnumbered — 392 people tracking nearly 200,000 students with serious attendance problems — and struggled to cover broad swaths of the city from centralized offices, making it difficult for them to develop strong relationships with neighborhood social services agencies.”
Examining detailed attendance reports for the city’s nearly 1,500 schools, the report found that in 124 elementary schools, 98 middle schools and 41 schools serving kindergarten through eighth grade, at least 30 percent of the students were chronically absent, defined as missing 20 days of the 185-day school year. (The report did not provide the number of high schools with such absentee rates.)
The report is a one-year snapshot and does not include comparable historical data. But Education Department officials said that attendance had improved under the Bloomberg administration. Using a different standard for chronic absences — 10 consecutive days or 20 days over four months — the rate has declined, to 9 percent in 2007-8 from 11 percent in 2004-5, according to the department.
Related: Funny School Excuses [Buzzle]
edbooked
October 21, 2008
Perhaps students would be more diligent in their attendance if public school administrators stopped substituting politically motivated policies and practices for sound principles of education. Student participation is critically importing in the learning process. Yet it is the teachers who are criticized when students fail to put forth effort.
The potential, challanges, and obstacles that currently litter the public education landscape are discussed in the novel, The Twilight’s Last Gleaming On Public Education. You may purchase a copy via http://www.Xlibris.com, http://www.bn.com, http://www.borders.com, or http://www.amazon.com. This intriguing, socially relevant, and enlightening story possesses many of the elements commonly found in just about every school system throughout the United States. Check it out for youself. Discuss it with your friends. See if you can identify with the characters and situations presented. Do you agree with the proposed solutions?
brox711
October 20, 2008
I agree that we need to crack down on the absents of students, but most importantly we need to crack down on parents. These days parents will excuse their child from school for any reason. When I was in high school there were rewards that students would get for not missing more than so many days of schools, maybe this would be a good idea to bring back to the schools. Maybe it will give students more of a reason to come to school!