Reply to Chronic absenteeism and truancy in DC

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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.

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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.[/quote]

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.

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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.[/quote]

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. [/quote]

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