Richard Montgomery High School teacher complains about chronic absenteeism

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just to clarify with the issue of parents saying they don't correct their kids being mistakenly being marked absent, the issue isn't that parents aren't making an effort to correct the records.

The issue is when showing that their school's attendance rates might not be where they would like it, they come with the excuse, "oh well, they make mistakes in taking attendance"

Same thing when showing low proficiency rates, "oh my kid had a bad day and is why they got a low test score..."

I know my kid was at school yesterday taking a test all day. Got an email saying they were absent. Not fixing it.

I will bet everything I have that your kid is not a high performing kid. Am I right?

I’m not the PP whom you are addressing, but I am one of the PPs who doesn’t fix the many absences that MCPS erroneously records for a single period out of a day. My kid attended a CES, a criteria-based middle school magnet, and is a senior in a criteria-based high school magnet. Kid will have completed 12 APs by graduation and currently has a 4.9 GPA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: I am a teacher. The issue is that you can be absent for 25 days out of a month and there are no consequences. For example, you can be absent for 25 days out of the month and then at the end of the marking period, the school wants to have you give out work to bring up their grade. They can turn everything in within the last 5 days and they pass the class even if they did not go to class. It is impossible to retain a child at this point. They all pass. There are threats but there are no follow through.

There aren’t 25 school days in a month. Do you mean they can miss 25 days out of a marking period? How are they able to complete enough of the required grades in the final week to pass? Are they taking multiple tests that week? Or MCPS just makes you pass them with whatever grades they have?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just to clarify with the issue of parents saying they don't correct their kids being mistakenly being marked absent, the issue isn't that parents aren't making an effort to correct the records.

The issue is when showing that their school's attendance rates might not be where they would like it, they come with the excuse, "oh well, they make mistakes in taking attendance"

Same thing when showing low proficiency rates, "oh my kid had a bad day and is why they got a low test score..."

I know my kid was at school yesterday taking a test all day. Got an email saying they were absent. Not fixing it.

I will bet everything I have that your kid is not a high performing kid. Am I right?

Yes they are high performing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is what you get when you have unmotivated students from poor families. You think this is happening at Whitman or Churchill?

Sooooo my kid goes to Churchill and it's true that kids are pretty on the ball and the classroom culture is pretty conducive to learning. Part of that is that the principal and most teachers actually enforce things like the cell phone policy and wearing lanyards.


But on the rare occasion that I am dropping my kid off at 7:44 or 7:45, there are still a lot of kids in the drop off line. I think 1st period it's pretty typical to have kids roll in 5-10 minutes late. Not good. But it happens.

Part of it is that Churchill has kids with means, for the most part, so they have their own cars or friends with cars or parents who have the time and/or flexibility to get them to school on time. They don't (generally) have to care for siblings or work PT jobs that make them exhausted in the way that physical labor does. So yeah. It's definitely an equity issue.

Was just coming to post this. Having parents with the flexibility to drop off kids and/or means (we've had to Uber our kid a few times) is definitely a piece of this.

Yes but although MCPS frequently implies low income h.s. students are working multiple jobs and taking care of siblings, as a teacher working in a Title I elementary school (and with friends teaching across low income middle and high schools), that is not the experience for the MAJORITY of low income students. Many teachers are more than willing to accommodate situations where the student income is needed to pay rent, buy food, etc. There are also many free resources for child care for students in poverty.

At risk of appearing judgmental, many of the low income families at my school have 4, 5, 6 kids. It’s not uncommon for my students to have siblings in their teens and 20’s. The more kids you have, the less resources available for the family. We can’t keep sacrificing the entire educational system to try and meet the needs of a few — instead, we should concentrate on developing robust tutoring programs, increasing counselors, PPW’s, community liaisons, etc. for the students who are falling behind because they are watching siblings or working to help support the family.

I agree high schools start too early, but my kids, and the majority of their friends, all had part time jobs and heavily participated in sports while attending high school. We need to do a better job of teaching and empowering kids how to ask for help, which is a life skill.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think this problem is at all limited to first period, but I do think having such early start times might contribute to overall truancy because for parents who struggle to get their kids to school on time (or kids who struggle to get there on their own) it starts the day off on the wrong foot.

