Reply to Roughly 25% of MCPS students are chronically absent, and absenteeism response plan delayed

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Reply to "Roughly 25% of MCPS students are chronically absent, and absenteeism response plan delayed "

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Chronic student absenteeism and the lack of a MCPS response is the purpose of this thread. If you want to start a different thread regarding teacher absenteeism then please have at it. However, just like any employer, MCPS has to honor legitimate reasons for teachers are absent. As a PP pointed out, just because a teacher is not in the classroom doesn’t mean they are not performing another job duty for MCPS.

Likewise, students are allowed excused absences. Doctor appointment or dental appointments would classify as an excused absence and would require a parental or provider note.

For students who are considered chronically absent, is there data on the percentage of excused absences vs. not excused? How many students are considered to be habitually truant?

Any word on when MCPS hopes to have a plan for addressing this problem?[/quote]

Schools and leadership teams are working on this issue.  The data is not currently broken out by excused absence vs not executed.  Nor does it break out whether a kid is chronically missing some classes vs the whole day vs leaving early.[/quote]
The data doesn’t need to be broken out by excused or unexcused, because it has no meaning. There are kids who have legitimate reasons for being absent who don’t know to get an excuse note, have parents who don’t speak English and don’t know how, or whose parents just won’t write one. Then there are parents who will write excuse notes all the time without really paying attention. (Yeah, Larla, you really are sick every week whenever there is a math quiz or test.)

If a student is chronically absent, especially the ones with more than 20% absences, they are missing a significant amount of instruction and opportunity to learn by working with peers. It also makes it really hard to plan engaging lessons where kids work together when 1/4 of kids are absent and another 1/4 aren’t prepared because they were absent earlier.

[b]Students that truly have chronic illnesses should be utilizing one of the several other educational options like IIS, OPTG, or VA.[/b][/quote]

I agree with this.[/quote]

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