I’m curious as to when this attendance policy changed.
When I was in high school 5 years ago, we had a policy where you could miss 3 days of class and not have to take the final exam (if you had a B or better). We considered them personal days, and every semester without fail my friends and I would take 3 days off. We didn’t exactly hide our intentions either. Those of us over 18 would put “personal day” on the attendance slip, and our teachers were aware we’d be spending the day at the local pool hall or theme park, etc.
No, of course not. But in days past, confrontations over such things were not followed up by everything from malicious accusations of abuse and career-ending law suits to hate-mongering web sites and machine gun massacres.
Well, I generally missed about three weeks total per year, and I graduated from a Virginia high school with a Governor’s Seal diploma (GPA higher than 3.5; mine was 3.8) in 2002. Missing high school classes does fuck-all if the student is sufficiently smart and/or otherwise hardworking.
That is, of course, until the Powers That Be at the D of E deem it prudent to measure academic achievement in terms of ability to place one’s ass in a chair on a regular basis as opposed to, oh, whether or not the student has mastered the required material. I won’t be surprised if that decision comes sooner rather than later, given that during my last two years of high school, it was established that grade advancement would be partially determined by the Standards of Learning exams: statewide grade-specific standardized testing for each “core” subject which had – and, as I understand it, still have – little to nothing to do with the (also state-prescribed) curricula for those same courses, resulting in the third quarter of each year being spent abandoning any current lessons and focusing on rote memorization of answers to banal, but as yet undiscussed, questions.
Soon, though, that won’t be good enough anymore…after all, the S.O.L.s are still evaluating students based on knowledge of some kind, even if that knowledge is only tangentially relevant to the subjects at hand. Students can still pass through the public education system by becoming educated on the things the educators are educating them upon. Unacceptable! No, clearly, we must find another criterion on which to impede students’ academic development despite the insistence of some of them on continuing to learn regardless. Attendence, it seems, is just the ticket; pay no mind to such quibbles as student willingness or ability to master the concepts taught during absences, as it ought to be clear to us all by now that learning is hardly the point of the learning experience. If this doesn’t work out, we’ll just whip up requirements for posture and personal grooming habits. No child left behind, indeed.
As a footnote, I’d like to point out that none of the above snark is directed at the OP; he (I’m assuming AWB is male, please correct me if I’m wrong) is simply doing his job and trying to conduct his class without incident. I just get riled at any rule imposed by a purported “institution of learning” by which any criteria beyond knowledge and comprehension are used to measure success. I have the same problem with, for example, notebook checks; this rant just seemed more appropriate to the thread.
No shit. I can’t imagine my mother ever writing me a fake sick note–hell, it took nothing less than a 100+ degree fever for her to let me stay home when I really WAS sick. And she went to nursing school, there was no faking it. I tried one time. She looked at the thermometer, looked at me, and said “You don’t have a fever of 106. Get dressed.”
To me a policy like this says, “I have limited value as an educator, and the students in my class do equally well whether they attend classes or not. I dislike having this pointed out, and would like a way to punish students who have the affrontery to learn the material without me, thus underscoring my uselessness. Therefore, even if students who skip class demonstrate mastery of the subject superior to that of the students who attend, I plan to fail them.”
I’m sure you see it differently, I’m just not sure why.
This is yet another reason why I refuse to teach anything except university or paying clients. At least they (or someone else, if their employer is paying) want to be there enough that they’re paying to be there. And if they don’t show up for a test, not my problem.
Of course, the downside of teaching in industry is that your students can fire you…which means you have to do a fairly good job to keep employed.
Well, I had a job and my own apartment for the latter half of senior year.
It was FUN to write my own notes “I didn’t come to school yesterday because I didn’t feel good”, signed ME. Typically the not feeling good was in relation to a hangover.
I love reading these kind of threads, just to learn about the differences between America and the UK. At my school, once we were out compulsary education (16) we didn’t need notes from our parents. I didn’t need to write myself one either. I’d just explain to my tutor “I was ill.”
No, it says “My federal funding is attached to student attendance”.
It’s a more draconian policy than most, honestly, more draconian than I am comfortable with, but I will say this: kids are bad at assessing how much attendence effects their learning. I see this all the time, especially in the hightly “involved” kids who miss dozens of days for activities. They may or may not keep their grades up, but usually they get a lot less out of their assignments than they would had they had the full context of class. It’s a tradeoff–being in baseball or JROTC or whatever also adds a lot to a high school experience and I’m not going to say they shouldn’t participate–but missing class does have a signifigant impact.
The OP didn’t mention museums either, but you saw fit to bring them up. I honestly have no idea why my one comment has so consumed you that you must examine it to see whether, in your view, it means anything, is pertinent to the OP, or whatever standard it is that you are applying.
The OP told about a series of confrontational encounters with a student over time that, in this day and age (no it isn’t in the OP, but it is in the newspapers) can lead to all sorts of misfortune for the school and the teacher and the student. I therefore expressed the sentiment that there isn’t enough money to attract me to teaching today.
Would you mind terribly just letting that be an opinion of mine that has been expressed and leave it at that? Had you just left it at that to start with, and not interrogated me with your questions, there would be four fewer worthless posts to the thread.
Keep in mind, though, that America doesn’t have a single school system, so the rules are different not only in each state, but in each school district within each state. There are some national “rules” (only enforced by not giving schools federal money if they don’t comply), there are state rules, which most public schools must follow, and there are local district rules which each school in the school district (usually no more than half a dozen schools, except for really big cities like Chicago, where there are hundreds of schools in one district) must follow. Sometimes, but not always, charter and magnet schools, which are publicly funded but allowed more autonomy, don’t have to follow those rules. Private secular and private church-run schools don’t have to follow the same district or state rules, either.
So the draconian absentee rules in this thread are not necessarily representative of most, or even many, American schools.
It’s ‘so consumed’ me? Don’t flatter yourself. Just next time, don’t leave us to guess what your intent is when you make your one-line reply, and you won’t have to worry about precious time spent explaining it later.
Jesus, you’re still at it. If you really can’t figure out what someone means, ask them. And when they answer you, be satisfied. Incidentally, there’s only one of you — there’s no “us”.
When I was in high school, I was at the public school with the biggest campus in Albuquerque. We had 10 minutes to get from class to class. Anyway, a policy as described above would have sunk me in my second period class at least one year. Why? Because I had one class all the way at one end of the campus and my next class was all the way at the other end of the campus (up a hill to boot.) If I was somewhat late getting out of that first class (which often happened, it being a music class and all) I could easily be late to that second class, even at a dead run. General attendance (for the school as a whole, not for an individual class) was taken that second period. However, that second period was also 10 minutes longer because the administration would spend the first 10 minutes yapping away over the PA, so it’s not like I missed anything by being a couple minutes late. Several times, however, a call still got sent to my house–one of those machine calls that says “your child was absent from school today.” Complete BS and my parents knew it.