I've worked a lot with kids who have school avoidance issues. One thing you discover is that for a kid who is has a lot of reasons for not wanting to be at school (the most common are social issues or learning problems that make school a stressful and unwelcoming place for them), how the day starts matters. You can turn around a kid who is very school avoidant with a good homeroom teacher who starts the day off on a good note, for instance. It doesn't change the rest of the day at all but it will help that kid get through the door and in the seat, and once he's there, he is way less likely to leave.

If, on the other hand, there are major obstacles to the very first part of the day, the avoidance is triggered first thing in the morning, and it's hard to get that kid to go in even after that initial obstacle is over (i.e. to get the kid to go to 2nd period even if it's a class they like okay and it doesn't have the issues that homeroom does).

So having an early start time and a culture of absenteeism in homerooms, and then the school just tacitly overlooking that absenteeism, is going to impact the full day attendance because for any kid who has reasons for wanting to avoid school, you've just provided them with multiple reasons not to show up for the start of school, which is going to roll into the rest of the day for these kids. You need to find a way to get them sitting in that homeroom seat to start the day.

I think pushing start times back 30 minutes would help a lot. I know there are issues with buses and coordinating with elementary and middle school start times. But that doesn't change the fact that the early start is likely contributing to overall truancy.

I can buy the argument that early start times are negative in the ways you say, but I don't buy that pushing the start time back 30 minutes would help. Kids will inevitably just stay up later.

So then you get to the question what level of start time would help and align with adolescent development. My guess is 1-1.5 hours, but I can't how the system could function with a start time that is delayed for high schools.

Between activities, sports and homework, if schools started an hour later, they'd have to stay up an hour later to fit everything in or get up even earlier to do sports before school which defeats the purpose. On game nights, they may not get home till 10 and then still have homework, so that pushes games back to what 11?

Yes, that’s the whole point. For the majority of teenagers, both starting and ending their day later better aligns with their circadian rhythms. The idea is to fit their schedule to their optimal sleep patterns instead of fighting biology by trying to fit their sleep into a schedule that prioritizes the convenience of adults.

You know what helps more, being engaged in things they enjoy. My kids should not be going to bed at 12-1 pm because you refuse to enforce bedtime. Mine should not give up their activities and sports because you refuse to parent.

They don’t need to give up any activity or get less sleep. You just shift everything by a modest amount of time. There are still 24 hours in a day. They’ll get home one hour later, go to bed one hour later, get up in the morning one hour later. It’s no different that when our clocks change by an hour to switch from standard time to daylight savings time and back. If you enforce a bedtime, there should be zero issues.

So, if my kids have an activity from 7-9, that shifts one hour to 8-10 or it stays the same but then they have to come home and study so they go to bed an hour later so there is zero benefit except to you not having to enforce household rules. Some kids are out till 8-9-10 regularly even with school activities. They wouldn’t go to bed at the same time, they’d go to bed at least an hour later.

Why is it we can get our kids to school and you cannot?

It doesn’t matter that your kids would go to bed an hour later because they would get to sleep in an hour later. Same number of hours in the day, same activities, same amount of sleep.

The benefit to changing high school start time is that the majority of teens cannot fall asleep early even if they are tired. A later school start time and later bedtime better aligns with teens’ natural biological rhythms. We can maintain the status quo and teens can go through life feeling chronically tired, just like night shift workers do, but that’s not great for their health.

My kids are there when school starts at 7:45, but that’s not what’s best for them. However, it really doesn’t matter what’s best for my individual family or your individual family; what matters is what is most beneficial to either the majority of students or the students with the fewest resources. Maybe that’s a schedule that aligns to natural sleep patterns. Maybe that’s the status quo so they can provide childcare for younger siblings. Our demographics have changed since MCPS studied this more than a decade ago and there are lots of changes to school programs and boundaries coming in the near future. The last study will soon be totally obsolete.

