Just to clarify, the ‘illegal’ absences have nothing to do with whether or not the student gets the material. It has everything to do with how much money the school gets from the federal gov’t for each kid crammed in the classroom.
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Students don’t do equally well if they’re tardy. Instruction starts as soon as they enter, not when the bell rings. They’re supposed to do a warm-up exercise when they get in, preparing them for the lesson ahead. When they show up 1-10 minutes late, they miss that exercise, and more often than not, when I assign the class work to do in class, they’re the ones who’re asking me to re-teach them what they wouldn’t’ve missed had they been on time.
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Students who’re tardy disrupt the instruction that is happening when they arrive. Many are cocky about being late, and make it a point to get a laugh when they arrive.
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If the student isn’t in my class, they’re probably being disruptive in the halls. Tying grades to promptness gets the kids out of the halls.
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Tied with the unlawful absences is the right to make up missed work. When a student is unlawfully absent, I don’t allow them to make up the work. I’ve had students not show up on test days, wait until I grade the others’ tests and hand them back, then study those for when they plan to make up the test. When they approach me to make them up, I ask, “Where’s your admit for the day you missed?” When they don’t have one, I state, “Sorry, I can’t allow you to make up the test.”
If I were teaching a college class, I probably wouldn’t have much say whether students are tardy or not. But being legally-mandated classes, the students don’t have a right to be disruptive.
My biggest problem with this policy is that it ties the student’s grade to something outside the scope of what the grade is measuring. Two students could miss the same amount of school, but the one who was sick gets a higher grade than the one who skipped, even if the one who skipped has mastered the material better.
If the student is capable of doing fine without those 10 minutes, then it isn’t really a big deal if he or she misses it. If the student does need those 10 minutes, then not getting them will lower his/her grade due to poorer performance. Why lower it artificially?
Disruptive behavior is bullshit and should not be tolerated, but it has nothing to do with the student’s academic performance.
The point of the test is to figure out how well the student has mastered the material. How can you determine this if you won’t let the student take it? Granted that doesn’t mean it’s ok to let the students cheat. There are some obvious logistal constraints here. It’s not like you can make up a new test ever time a student decides he or she is ready to be tested. That’s the whole reason we give them all at once in the first place. I’m not really sure what the best thing to do is, but giving someone a zero when that is not an accurate representation of performance probably isn’t it.
Their are many things besides tests that have a “logistical” component to them–high school is as much about what you’ve done as what you’ve learned. This includes everything from being there for PE (how do you make THAT up?) to participating in class discussions to practicing notetaking to performing labs. A high school diploma certifies what you’ve learned, but it also certifies that you’ve been trained TO learn, that you know how to be a student. This is important because in college the balence of the responsibility for learning shifts dramatically towards the student, and so a big part of a HS teacher’s job is to be sure the student is ready for that responsibility–and isn’t just coasting on natural talent. So a HS history teacher might insist on notetaking so that kids learn how to take notes, even if the actual material is simple enough for the students to remember unaided, and a HS science teacher may insist that students follow all the steps to writing up a lab even if the chemical reaction being tested is pretty damn basic and self-explanitory, because they are teaching methods as well as material–and that isn’t something that can be “made up” readily. It can be done, but the opportunity cost is so high that you want to discourage it, and one way to do that is to limit to those people whose absences were either outside of their control or extraordinary.
I thought that federal guidelines tie funding to attendance, but specifically forbid schools from tying grades to attendance.
Is that not correct?
That’s what I was told back in High School.
-FrL-
Is it really so unreasonable to expect students to regularly attend classes and to be on time?
Marc
It is reasonable to expect punctual attendance. It is also unreasonable to give them a failing grade for tardiness and nonattendance.
-FrL-
I may have mentioned this before, but it’s about my favorite excuse note.
Kenneth was in his mid-twenties and in my 10th grade English glass. I doubt that it was legal for him to be there, but he wanted to learn and I didn’t mind.
He was absent one day and brought an excuse note from his grandmother the next day:
At my school district you could miss X number of days each semester without it counting against you. Even going on school sponsered field trips (band, orchestra, cheerleading, etc) a student still had to take into account that he or she only had X number of days they could miss class. This was in Texas, so I wonder if it was a disctrict rule or if the state required students to be in class so many days per semester. Anyone know if their state requires students to be in class so many days per semester? Anyway, if someone didn’t show up enough they might be required to take the class again next semester no matter what their grade was. I think the counted it as an “incomplete” or something. I have no problem with that.
So far as tardies went, they weren’t connected to our grades at all. However, if you were more than 10 minutes late it counted as an absence.
Marc
You mean time spent on those field trips was subtracted from the absence allowance?
Yep, this meant that Moose couldn’t miss his afternoon classes every Friday because coach wanted him to prepare for the big game. Again, I don’t know if this was the decision of the district or a requirement of the state. Generally speaking, there were very few extra-curricular activities that required one to miss class regardless of what sport, art, or activity group you belonged to. In my four years of high school under these rules I think I missed two days for field trips and they weren’t even full days.
Marc
I would contact the parent and ask for their help.
