Who leaked the MCPS attendance documents to the Washington Post?

[Anonymous]

Wealthy parents get very angry when it’s pointed out that they are gaming the system. Britain has fines for taking vacations when school is in session. People still do it anyway, leading to doctors who are in on the scam and will propose sham treatments conveniently requiring travel.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Start by demanding that family vacations are not excused regardless of the socioeconomic status of the family. Write letters to the BOE and Smith on this issue specifically. Ask why a week at Disney is an educational experience, but attending the funeral of a cousin is an excused absence.


Stop deflecting. Neither a funeral or a week at Disney would add up to 47 unexcused absences.

47 days is 9 weeks. 9 weeks. Who goes on vacation or goes to a funeral for 9 weeks?


47 unexcused absences is 47 classes. My kid's high school has 7 classes per day. So 7 days of school. Not 9 weeks of school.

The article HEADLINE is missing 47 DAYS OF ENGLISH. This is 9 weeks of a core class. Do you really think that these kids are hustling it in for math on those days? No.

This isn't about trips and it isn't happening at wealthy schools. It isn't a front office staff typing something in incorrectly. Einstein is failing large numbers of kids and hiding it to keep their numbers up.

The heck it's not. It is just students and parents at wealthy schools (and UMC students in general) know how to play the game and write excused notes all the time. I have kids that are routinely absent one or two days per week the entire year. (That'll add up to more than 40.) Strangely, they seem to fall on days of big quizzes and tests. Or there are the students who are doing to many activities and routinely take a day or two off every couple of weeks to catch up. And there are the kids who feel a little stressed out by school and find that they can get their friends to tell them what happened in class and do enough self-studying while they are home to keep up. The biggest problem I have with the Washington Post article is that it misses the actual scope of the problem by not including excused absences, and ignores the data that came out with the Maryland school report cards that shows the extent of chronic absences (which only includes full days).

Our current system of high school and awarding high school diplomas was based on a model of school attendance to gain access to information that could not readily be obtained elsewhere from last century. Ever since the internet and the readily available information on everything, the actual need to go to school to learn has been reduced. I can't believe one of our own board members said "It seems incongruous that you could pass high school math and not be there". Clearly she has never heard about Khan Academy.

We are really at the point where we need different types of diplomas that match the learning needs and desires of students. Some need a more traditional approach for a college ready educational experience. Some would do better with a self paced, online, demonstration of mastery process. And some would do best with a minimal, just meeting the graduation requirements diploma (22.5 credits only, thank you). Getting hung up on attendance accounting right now is missing the bigger, overall problem.

There’s a lot of truth in that post. I’m an educator and actually don’t have a problem with kids occasionally taking a mental health day or a day to catch up. They’re people, just like us. But I agree that it’s the UMC families who know how to work the system.

When you compare the test scores, the kids from UNC are doing fine but the students from poor families who are missing a lot of classes are failing. When MCPS doesnt care if their students are learning or not and only wants to have the make-you-feeel-good gratulation rate, the poor and minority students are The one got the short end of the stick.

[Anonymous]

No child is served by a school system that does not care if it is challenging those students who are ready for the rigor or teaching those who need a basic education. No matter what the income level of the family of the student. Attendance should have value.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No child is served by a school system that does not care if it is challenging those students who are ready for the rigor or teaching those who need a basic education. No matter what the income level of the family of the student. Attendance should have value.

Please don't blame the teachers, however.

I realize it's not admin's fault either, but while teachers have always taken a stand on low expectations, administrators have not. They are the weak links who are protecting their salaries and benefits.

We had some very strong principals in the past who didn't comply for good reason. Sadly, this isn't the case any longer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We constantly get the emails from my kids middle school saying she had an unexcued absence. I used to call about them but the school never could tell me the reason why and when I asked my kid (who is a pretty good student, and I don’t think ditching class) she either didn’t know or thought it was because the sub didn’t mark correctly; she was late to class because she needed to go to the bathroom; or she had left class (with a note) to do a checkin with counselor or something like that. I have given up trying to track it because the front office was so unhelpful and it didn’t seem like a big deal. It would be moderately more helpful if the automated message reported which period(s) the child was marked absent—then a parent could tell whether the kid or ditching class regularly, or whether there’s just a teacher or sub that doesn’t take attendance well. I can’t email all seven teachers every time I get the auto email.

Same here, I have probably 15-20 of these. I used to call and it was usually a mistake then I decided that it wasn't my job to manage attendance. They have all the modern conveniences available to them and they still can't get it? DD is doing well and getting all As it is a non issue for me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Start by demanding that family vacations are not excused regardless of the socioeconomic status of the family. Write letters to the BOE and Smith on this issue specifically. Ask why a week at Disney is an educational experience, but attending the funeral of a cousin is an excused absence.

Stop deflecting. Neither a funeral or a week at Disney would add up to 47 unexcused absences.

47 days is 9 weeks. 9 weeks. Who goes on vacation or goes to a funeral for 9 weeks?

Not straight, but I have a student who has tacked 2-3 days onto every 3 day weekend or holiday so far this year. She is sick, of course. The family goes somewhere sunny.

