Bring Back Loss of Credit for Skipping Class!
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Anonymous
| Doing so would increase the achievement gap. |
Anonymous
Then the problem is Admin. Ask Admin what equity concern you are trying to address with a 50% when the student is roaming the hall instead of attending class? What strategies they suggest be employed to get people to class timely? Ask them to help you by coming to class or team meetings to model how to effectively implement this current strategy? Is there something else these students can do or somewhere else they can be besides the hall? If there’s nothing Admin can do to help enforce NEEDED limits when you are escalating an issue to their level, then why are we concerned with the grade percentage students receive? And feel free to send a note to their DLAA about the concern. Feel free to file a complaint? Feel free to find another job at another school. |
Anonymous
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And stop it with the grade inflation!
Half of Churchill has a 4.5 or better! Crazy. Actually have teachers that can teach. Is that too much to ask! |
Anonymous
| They need to give a detention for every tardy. |
Anonymous
Don't go there. Just stop right there. Just like posters are saying teachers can find another job, you can find another school if you are going to start with the teacher bashing already. |
Anonymous
You cannot just find another school. Most COSAs are denied. Everyone is entitled to a public education. |
Anonymous
But they do disrupt class. They're loud and sometimes yelling or screaming in the hallway. Even with the door closed it can be disruptive. It's also a safety issue because they're unsupervised. |
Anonymous
Exactly. And teachers can’t break their contracts without penalty in many cases. So knock it off. |
Anonymous
I'm the guy you replied to last night. I woke up early just to write this before I get ready to go (Frederick resident....born and raised in MoCo but can't afford to live there, at least in a place I can have my family comfortably living in....tale as old as time). 1. More accountability AND support for parents. I'm not gonna identify my high school but let's just say it's a "highly impacted" one. Way too many parents say things like "I don't know what to do to get him to go to class/get out of the halls/stop skipping/stop leaving campus." Or, "I don't know how to get him to get up on time and go to school and listen to me." Also, "I just need you all (school staff) to motivate him and make him want to go to school/class/care." I am not kidding, in my role in MCPS, they're literally by far the most common responses. They dwarf the responses of "Thank you all for the efforts you are putting in. We will work on this at home. I'm looking forward to working together on this." And before anyone says anything, like I said earlier, we bust our asses to support these kids but there's a line we have to draw before it becomes the parent giving up and dumping the kid on us. So first thing's first, parent support groups—single mothers groups; single fathers groups; non-parental caregiver groups; parenting classes; family counseling; family tutoring; I could go on and on. Those should not only be provided, but mandated when a certain threshold of attendance and/or behavior violations have occurred. As a parent myself, I feel like I should have consequences for my child's repeated actions. And no, not everything is an educational disability. Maybe Instagram or Facebook groups make parents think any time their kid farts they need an IEP. It's OK to accept that it's mostly NOT a disability and, instead, it's (a) choices made by the kid, (b) choices made by the parent, and (c) lack of accountability on the parent in having to pursue these things I described. Call me what you will but it starts at home, full stop. 2. Major changes in school experience for students and parents entering Semester 6. What do I mean by this? When students enter their 6th semester—typically semester 2 of their third year (i.e. 11th grade)—if the student is way behind in credits, still having attendance issues, still walking the halls, etc. then there needs to be a systematic and mandatory district-wide process. Let me first say that we MUST significantly fade the availability of credit recovery (Edmentum) and bring back high school plus. If a kid fails a class big time, they should NOT be allowed to do credit recovery on Edmentum. They need to retake it. If they fail by X percent (say, by 5%) and they had solid attendance then give them the option of credit recovery. But if they never went to class and just bombed it since they expected they could do it all later online in a few days on Edmentum, that's gotta end. They need to do HS+ or summer school or retake for original credit in the school year some other time. So think about this through this lens. Any family whose student meets certain criteria like I described above when they enter that 6th semester will be mandated to have a meeting with their administrator, counselor, PPW, and any other related school staff. In that meeting there will be a discussion about what the next three (or more) semesters will look like. There will be a clear graduation pathway outlined. There will be strict adherence to withdrawing after 10 consecutive absences. There will be mandated meetings for the parent to come into the school far more often than they may be used to when their kid is skipping, etc. The stakes will rise and the expectations will too. And then, if it's evident the student will need to come back for a 5th year, the stakes raise even more. Strict adherence to withdraw after 10 consecutive absences. Automatic parent/admin/counselor/PPW meeting after 5 consecutive absences. Regularly discuss things like Job Corps, GED, etc. Sorry folks, I know they have a right to access school until age 21, but if they want to be in HS at age 19, we're talking about an adult here. They have to feel the pain if they want to keep screwing around. Call me what you want—a mean evil jerk—but the parents and students need to be accountable. I've been teaching/leading in high school for 15 years and I've concluded that this key component is missing. Too much responsibility on the institution/school (read: government) and not enough on the student/parent (read: individual). 3. Reading, math, executive functioning, and personal/professional skills interventions are mandatory to varying degrees for ALL students. Every single student in MCPS who enters 9th grade for the first time must be enrolled in one or more of those interventions. Full stop. The idea that a 14 year old is a fully formed adult and doesn't even need, at a minimum, personal/professional skills training for a year is absurd. Families who push back at this since their little Johnny is a perfect little gentleman and can, at 14, just move off to the big city and have a career need to get a grip. Because that's what they're saying—their child has perfected his personal/professional skills at 14. Ridiculous! Those skills are just as important as English, math, science, social studies, etc., if not MORE important. But not all kids are Little Perfect Johnny. I have done deep dives into the data many times....MAP-R, MAP-M, missing assignment trends, etc. Folks, these kids can't read. They can't do basic math. They can barely keep track of their assignments. And yet, we have this ridiculous zombie mindset from the Bush/Obama years that we need to push college and career readiness. THESE ARE 14 YEAR OLDS! Forget about college and career readiness if they can't read even on a 5th grade level. You'd be SHOCKED how many students—non IEP, non 504, non ESOL, non FARMS—who are in high school and read on an elementary level but have NEVER had a reading intervention. We as a school system need to fix that. Change the mindset. Remember there are basic skills these kids don't have. Most of the kids in the halls probably can't read, at least for comprehension. Many still have decoding issues. And it's not always a reading disability. So if we want to fix the hallways, attendance, behaviors, we have to as a society and system stop wanting to just smell our own farts all day and pat ourselves on the back that our students are doing such awesome and cool stuff to become college and career ready (YAY GO US!) and wake up to the reality that not only is reading and math intervention disincentivized in high school, but also in middle school and elementary. Call me what you want but we gotta fix that. [/b]OK that's it.[/b] I could keep going but these three things are keys to fixing these issues IMO. Time to get ready to get on the road! Have a great Friday and weekend!! |
Anonymous
What does "fully released position" mean? |
Anonymous
I don’t teach classes but am not admin. |
Anonymous
*applause* This was fantastic! Are you in a leadership role at MCPS? If not, you need to be promoted ASAP. |
Anonymous
At my school teachers have to contact home after every 3 tardies and supervise lunch detention. Feels like a contract violation to me. Also feels like teachers are being punished for what kids are doing outside of the classroom. Administrators should be sweeping the halls and getting kids to class. |
Anonymous
| Eh. My 12th grader skips, or stays home for the day, whenever they determine that doing so is a better use of time(to study or work on a paper) than not doing anything worthwhile in class. Though I usually call in so it’s an excused absence. As far as I’m concerned, it’s good time management skills for when they head off to college in 6 months. |
Anonymous
Oh I know! It's so terrible! This and that 50% rule are destroying the fabric of society! |