As you know, there’s quite a difference between the state school system and the private system in England.
As I teach at a private school, the fact the parents are generally paying £10,000+ ($20,000) a year tends to encourage them to give us their support.
It also helps a lot if you have a decent Headmaster, who will join in effectively.
Mind you, good parents are good parents in any system.
Just like my Mum!
I don’t know when MGibson went to school, but in 1984, Texas passed House Bill 72, part of which tried to address the issue of kids who participate in so many extracurricular activities that they were missing a lot of school.
First, a student had to pass all classes with a C or better to participate in any extracurricular activities. No exceptions. Some outside organizations adopted this standard, as well.
Second, all students had a limit of five unexcused absences per semester per class. I don’t think there were limits on excused absences, which included school-sanctioned activities (but not activities held outside the purview of the school, except for religious observances, which were excused), but excessive absences meant that your grades would drop because you missed so much material. (Excused meant that you could make up missed material, but that’s it. No guarantees about grades.) If you went below a 70, you couldn’t participate for the six-week grading period. The whole period. (Now, it’s only three weeks.) Consequently, the whole absence thing became a self-correcting problem because some students were spending a lot of time making up old work, keeping up with new work, and still practicing their activities that their grades dropped. Some students of my acquaintance were encouraged to drop out of a few of their activities because of the danger to their grades.
Obviously, kids with medical issues were provided with tutoring and other services so they wouldn’t suffer academically. Kids who were just overscheduled had to take what they could get, and ISTR teachers who had grading policies that capped make-up test grades for non-medical excused absences, although there was no penalty for taking an exam or turning in an assignment early.
This was the Plano ISD.
Robin
If we are collecting data points:
Current Texas state law states that a student must attend school 90% of the days in order to get credit. Excused or unexcused don’t have any effect on this (they do effect truency, but that’s a different issue and handled by the courts)
Offical extracurricular activities do not count as absences. The student is “at school”, even if they aren’t in class.
Students who miss more than the 90% may appeal to an attendance commitee, which has a great deal of latitude to make determinations. At least at my school. they tend to try very hard to find ways to work with the kids.
Students with long-term health issues (childbirth, frankly, being the most common at my school) are put on homebound instruction where they get work sent home and a tutor.
In practice, this is not perfectly observed by any means, but that’s the theory.
BTW, Robyn, pass-to-play still applies the entire six weeks in TX: they can get re-eligible after 3 weeks only if they can prove they are again passing all their classes, not just the one(s) they were failing before. And that IS strictly enforced, at least for anything competitive. People are a little more lax about kids showing up after school for key club projects if they aren’t eligible.
I knew about the three weeks’ suspension, but not about it applying to all six weeks.
That said, I think most students involved in academic pursuits tend to care about their grades a great deal and don’t let their activities take over their lives. The exception was the ROTC classmate who lived, breathed, slept and ate ROTC for four years because he was angling for a nomination to the Air Force Academy. He didn’t make it, but he was able to get into a fairly good college on a full USAF ROTC scholarship. But even he was able to keep his grades up.
Robin
Well color me informed. We were told that our absences would count against the total allowed for the semester, this was P.I.S.D. back in the early-mid 90’s. Of course being told something and having that something be true aren’t always the same thing.
Marc
Well, what we are told ( and the same caveat applies) is that it is not an absence and we are not to mark students absent. if we do, they fix it in the attendance office.
To respond to Ms Robyn, in my experience kids who are involved do make up all the work that is graded–what they can’t and don’t make up are the less quantifiable aspects of the class and that does show. Last year we had a kid make a 2 (failing) on the AP World History exam who should NEVER have made a 2–but he missed 6th period World History 22 days in the spring because of baseball, and while he could cram on what he missed to do ok on tests, when it came to long term retention, he flubbed it. Not saying that means he shouldn’t play baseball (though I don’t entirely understand why they have to miss so very many days), but that there is a trade off there and parents and students need to acknowledge and accept it.
What a great statement! I think you just described every dedicated teacher in the world in one sentence!
Part? How about 99%?
Why not? It is great training for the real world.
I fire people who can’t make it to work on time. I don’t buy from vendors who can’t make it to meetings on time. I don’t hire candidates who don’t make it to the interview on time.
UNLESS they have a good excuse.
The school system is using the same set of rules that the working world uses. If you are sick or otherwise detained, let the boss/client know and it is fine. Skip work too many times due to a hangover, and you will no longer interact with me on a professional basis.
If part of the grade is ability to show up in class, then the student has failed in one area.
My school had rules that you could not graduate if you missed over 18 days during the school year, regardless of reason. I hit 18 with legit and semi-legit reasons, but I tracked those days closely.
This is closer to how my district policy was (back in the hair-sprayed '80s). I routinely abused the policy to its limits in high school, 10 missed days per quarter was common for me and no one cared as long as there was a parent’s note. What also played a factor, was that I was also seen as a bright kid and as long as I was getting As and Bs, my teachers didn’t feel the effort of enforcing policy was worth pursuing.
More than 3 days in sequence required a doctor’s note by policy, but in practice all the school would do would be to also call the parent to verify the parental note.