Attendance Policy??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought that excused absences did not count against a school for NCLB - it was unexcused ones (eg: missing school for a family trip)

No, at least not as far as I understand it. The school's "attendance rate" is just a measure of how many children are present divided by how many children are enrolled, each day. It is not a measure of truancy or unexcused absenses.

In looking for a citation for this information, though, I came across this memo on the VA Dept of ed website, which seems to me to be saying that according to the rules of NCLB, states MUST include a measure of reading and math in their assessment of school's yearly progress, but have a choice as to which ither areas to choose -- they must choose one other indication, either attendance, science, history, or writing:

http://www.doe.virginia.gov/administrators/superintendents_memos/2008/adm025.html

For a school to make AYP under NCLB, all schools that do not have a graduating class must meet the participation rate and the annual measurable performance objectives for reading and mathematics, plus their selected other academic indicator. The choice of attendance, science, history, or writing as the other academic indicator also will apply to the safe harbor AYP calculation.

If I'm reading that and understanding it correctly, that would make me really mad, if Maryland chose "attendance" when it could have chosen to measure, say kids' progress in history or science.

It is a lot cheaper to measure attendance than progress in history or science.

[Anonymous]

cheaper, yeah, but isn't the overall goal of compulsory education to be sure that the kids are actually elarning something?

I'd rather they measure progress in Social studies than preogress in forcing kids to attend school even if they are sick.

I'd have no objection to measuring progress in reducing truancy (unexcused absences).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:cheaper, yeah, but isn't the overall goal of compulsory education to be sure that the kids are actually elarning something?

I'd rather they measure progress in Social studies than preogress in forcing kids to attend school even if they are sick.

I'd have no objection to measuring progress in reducing truancy (unexcused absences).

What are you willing to give up in order to measure this?

Art? Music? Foreign Language? Kindergarten? (in many states this is not required) There are limited resources - NCLB is a joke - but a federal requirement so schools are spending the $$ testing as opposed to teaching and the testing companies made a whole lot of money the last decade.

[Anonymous]

Well, I think children should be tested each year to see how much they have learned in math, science, language arts and social studies. If Maryland gave up its Brief Constructed Responses (esp in math) and went to multiple choice only I bet they'd save a lot of money as they wouldn't have to hire and train people to score the tests.

I can understand that the writing and testing of tests take some time, but I don't see why each state needs to have its own test for elementary school. Seems logical that for most subject areas, states should band together to be able to afford great tests for not too much cost.

[Anonymous]

Thank you Op for keeping your child home when he is sick. This policy is just one of the idiotic Bush policies that needs to be changed in No Child Left Behind.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thank you Op for keeping your child home when he is sick. This policy is just one of the idiotic Bush policies that needs to be changed in No Child Left Behind.

Well, I thought that, too, until I saw that the decision to choose "attendance" as one of the ways to show progress under NCLB was essentially voluntary by the state of MD (and other states.) They could have chosen to show progress in an academic area such as Science or Social Studies. But they chose "attendance". So for MD officials to say "This is because of NCLB, there's nothing we can do about it" is a little disingenuous.

But anyhow, of course I keep my child home when he's sick. I will admit that because I work part time from home, it isn't hard to keep him home. I know if I HAD to be at work somewhere else as many people do, I probably wouldn't let him stay home with a complaint of a stomachache, which I have been known to do.