Chronic absenteeism and truancy in DC

[Anonymous]

I want to get inside the head of a kid who is chronically absent.

Your mom tells you to go to school, generally. She might help you get out of the house sometimes, if she isn’t focused on your siblings. More often she’s focused on other things, like most adults are. (i’ll try not to assume too much else.)

You’ve been getting bad test grades your whole life and the sense that you’re bad at that has come through. You have trouble expressing yourself in writing. Math is mystifying and annoyingly boring.

Your teachers are not people you connect with socially, mostly, either they are not of your background or have some superficial similarities but define themselves in contrast to people like you.

The things that excite you are outside school. The ways to make money that come through school aren’t obvious to you. From the flashy of course but most of the McJobs around you can be done by people with minimal education. You don’t see people taking middle school math and doing that in any job. No one you know writes like your English teacher wants for a living.

You’d rather hang with your friends. Who feel the same. You’d rather play video games. You’d like to avoid being told you’re going to fail for the rest of your life.

And what’s the alternative? Somebody is going to come find you and make you go to school? Everybody is out of school. Why are they going to focus on me?

And a high school diploma will get me a job. Maybe. But will I have to use the skills that I learned in high school? Not really. So why not just work hard enough to make sure I get the diploma? It’s not like I’m gonna be able to get some office job where I write all day or a STEM job where I need to do graduate school level math or coding to contribute. No I’m going into the service sector where all that matters is attitude and people skills and I already got that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:and this gem, but off topic:

More than 160 students — nearly 30 percent of the student body — at D.C.’s celebrated Duke Ellington School of the Arts live outside the city and are not paying the tuition required of suburbanites who attend the District’s public schools, an internal investigation has found.
The students’ cases have been forwarded to the D.C. attorney general’s office, which enforces laws against school residency fraud, city officials said Friday. Another 56 have been flagged for less clear-cut residency problems and are being given a week and a half to prove they live in the city, bringing the total number of students caught up in the fraud investigation to 220 out of the 570 enrolled at the Northwest Washington campus.

wait, still?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A family has been using my home address for 6+ years. I've reported it no less than 10 times to OSSE. Their kid went from good grades in elementary to chronically truant in a DCPS magnet school and failing all but two of his classes. He has missed 50+ school days this year. How do I know? Because after utter and complete inaction by OSSE for 8 years, I started opening his report cards.

This kid may well be attending high school in Maryland. Enrolled at the DC school and then just never showed up. But the Maryland school isn’t required to tell the DC school that he’s switched, so he’s still on the roll in DC. This is exactly what it would look like, if that’s what happened.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A family has been using my home address for 6+ years. I've reported it no less than 10 times to OSSE. Their kid went from good grades in elementary to chronically truant in a DCPS magnet school and failing all but two of his classes. He has missed 50+ school days this year. How do I know? Because after utter and complete inaction by OSSE for 8 years, I started opening his report cards.

This kid may well be attending high school in Maryland. Enrolled at the DC school and then just never showed up. But the Maryland school isn’t required to tell the DC school that he’s switched, so he’s still on the roll in DC. This is exactly what it would look like, if that’s what happened.

No it wouldn't. The report card says he's missed 50+ days. That means he has been marked as in attendance over 100x. No teacher (at a magnet HS apparently) is going to mark a kid they have never met "present" 100+ times AND actually enter a grade for his classes. DCPS is incompetent but teachers actually have to exist in reality.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What about school buses for ES kids? At least they’d have a reliable way to get to school.

I assume you are sitting in your house in the suburbs with such a dumb suggestion. The majority of DCPS kids walk to school. Are you suggesting that absentee parents who can walk their kids to school on their own schedule are MORE likely to get their kids to a bus stop on time? Isn't there a Fairfax meeting you can go attend?

Have you ever seen a kindergartner walking themselves and their preK sibling to school for 3/4 of a mile so they can have something to eat? I have. But sometimes they can’t make it alone and stay home. A bus isn’t perfect but it would help a lot of kids get to school safely.

But thanks for your input.

There actually are buses in DCPS. Most often used for unhoused kids (coming from shelters or other temp housing) but can also be used for kids in other at risk categories IF the school district can figure out a way to do it. But for kids in bad situations their housing and home life may simply not be consistent enough for a bus to be the solution. It doesn't work if you are sleeping in a different home every week. It doesn't work if the issue is your parent/guardian is high every day and doesn't even think about getting you up and ready for school. And so on.

But in any case DCPS already does this for a lot of kids especially at the elementary level.

