Reply to Proposal that could allow truant seniors to graduate

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]In some schools, attendance is taken 30 times per week (period attendance). A student can easily acquire many absences if school based activities are coded incorrectly by the teachers ( field trips , special ed pullout services, athletic travel, guidance counseling[/quote]

Yeah, and this is where this becomes a class thing.  I have time to call the school and fight to get them to correct wrongly entered absences (most days DS has a game, he gets marked absent and many days when he's sitting in class he gets marked absent).  Lots of parents don't.[/quote]

Lot's of parents don't understand, just because you send your child to school does not mean they are sitting in class in middle and high school. We have many many hall walkers, teachers take attendance during the 1st 10 minutes, you would be shocked how many students skip class, enter during 1st 10 mins then leave and don't come back, or just roam the halls. Again, parents just because you send your child does not mean they are sitting in class and doing their work![/quote]

You're wasting your energy. I assume you're a teacher and have sat through enough "I know my child" speeches during parent conferences. We're with their kids more waking hours than they are, and we see their children interact with a greater number of people than they do. Despite this, we'll never win that fight. [/quote]

I'm absolutely sure that you are both right about kids walking the halls.  However, when my straight-A student has been marked absent, he has been able to show me the classwork that was completed that day and describe in great detail what the class did.  That's why the attendance office fixes the issue once I email or call.  This is typically an issue when there is a sub, which also happens to be when work that was completed and turned in ends up getting lost and he ends up with a zero for classwork.  It's such a regular occurrence that my kid now takes a picture of all sub work with his phone before turning it in.

Also, by high school, my kid is one of hundreds of kids that a teacher sees for about 5 hours a week each, almost always in a group of 30 other kids.  Some of my kid's teachers barely know his name, so the notion that they know much about him -- other than how he behaves for the few minutes a week that they directly interact --- is not credible to me.  I entirely believe that teachers DO know if my kid is making their day to day harder by causing any kind of disruption (i.e. talking, looking at his phone, etc.), so when they report that kind of thing at conferences, I take it at face value.  The idea that they know WHY he's behaving as his is, or what's going on with him socially or emotionally, or even what class material gets versus what he's struggling with  -- nah, not a chance.  They simply have too many students for my kid to be much more than student number XXXXXX to them.

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