Truancy In DC HS Is Shocking - Why No Urgency To Address?!!

[Anonymous]

From 911 to getting kids back in schools, it seems like the most basic functions of government are failing. What future will these kids have? What are they getting up to when NOT in school SO much of the time?

[Anonymous]

Wow, Jackson Reed is high. Maybe that's how it stays over-capacity-a 1/3 of the kids aren't there on any given day?

[Anonymous]

Are the numbers accurate?

My kids are in MCPS over the border, and the absence reports can be entirely wrong. Sometimes my kids miss class for medical appointments, and are not marked absent, and sometimes they're in school, and I get absence messages. The mistakes have become so frequent that I've stopped addressing the issue with their schools. It doesn't matter for academic standing anyway.

[Anonymous]

I assume they are relatively accurate because one school metric is percent of students present on a single day. No principal wants to explain to their superintendent why 60% of kids are absent on a Monday.

[Anonymous]

I would argue that determining an excused versus unexcused absence is not equal across the district. And parents know how to game the system- more than 1.3% of Walls kids miss 20 days of school a year- their parents just know how to get those absences excused.

[Anonymous]

What do you want DC to do about it? Put 88% of the kids at Ballou, 1/3 of the kids at JR, etc. in foster care? Put all their parents and guardians in jail? Encourage them to drop out so they don't get counted anymore? Send them to boarding school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What do you want DC to do about it? Put 88% of the kids at Ballou, 1/3 of the kids at JR, etc. in foster care? Put all their parents and guardians in jail? Encourage them to drop out so they don't get counted anymore? Send them to boarding school?

Very progressive of you to ask a bunch of questions and then claim nothing can be done because of equity.

[Anonymous]

Send the parents to mandatory parenting classes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What do you want DC to do about it? Put 88% of the kids at Ballou, 1/3 of the kids at JR, etc. in foster care? Put all their parents and guardians in jail? Encourage them to drop out so they don't get counted anymore? Send them to boarding school?

Make sure they have their basic needs - food, clothing for school (clean), school supplies, tutoring to help catch up if they are behind...

[Anonymous]

Holy crap.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would argue that determining an excused versus unexcused absence is not equal across the district. And parents know how to game the system- more than 1.3% of Walls kids miss 20 days of school a year- their parents just know how to get those absences excused.

Do you know this or are you just speculating? My kids have never missed 20 days of school in a year. Even if a student had Covid twice and went to the doctor and dentist a few times, you wouldn't get near 20 days.

[Anonymous]

For those of you with kids at Jackson-Reed, I feel those numbers are way higher then they actually are. My kids end up with so many days marked absent even when they are in school. Email the attendance counselor and nothing happens. I have finally given up wasting my energy and as long as we stay below 10 days over the year, I don't worry about it. Which is not good as they school does not have an accurate record of absences or how to address the problem. They are attempting to work on it this year so will be interesting to see new numbers.

[Anonymous]

This is 100% a parent issue and responsibility.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would argue that determining an excused versus unexcused absence is not equal across the district. And parents know how to game the system- more than 1.3% of Walls kids miss 20 days of school a year- their parents just know how to get those absences excused.

20 days is a LOT. It takes a big effort to miss that much in HS and presumably most Walls families care about academics and won’t miss that much. Also DCPS is pretty strict about how they determine excused/unexcused. Are you seriously arguing that 50% of Walls students miss 4 weeks of school and their parents give fake dr notes?

[Anonymous]

Three of the top 7 schools on this list are specifically for students who have always struggled with attendance and are overage/undercredited. So their high truancy rates aren't surprising.