As a HS teacher I can tell you that first period is my least favourite period. The kids end up learning a lot less than the other periods. Even kids who are in class are like zombies. They are not participating and most are barely listening. Many have their heads down. And then you have the kids who are not even present in class. It is too early in the day for teenagers

Or, make the class more engaging.

You, my friend, are the problem. Please try subbing for 3 days and report back. The teacher can spend hours planning the most engaging lesson but 1.) if the kids are not in class, it doesn’t matter, 2.) we are fighting against the teenage brain and hormones, and 3.) teachers are in constant competition with screen and tech to the point some kids are not receptive to “non preferred activities.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think this problem is at all limited to first period, but I do think having such early start times might contribute to overall truancy because for parents who struggle to get their kids to school on time (or kids who struggle to get there on their own) it starts the day off on the wrong foot.

I've worked a lot with kids who have school avoidance issues. One thing you discover is that for a kid who is has a lot of reasons for not wanting to be at school (the most common are social issues or learning problems that make school a stressful and unwelcoming place for them), how the day starts matters. You can turn around a kid who is very school avoidant with a good homeroom teacher who starts the day off on a good note, for instance. It doesn't change the rest of the day at all but it will help that kid get through the door and in the seat, and once he's there, he is way less likely to leave.

If, on the other hand, there are major obstacles to the very first part of the day, the avoidance is triggered first thing in the morning, and it's hard to get that kid to go in even after that initial obstacle is over (i.e. to get the kid to go to 2nd period even if it's a class they like okay and it doesn't have the issues that homeroom does).

So having an early start time and a culture of absenteeism in homerooms, and then the school just tacitly overlooking that absenteeism, is going to impact the full day attendance because for any kid who has reasons for wanting to avoid school, you've just provided them with multiple reasons not to show up for the start of school, which is going to roll into the rest of the day for these kids. You need to find a way to get them sitting in that homeroom seat to start the day.

I think pushing start times back 30 minutes would help a lot. I know there are issues with buses and coordinating with elementary and middle school start times. But that doesn't change the fact that the early start is likely contributing to overall truancy.

I can buy the argument that early start times are negative in the ways you say, but I don't buy that pushing the start time back 30 minutes would help. Kids will inevitably just stay up later.

So then you get to the question what level of start time would help and align with adolescent development. My guess is 1-1.5 hours, but I can't how the system could function with a start time that is delayed for high schools.

Between activities, sports and homework, if schools started an hour later, they'd have to stay up an hour later to fit everything in or get up even earlier to do sports before school which defeats the purpose. On game nights, they may not get home till 10 and then still have homework, so that pushes games back to what 11?

Yes, that’s the whole point. For the majority of teenagers, both starting and ending their day later better aligns with their circadian rhythms. The idea is to fit their schedule to their optimal sleep patterns instead of fighting biology by trying to fit their sleep into a schedule that prioritizes the convenience of adults.

You know what helps more, being engaged in things they enjoy. My kids should not be going to bed at 12-1 pm because you refuse to enforce bedtime. Mine should not give up their activities and sports because you refuse to parent.

They don’t need to give up any activity or get less sleep. You just shift everything by a modest amount of time. There are still 24 hours in a day. They’ll get home one hour later, go to bed one hour later, get up in the morning one hour later. It’s no different that when our clocks change by an hour to switch from standard time to daylight savings time and back. If you enforce a bedtime, there should be zero issues.

So, if my kids have an activity from 7-9, that shifts one hour to 8-10 or it stays the same but then they have to come home and study so they go to bed an hour later so there is zero benefit except to you not having to enforce household rules. Some kids are out till 8-9-10 regularly even with school activities. They wouldn’t go to bed at the same time, they’d go to bed at least an hour later.

Why is it we can get our kids to school and you cannot?

It doesn’t matter that your kids would go to bed an hour later because they would get to sleep in an hour later. Same number of hours in the day, same activities, same amount of sleep.