And who gives a crap? You are jealous. I'm a parent who doesn't pull my kids for vacations and I have volunteered a lot at the schools through the decades. I hear the most bitching about this type of stuff from the poorer teachers who can't afford the vacations. There is so much resentment of the families with money from these teachers. My kid got a $100 watch for Christmas one year and so many teachers commented on it that he stopped wearing it. One of the teachers made a "must be nice" comment in his iep meeting. Jealousy. Get over it.

[Anonymous]

My senior MCPS attending stepdaughter missed the majority of classes this year and you can clearly see in the portal where missing assignments were simply dismissed and not included in the final calculation in order to officially pass and graduate. Also SSL hours are signed off by parents and neighbors to meet that requirement. When the parents fail at holding these kids accountable, it is unfortunate that the school system teaches them there is no need to learn or practice personal responsibility.

[Anonymous]

OMG colleges and universities must be aware of these practices in MCPS, right?

[Anonymous]

People this is not about taking a vacation. This one has nothing to do with wealthy kids.

This is a school system completely dropping the ball and giving out fake diplomas. The kids that skipped half the semester in Chemistry did not make up all the labs or pass the exam. The student who skipped 47 English classes or 50 Algebra classes was not making it up on their own by reading at the library or doing Khan academy.

It is the combined problem of ignoring truancy AND making teachers give fraudulent grades.

40% of Einstein students had excessive unexcused absences. This is not a one off situation but a systemic failure of the school system. Don't let them ignore it or deflect away from the problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People this is not about taking a vacation. This one has nothing to do with wealthy kids.

This is a school system completely dropping the ball and giving out fake diplomas. The kids that skipped half the semester in Chemistry did not make up all the labs or pass the exam. The student who skipped 47 English classes or 50 Algebra classes was not making it up on their own by reading at the library or doing Khan academy.

It is the combined problem of ignoring truancy AND making teachers give fraudulent grades.

40% of Einstein students had excessive unexcused absences. This is not a one off situation but a systemic failure of the school system. Don't let them ignore it or deflect away from the problem.

I am pretty sure that if the adms do not get blames for student dropping out of school, they would enforce the attendance policy.
But now they are blamed for kids dropping out, then of course they try to prevent that from happening.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People this is not about taking a vacation. This one has nothing to do with wealthy kids.

This is a school system completely dropping the ball and giving out fake diplomas. The kids that skipped half the semester in Chemistry did not make up all the labs or pass the exam. The student who skipped 47 English classes or 50 Algebra classes was not making it up on their own by reading at the library or doing Khan academy.

It is the combined problem of ignoring truancy AND making teachers give fraudulent grades.

40% of Einstein students had excessive unexcused absences. This is not a one off situation but a systemic failure of the school system. Don't let them ignore it or deflect away from the problem.

Yup this happens in any low income area

Since this is mainly an UMC board the options are

1. Enforce the laws and increase the hs dropout rate to 50% plus at these schools... do you know how hard it is to get a job without a hs diploma these days. it's almost impossible you are setting a kid up to become a warden of the state costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars

2. Turn a blind eye and give the kid a piece of paper so they have a shot at being successful

If people actually care about fighting poverty (That's really what's going on here) Policy changes need to be made much earlier before birth in some cases

Remember the average reading level of an American is below 7th grade now that means 50% of the US can't handle high school material. So technically the hs graduation rate should be under 50% but seeing option 1 and 2 what would you choose

[Anonymous]

Wasn’t the 40% number the number that had over 10 absences? I don’t know if that was the whole year or per semester, but 10 days over the course of a year could easily be a vacation, a few mental health days, and not bothering to send in notes for a couple absences that should be excused. It’s not that hard to get up to 10-12. It’s hard to get to 47 without a major health/mental health/job issue I would think.

[Anonymous]

After I was accepted to an Ivy, I took off one day a week for the remainder of my senior year. It had no impact on my grades and nobody cared.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wasn’t the 40% number the number that had over 10 absences? I don’t know if that was the whole year or per semester, but 10 days over the course of a year could easily be a vacation, a few mental health days, and not bothering to send in notes for a couple absences that should be excused. It’s not that hard to get up to 10-12. It’s hard to get to 47 without a major health/mental health/job issue I would think.

10 classes missed not 10 days missed. 1.5 school days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Start by demanding that family vacations are not excused regardless of the socioeconomic status of the family. Write letters to the BOE and Smith on this issue specifically. Ask why a week at Disney is an educational experience, but attending the funeral of a cousin is an excused absence.

Stop deflecting. Neither a funeral or a week at Disney would add up to 47 unexcused absences.

47 days is 9 weeks. 9 weeks. Who goes on vacation or goes to a funeral for 9 weeks?

Not straight, but I have a student who has tacked 2-3 days onto every 3 day weekend or holiday so far this year. She is sick, of course. The family goes somewhere sunny.

And who gives a crap? You are jealous. I'm a parent who doesn't pull my kids for vacations and I have volunteered a lot at the schools through the decades. I hear the most bitching about this type of stuff from the poorer teachers who can't afford the vacations. There is so much resentment of the families with money from these teachers. My kid got a $100 watch for Christmas one year and so many teachers commented on it that he stopped wearing it. One of the teachers made a "must be nice" comment in his iep meeting. Jealousy. Get over it.

If you weren't insecure yourself you wouldn't be posting. goes both ways