If you spend any time at all working with this population you understand that you're dealing with endemic poverty and crime issues. DCPS already does a ton and it absolutely helps kids on the margins where there may be issues but maybe they have a grandparent who can step in and help, or kids who are just wards of the state or living in shelters or foster care. But there are still tons of kids in DC who technically have custodial parents (or other family) but there's just so much dysfunction that school isn't a priority.

I thought you had to have an IEP (or 504) to get bussing. They bus kids from shelters? Never heard of that in DC specifically, but certainly have in the MD counties.

How else do you think kids in shelters get to school? Of course they do this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:and this gem, but off topic:

More than 160 students — nearly 30 percent of the student body — at D.C.’s celebrated Duke Ellington School of the Arts live outside the city and are not paying the tuition required of suburbanites who attend the District’s public schools, an internal investigation has found.
The students’ cases have been forwarded to the D.C. attorney general’s office, which enforces laws against school residency fraud, city officials said Friday. Another 56 have been flagged for less clear-cut residency problems and are being given a week and a half to prove they live in the city, bringing the total number of students caught up in the fraud investigation to 220 out of the 570 enrolled at the Northwest Washington campus.

wowza

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:and this gem, but off topic:

More than 160 students — nearly 30 percent of the student body — at D.C.’s celebrated Duke Ellington School of the Arts live outside the city and are not paying the tuition required of suburbanites who attend the District’s public schools, an internal investigation has found.
The students’ cases have been forwarded to the D.C. attorney general’s office, which enforces laws against school residency fraud, city officials said Friday. Another 56 have been flagged for less clear-cut residency problems and are being given a week and a half to prove they live in the city, bringing the total number of students caught up in the fraud investigation to 220 out of the 570 enrolled at the Northwest Washington campus.

wait, still?

That’s quoting an article from 2018.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What about school buses for ES kids? At least they’d have a reliable way to get to school.

I assume you are sitting in your house in the suburbs with such a dumb suggestion. The majority of DCPS kids walk to school. Are you suggesting that absentee parents who can walk their kids to school on their own schedule are MORE likely to get their kids to a bus stop on time? Isn't there a Fairfax meeting you can go attend?

Have you ever seen a kindergartner walking themselves and their preK sibling to school for 3/4 of a mile so they can have something to eat? I have. But sometimes they can’t make it alone and stay home. A bus isn’t perfect but it would help a lot of kids get to school safely.

But thanks for your input.

There actually are buses in DCPS. Most often used for unhoused kids (coming from shelters or other temp housing) but can also be used for kids in other at risk categories IF the school district can figure out a way to do it. But for kids in bad situations their housing and home life may simply not be consistent enough for a bus to be the solution. It doesn't work if you are sleeping in a different home every week. It doesn't work if the issue is your parent/guardian is high every day and doesn't even think about getting you up and ready for school. And so on.

But in any case DCPS already does this for a lot of kids especially at the elementary level.

If you spend any time at all working with this population you understand that you're dealing with endemic poverty and crime issues. DCPS already does a ton and it absolutely helps kids on the margins where there may be issues but maybe they have a grandparent who can step in and help, or kids who are just wards of the state or living in shelters or foster care. But there are still tons of kids in DC who technically have custodial parents (or other family) but there's just so much dysfunction that school isn't a priority.

I thought you had to have an IEP (or 504) to get bussing. They bus kids from shelters? Never heard of that in DC specifically, but certainly have in the MD counties.

You only get bussing if there is a special program (self-contained) that your child needs and is not offered at their home school

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:1. Taking accurate attendance is much more difficult than average people know. There are so many mistakes that if one really knew how bad it was, this report would be thrown out the window.

2. Attendance "counselors" are the most underpaid, under-trained, overly disrespected people in the building. They are undervalued and I guarantee if you walk into any building that person has more than one job.

3. The gig requires chasing the constantly moving 🎯 target of tracking down teacher, substitute teacher, and parent data entry errors.

4. It never ever reflects the number of kids actually in the building, as they are tasked to paper chase while also answering the phone, putting band-aids on bleeding kids, being yelled at and spoken to rudely by parents of all walks of life.... and sometimes building admins....

5. These citywide truancy dog whistle reports are red herrings; they never talk about the antiquated contracted attendance systems. There are over 45 attendance codes which is ridiculous.

While DD had a couple of absences from individual classes incorrectly, her attendance was overall accurate. I'm sure there are outliers but I absolutely believe that the numbers are atrocious.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What about school buses for ES kids? At least they’d have a reliable way to get to school.

I assume you are sitting in your house in the suburbs with such a dumb suggestion. The majority of DCPS kids walk to school. Are you suggesting that absentee parents who can walk their kids to school on their own schedule are MORE likely to get their kids to a bus stop on time? Isn't there a Fairfax meeting you can go attend?

