Now that I am done EC&I 831, I want to continue using this blog to reflect on my first year as an in-school administrator. Kelly asked a five part question on his website and each part would require a blog entry. I am going to focus on the question, What areas need improvement?
I guess that all schools are looking for the "perfect" attendance policy. In my limited experience as an administrator and with my 18 years of teaching in my career the most accurate statement about attendance policies that I have heard is that all attendance policies will do in the end is punish the students with honest parents. We all know of situations where a parent/guardian has blatantly lied to the school about an absence because they don't want anything "bad" happening to their child or they believe that the school has no business interfering in their business.
So, I guess this is a call for help. What do your high schools use for attendance policies? What are their strengths and weaknesses? Perhaps if we put our universal heads together, we might be able to come up with an attendance policy that actually does what is intended ... make school a high priority in the life of all of our students.
I look forward to reading your responses.
Mathman33
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4 comments:
Set a number (of abscences) to activate a process that can help solve the problem. Other than that, attendance policies can really do no more than that. In my experience as an administrator, attendance is one of the toughest and most aggravating items to nail down. Even the Ed. Act. does not do a lot for consequences (if that's what you are looking for).
The days of a kid hitting a number and then they are out of a class, no questions asked, do not exist, nor should they.
The question I would have to ask is "why doesn't the kid want to be in school?" I think the reasons for this vary from student to student and I realize this takes a lot of time to process. However, skipping to enjoy the fun summer weather or play card with my friends vs being bullied, sickness or frustrated because one doesn't understand the content require different interventions. Perhaps different interventions need to be considered rather than simply a blanket one size fits all policy.
Jeez, the darn attendance policy thing. I'd like to scrap the whole darn thing and just work with the student. Being late for school is not a good enough reason, ever, to fail a class or be expelled from school. It can be a contributing factor if the student is having other issues.
I'd really like to see an option for students outside of what we currently have for school. I have a few students that struggle with coming to school but would do well in a different situation. We then run into a whole problem because we have a "attendance" policy that sometimes gets in the way of doing things.
I agree with laurie that the policy needs to be very elastic. Skipping school because it's nice out may not seem appropriate but I'm starting to think that maybe we get too hung up on some things and don't allow students enough time to be children. I'm really beginning to question the whole "What will they do when they get into the real world" line of thinking. Students that are not motivated to get to school on time are not predestined to be the same as adults. So, somehow we have to make school relevant enough for them to want to be there on time and just accept the fact that this will continue to plague schools - is it a hill that is worth dieing on? For me, there are other battles that are much more important.
Sask learning mandated many years ago that a student could not miss more than 80 percent of their classes, otherwise they had to repeat the course. (This was many years ago) When I implemented the high school program at a First nations school, our director demanded the same policy. My mind set is that in the end, a student need s to complete course requirements in order to pass. At the senior level, any student can challenge a final exam in a course. My point is, absence is the responsibility of the student to pass or fail..as long as the parents are kept in the loop, I don't see the point of dismissing kids because of attendance.
And certainly, engagement is the whole other issue.
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