The benefit to changing high school start time is that the majority of teens cannot fall asleep early even if they are tired. A later school start time and later bedtime better aligns with teens’ natural biological rhythms. We can maintain the status quo and teens can go through life feeling chronically tired, just like night shift workers do, but that’s not great for their health.

My kids are there when school starts at 7:45, but that’s not what’s best for them. However, it really doesn’t matter what’s best for my individual family or your individual family; what matters is what is most beneficial to either the majority of students or the students with the fewest resources. Maybe that’s a schedule that aligns to natural sleep patterns. Maybe that’s the status quo so they can provide childcare for younger siblings. Our demographics have changed since MCPS studied this more than a decade ago and there are lots of changes to school programs and boundaries coming in the near future. The last study will soon be totally obsolete.

As a HS teacher I can tell you that first period is my least favourite period. The kids end up learning a lot less than the other periods. Even kids who are in class are like zombies. They are not participating and most are barely listening. Many have their heads down. And then you have the kids who are not even present in class. It is too early in the day for teenagers

Or, make the class more engaging.

You, my friend, are the problem. Please try subbing for 3 days and report back. The teacher can spend hours planning the most engaging lesson but 1.) if the kids are not in class, it doesn’t matter, 2.) we are fighting against the teenage brain and hormones, and 3.) teachers are in constant competition with screen and tech to the point some kids are not receptive to “non preferred activities.”

Bad excuses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think this problem is at all limited to first period, but I do think having such early start times might contribute to overall truancy because for parents who struggle to get their kids to school on time (or kids who struggle to get there on their own) it starts the day off on the wrong foot.

I've worked a lot with kids who have school avoidance issues. One thing you discover is that for a kid who is has a lot of reasons for not wanting to be at school (the most common are social issues or learning problems that make school a stressful and unwelcoming place for them), how the day starts matters. You can turn around a kid who is very school avoidant with a good homeroom teacher who starts the day off on a good note, for instance. It doesn't change the rest of the day at all but it will help that kid get through the door and in the seat, and once he's there, he is way less likely to leave.

If, on the other hand, there are major obstacles to the very first part of the day, the avoidance is triggered first thing in the morning, and it's hard to get that kid to go in even after that initial obstacle is over (i.e. to get the kid to go to 2nd period even if it's a class they like okay and it doesn't have the issues that homeroom does).

So having an early start time and a culture of absenteeism in homerooms, and then the school just tacitly overlooking that absenteeism, is going to impact the full day attendance because for any kid who has reasons for wanting to avoid school, you've just provided them with multiple reasons not to show up for the start of school, which is going to roll into the rest of the day for these kids. You need to find a way to get them sitting in that homeroom seat to start the day.

I think pushing start times back 30 minutes would help a lot. I know there are issues with buses and coordinating with elementary and middle school start times. But that doesn't change the fact that the early start is likely contributing to overall truancy.

I can buy the argument that early start times are negative in the ways you say, but I don't buy that pushing the start time back 30 minutes would help. Kids will inevitably just stay up later.

So then you get to the question what level of start time would help and align with adolescent development. My guess is 1-1.5 hours, but I can't how the system could function with a start time that is delayed for high schools.

Between activities, sports and homework, if schools started an hour later, they'd have to stay up an hour later to fit everything in or get up even earlier to do sports before school which defeats the purpose. On game nights, they may not get home till 10 and then still have homework, so that pushes games back to what 11?

Yes, that’s the whole point. For the majority of teenagers, both starting and ending their day later better aligns with their circadian rhythms. The idea is to fit their schedule to their optimal sleep patterns instead of fighting biology by trying to fit their sleep into a schedule that prioritizes the convenience of adults.

You know what helps more, being engaged in things they enjoy. My kids should not be going to bed at 12-1 pm because you refuse to enforce bedtime. Mine should not give up their activities and sports because you refuse to parent.

They don’t need to give up any activity or get less sleep. You just shift everything by a modest amount of time. There are still 24 hours in a day. They’ll get home one hour later, go to bed one hour later, get up in the morning one hour later. It’s no different that when our clocks change by an hour to switch from standard time to daylight savings time and back. If you enforce a bedtime, there should be zero issues.

