Reply to Who leaked the MCPS attendance documents to the Washington Post?

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[quote=Anonymous]This is what I have observed as both a teacher and a parent:

When middle class and affluent students are absent often, the parents know how to work the system. We often notify the school in advance and provide excuses or documentation that satisfy the attendance secretary. This allows our children to be marked excused absent and make up missed work. Even when the absence is clearly not considered excused under MCPS’ own rules, a way is found to kosher it. Our children are excused for family vacations, grandparents’ anniversaries, and attending siblings’ graduations. Mine was excused this year to interview for a summer experience.  If our children are struggling with social emotional issues that lead them to be late to school or not go at all on a particular day,  we use terms like “school refusal” that present nonattendance as a health issue rather than a behavioral problem. Recently, when DH has a serious health setback, my child’s counselor suggested taking a day off for DD to process.

In my experience, low income families often do not know how to use (or outright manipulate) the system this way. Students return from short illnesses (1-4 days) without the parent note that excuses the days missed. Students do not bring a doctor’s note for longer illnesses (5+ days), even though they may sport a hospital wristband. For students with chronic conditions like asthma, a lot of days may be racked up that should be excused, but just lack the paperwork. Families of low income students, particularly immigrants of color, may not realize that schools do bend rules to excuse absences for trips abroad, graduations, etc. They just know that their child still needs to accompany the family and they hope the teacher will excuse the missed work. They certainly don’t seem to know the magical phrase “school refusal” when their child won’t leave home in the morning. So they get sent scary letters about attendance while the parents of a middle class student with the same or more days absent is not.

I don’t know how to fix this. I do my part throwing starfish back into the ocean by contacting families to beg for notes or bringing up “school refusal” when we have our team meetings and someone uses skipping to characterize certain students’ absences and not those of others. I urge my colleagues to be aware of how our school and their own practices might be inequitable when it comes to dealing with absences that are technically inexcusable. If Larla can be excused for a five day trip to Israel for a cousin’s wedding under the excuse of religious observance, why can’t we do the same for Larla to miss one day for her godmother’s funeral?[/quote]

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