Have you ever seen a kindergartner walking themselves and their preK sibling to school for 3/4 of a mile so they can have something to eat? I have. But sometimes they can’t make it alone and stay home. A bus isn’t perfect but it would help a lot of kids get to school safely.

But thanks for your input.

There actually are buses in DCPS. Most often used for unhoused kids (coming from shelters or other temp housing) but can also be used for kids in other at risk categories IF the school district can figure out a way to do it. But for kids in bad situations their housing and home life may simply not be consistent enough for a bus to be the solution. It doesn't work if you are sleeping in a different home every week. It doesn't work if the issue is your parent/guardian is high every day and doesn't even think about getting you up and ready for school. And so on.

But in any case DCPS already does this for a lot of kids especially at the elementary level.

If you spend any time at all working with this population you understand that you're dealing with endemic poverty and crime issues. DCPS already does a ton and it absolutely helps kids on the margins where there may be issues but maybe they have a grandparent who can step in and help, or kids who are just wards of the state or living in shelters or foster care. But there are still tons of kids in DC who technically have custodial parents (or other family) but there's just so much dysfunction that school isn't a priority.

I thought you had to have an IEP (or 504) to get bussing. They bus kids from shelters? Never heard of that in DC specifically, but certainly have in the MD counties.

You only get bussing if there is a special program (self-contained) that your child needs and is not offered at their home school

Not true. Even if you are largely in gen ed, if you have an IEP or 504, you can get transportation if there is a disability-related reason that walking/public transportation is inappropriate. For example, I had a client with not well controlled diabetes who qualified for transportation because of her need for constant adult supervision to watch for highs and lows.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1. Taking accurate attendance is much more difficult than average people know. There are so many mistakes that if one really knew how bad it was, this report would be thrown out the window.

2. Attendance "counselors" are the most underpaid, under-trained, overly disrespected people in the building. They are undervalued and I guarantee if you walk into any building that person has more than one job.

3. The gig requires chasing the constantly moving 🎯 target of tracking down teacher, substitute teacher, and parent data entry errors.

4. It never ever reflects the number of kids actually in the building, as they are tasked to paper chase while also answering the phone, putting band-aids on bleeding kids, being yelled at and spoken to rudely by parents of all walks of life.... and sometimes building admins....

5. These citywide truancy dog whistle reports are red herrings; they never talk about the antiquated contracted attendance systems. There are over 45 attendance codes which is ridiculous.

While DD had a couple of absences from individual classes incorrectly, her attendance was overall accurate. I'm sure there are outliers but I absolutely believe that the numbers are atrocious.

I'll give a few examples:

Example 1: Parent of a DCPS third grader informs average neighborhood school that their kid is attending a private school. Average school doesn't have an waitlist and also needs a withdrawal form completed. Private school parent doesn't care nor complete the form, nor does the private school request records for the kid (they don't have to) Underpaid staffer needs paperwork to pull a student from the roster. School marks kid absent until the paperwork comes in.

Example 2: High school aged kid gets arrested and sentenced to DYRS or DC Jail or house arrest for 30 days a hearing is held. School marks the kid absent unexcused indefinitely

Example 3: Parent of younger student is hospitalized or incarcerated. Family sends kid to temporarily live out of state. Technically DCPS doesn't remove a kid if the parent is incarcerated, until a new placement is made.

Example 4: Lice outbreak at school. Kid sent home for lice exposure, parent has to wait two days until payday to buy lice remediation supplies, lice gets worse. Kid has some excused absences but has several unexcused as the infestation won't break. School offers learning plan, but forgets to tell attendance monitor.

[Anonymous]

Multiply the exceptions listed above by 60,000 families (not beginning to list the issues undocumented children have with parents being takes by ICE, etc).

Also take into account the average salary of attendance counselors and what they are expected to do (account for). They are literally managing 20-50 teachers entering period or daily data in some cases , then following up with 30-60 parents who have multiple personalities each day.

It's much more inaccurate and harder than people think.

Especially when students with IEP transportation are either not picked up by the buses or come 2-3 hours late to drop off special needs kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1. Taking accurate attendance is much more difficult than average people know. There are so many mistakes that if one really knew how bad it was, this report would be thrown out the window.

2. Attendance "counselors" are the most underpaid, under-trained, overly disrespected people in the building. They are undervalued and I guarantee if you walk into any building that person has more than one job.

3. The gig requires chasing the constantly moving 🎯 target of tracking down teacher, substitute teacher, and parent data entry errors.