So, if my kids have an activity from 7-9, that shifts one hour to 8-10 or it stays the same but then they have to come home and study so they go to bed an hour later so there is zero benefit except to you not having to enforce household rules. Some kids are out till 8-9-10 regularly even with school activities. They wouldn’t go to bed at the same time, they’d go to bed at least an hour later.

Why is it we can get our kids to school and you cannot?

It doesn’t matter that your kids would go to bed an hour later because they would get to sleep in an hour later. Same number of hours in the day, same activities, same amount of sleep.

The benefit to changing high school start time is that the majority of teens cannot fall asleep early even if they are tired. A later school start time and later bedtime better aligns with teens’ natural biological rhythms. We can maintain the status quo and teens can go through life feeling chronically tired, just like night shift workers do, but that’s not great for their health.

My kids are there when school starts at 7:45, but that’s not what’s best for them. However, it really doesn’t matter what’s best for my individual family or your individual family; what matters is what is most beneficial to either the majority of students or the students with the fewest resources. Maybe that’s a schedule that aligns to natural sleep patterns. Maybe that’s the status quo so they can provide childcare for younger siblings. Our demographics have changed since MCPS studied this more than a decade ago and there are lots of changes to school programs and boundaries coming in the near future. The last study will soon be totally obsolete.

As a HS teacher I can tell you that first period is my least favourite period. The kids end up learning a lot less than the other periods. Even kids who are in class are like zombies. They are not participating and most are barely listening. Many have their heads down. And then you have the kids who are not even present in class. It is too early in the day for teenagers

Or, make the class more engaging.

You, my friend, are the problem. Please try subbing for 3 days and report back. The teacher can spend hours planning the most engaging lesson but 1.) if the kids are not in class, it doesn’t matter, 2.) we are fighting against the teenage brain and hormones, and 3.) teachers are in constant competition with screen and tech to the point some kids are not receptive to “non preferred activities.”

Bad excuses.

Don’t forget unsupportive parents…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is what you get when you have unmotivated students from poor families. You think this is happening at Whitman or Churchill?

Sooooo my kid goes to Churchill and it's true that kids are pretty on the ball and the classroom culture is pretty conducive to learning. Part of that is that the principal and most teachers actually enforce things like the cell phone policy and wearing lanyards.


But on the rare occasion that I am dropping my kid off at 7:44 or 7:45, there are still a lot of kids in the drop off line. I think 1st period it's pretty typical to have kids roll in 5-10 minutes late. Not good. But it happens.

Part of it is that Churchill has kids with means, for the most part, so they have their own cars or friends with cars or parents who have the time and/or flexibility to get them to school on time. They don't (generally) have to care for siblings or work PT jobs that make them exhausted in the way that physical labor does. So yeah. It's definitely an equity issue.

Was just coming to post this. Having parents with the flexibility to drop off kids and/or means (we've had to Uber our kid a few times) is definitely a piece of this.

Yes but although MCPS frequently implies low income h.s. students are working multiple jobs and taking care of siblings, as a teacher working in a Title I elementary school (and with friends teaching across low income middle and high schools), that is not the experience for the MAJORITY of low income students. Many teachers are more than willing to accommodate situations where the student income is needed to pay rent, buy food, etc. There are also many free resources for child care for students in poverty.

At risk of appearing judgmental, many of the low income families at my school have 4, 5, 6 kids. It’s not uncommon for my students to have siblings in their teens and 20’s. The more kids you have, the less resources available for the family. We can’t keep sacrificing the entire educational system to try and meet the needs of a few — instead, we should concentrate on developing robust tutoring programs, increasing counselors, PPW’s, community liaisons, etc. for the students who are falling behind because they are watching siblings or working to help support the family.

I agree high schools start too early, but my kids, and the majority of their friends, all had part time jobs and heavily participated in sports while attending high school. We need to do a better job of teaching and empowering kids how to ask for help, which is a life skill.

Mine will not ask teachers and staff for help. There are rare teachers willing but most if the time they get blown off.