4. It never ever reflects the number of kids actually in the building, as they are tasked to paper chase while also answering the phone, putting band-aids on bleeding kids, being yelled at and spoken to rudely by parents of all walks of life.... and sometimes building admins....

5. These citywide truancy dog whistle reports are red herrings; they never talk about the antiquated contracted attendance systems. There are over 45 attendance codes which is ridiculous.

While DD had a couple of absences from individual classes incorrectly, her attendance was overall accurate. I'm sure there are outliers but I absolutely believe that the numbers are atrocious.

I'll give a few examples:

Example 1: Parent of a DCPS third grader informs average neighborhood school that their kid is attending a private school. Average school doesn't have an waitlist and also needs a withdrawal form completed. Private school parent doesn't care nor complete the form, nor does the private school request records for the kid (they don't have to) Underpaid staffer needs paperwork to pull a student from the roster. School marks kid absent until the paperwork comes in.

Example 2: High school aged kid gets arrested and sentenced to DYRS or DC Jail or house arrest for 30 days a hearing is held. School marks the kid absent unexcused indefinitely

Example 3: Parent of younger student is hospitalized or incarcerated. Family sends kid to temporarily live out of state. Technically DCPS doesn't remove a kid if the parent is incarcerated, until a new placement is made.

Example 4: Lice outbreak at school. Kid sent home for lice exposure, parent has to wait two days until payday to buy lice remediation supplies, lice gets worse. Kid has some excused absences but has several unexcused as the infestation won't break. School offers learning plan, but forgets to tell attendance monitor.

Other than the last one none of these strike me as problematic examples of a school marking a kid as absent. Those are all situations where it makes sense to mark the child as absent until it is clear to the school that the child is enrolled elsewhere. That's how it works. The lice thing is a screw up but as someone who has had a kid miss a lot of school for an illness and have to sort out the absence thing in DCPS -- it's annoying but it gets resolved. After 3 days you are supposed to provide a doctor's note. Sometimes the attendance coordinator takes a while to process these and correct the record but in our experience (at a Title 1 with plenty of overstressed staff) it does get addressed eventually. All our kids illness-related absences were eventually excused.

I would personally rather have schools that err on the side of marking kids absent (maximizing the odds of schools reaching families with issues causing truancy and impacting a child's education) than the opposite.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1. Taking accurate attendance is much more difficult than average people know. There are so many mistakes that if one really knew how bad it was, this report would be thrown out the window.

2. Attendance "counselors" are the most underpaid, under-trained, overly disrespected people in the building. They are undervalued and I guarantee if you walk into any building that person has more than one job.

3. The gig requires chasing the constantly moving 🎯 target of tracking down teacher, substitute teacher, and parent data entry errors.

4. It never ever reflects the number of kids actually in the building, as they are tasked to paper chase while also answering the phone, putting band-aids on bleeding kids, being yelled at and spoken to rudely by parents of all walks of life.... and sometimes building admins....

5. These citywide truancy dog whistle reports are red herrings; they never talk about the antiquated contracted attendance systems. There are over 45 attendance codes which is ridiculous.

While DD had a couple of absences from individual classes incorrectly, her attendance was overall accurate. I'm sure there are outliers but I absolutely believe that the numbers are atrocious.

I'll give a few examples:

Example 1: Parent of a DCPS third grader informs average neighborhood school that their kid is attending a private school. Average school doesn't have an waitlist and also needs a withdrawal form completed. Private school parent doesn't care nor complete the form, nor does the private school request records for the kid (they don't have to) Underpaid staffer needs paperwork to pull a student from the roster. School marks kid absent until the paperwork comes in.

Example 2: High school aged kid gets arrested and sentenced to DYRS or DC Jail or house arrest for 30 days a hearing is held. School marks the kid absent unexcused indefinitely

Example 3: Parent of younger student is hospitalized or incarcerated. Family sends kid to temporarily live out of state. Technically DCPS doesn't remove a kid if the parent is incarcerated, until a new placement is made.

Example 4: Lice outbreak at school. Kid sent home for lice exposure, parent has to wait two days until payday to buy lice remediation supplies, lice gets worse. Kid has some excused absences but has several unexcused as the infestation won't break. School offers learning plan, but forgets to tell attendance monitor.

Other than the last one none of these strike me as problematic examples of a school marking a kid as absent. Those are all situations where it makes sense to mark the child as absent until it is clear to the school that the child is enrolled elsewhere. That's how it works. The lice thing is a screw up but as someone who has had a kid miss a lot of school for an illness and have to sort out the absence thing in DCPS -- it's annoying but it gets resolved. After 3 days you are supposed to provide a doctor's note. Sometimes the attendance coordinator takes a while to process these and correct the record but in our experience (at a Title 1 with plenty of overstressed staff) it does get addressed eventually. All our kids illness-related absences were eventually excused.

I would personally rather have schools that err on the side of marking kids absent (maximizing the odds of schools reaching families with issues causing truancy and impacting a child's education) than the opposite.

I’m a teacher in a Title 1 school. Attendance is not hard and if inaccurate it’s a day or two here or there. Like looked at the wrong row and entered the wrong kid. No one is made a mistake entering Larla’s 42 absences this year.

My students are staying home because they are watching younger siblings, mom just had a baby and can’t go out and they live across town, they went to Disney, they went to their uncle’s, they got their hair done, they are ”sick” for the 20th time this year, they had a doctor appointment and just stayed home the whole day.

Also, it’s been policy for years to not send kids home or keep kids home for lice. If a kid is home it’s the parent’s choice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1. Taking accurate attendance is much more difficult than average people know. There are so many mistakes that if one really knew how bad it was, this report would be thrown out the window.

2. Attendance "counselors" are the most underpaid, under-trained, overly disrespected people in the building. They are undervalued and I guarantee if you walk into any building that person has more than one job.

3. The gig requires chasing the constantly moving 🎯 target of tracking down teacher, substitute teacher, and parent data entry errors.

4. It never ever reflects the number of kids actually in the building, as they are tasked to paper chase while also answering the phone, putting band-aids on bleeding kids, being yelled at and spoken to rudely by parents of all walks of life.... and sometimes building admins....

5. These citywide truancy dog whistle reports are red herrings; they never talk about the antiquated contracted attendance systems. There are over 45 attendance codes which is ridiculous.

While DD had a couple of absences from individual classes incorrectly, her attendance was overall accurate. I'm sure there are outliers but I absolutely believe that the numbers are atrocious.

I'll give a few examples:

Example 1: Parent of a DCPS third grader informs average neighborhood school that their kid is attending a private school. Average school doesn't have an waitlist and also needs a withdrawal form completed. Private school parent doesn't care nor complete the form, nor does the private school request records for the kid (they don't have to) Underpaid staffer needs paperwork to pull a student from the roster. School marks kid absent until the paperwork comes in.

Example 2: High school aged kid gets arrested and sentenced to DYRS or DC Jail or house arrest for 30 days a hearing is held. School marks the kid absent unexcused indefinitely

Example 3: Parent of younger student is hospitalized or incarcerated. Family sends kid to temporarily live out of state. Technically DCPS doesn't remove a kid if the parent is incarcerated, until a new placement is made.

Example 4: Lice outbreak at school. Kid sent home for lice exposure, parent has to wait two days until payday to buy lice remediation supplies, lice gets worse. Kid has some excused absences but has several unexcused as the infestation won't break. School offers learning plan, but forgets to tell attendance monitor.

Other than the last one none of these strike me as problematic examples of a school marking a kid as absent. Those are all situations where it makes sense to mark the child as absent until it is clear to the school that the child is enrolled elsewhere. That's how it works. The lice thing is a screw up but as someone who has had a kid miss a lot of school for an illness and have to sort out the absence thing in DCPS -- it's annoying but it gets resolved. After 3 days you are supposed to provide a doctor's note. Sometimes the attendance coordinator takes a while to process these and correct the record but in our experience (at a Title 1 with plenty of overstressed staff) it does get addressed eventually. All our kids illness-related absences were eventually excused.

I would personally rather have schools that err on the side of marking kids absent (maximizing the odds of schools reaching families with issues causing truancy and impacting a child's education) than the opposite.

I’m a teacher in a Title 1 school. Attendance is not hard and if inaccurate it’s a day or two here or there. Like looked at the wrong row and entered the wrong kid. No one is made a mistake entering Larla’s 42 absences this year.

My students are staying home because they are watching younger siblings, mom just had a baby and can’t go out and they live across town, they went to Disney, they went to their uncle’s, they got their hair done, they are ”sick” for the 20th time this year, they had a doctor appointment and just stayed home the whole day.

Also, it’s been policy for years to not send kids home or keep kids home for lice. If a kid is home it’s the parent’s choice.

+1000

I’m also a teacher and these extreme number of absences are not errors on the teacher’s part. Ive had kids get sick for two weeks straight each advisory this year, take a week off each advisory to ‘catch up on work due’ during the advisory, and all sorts of other reasons. 25 days, 30 days, 45 days. No one seems to really care as long as they pass.