A parent and child psychologist says attendance is a problematic way to screen students. (SchoolBook)
Advocates for physical education in schools will rally Thursday, not for the first time. (Insideschools)
An Idaho legislator wants to make all students read Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged.” (Spokesman-Review)
The new early childhood education chief in North Carolina has lobbied against pre-K. (WRAL)
Negotiations over education legislation are an essential plot point of Netflix’s “House of Cards.” (Russo)
A student at the Seattle school where teachers are boycotting state tests offers support. (Facebook)
Even states that collect lots of data about teachers collect little about principals, a study found. (EdWeek)
Germany’s education minister was found to have plagiarized her dissertation but won’t resign. (BBC)
Guest
Stopped posting here when GS changed hands but have to make an exception for the Ayn Rand story. I would never allow my child to be forced to read that propaganda garbage.
A.S.Neill
Ms. Workman’s comments concerning problems screening students for admission to middle schools based on attendance is well written with well intentioned idealistic motives but unfortunately runs into the open fact secrete that 80-90% of a schools success is due to the qualities of the student body itself, not the effectiveness of teachers, the leadership qualities of the principal or even the resources of the school. This was essentially the finding of the Coleman Report in 1966, and despite research twists and turns since then on the margin, largely remains true today and why Charter schools are desperate to manipulate the supposedly open lottery admission process to their selective advantage.
Whatever the reasons for excessive absences in elementary school, by middle and high school, these students become problems for schools both because it lowers their rating scores, and they require extraordinary efforts to correct the deficiencies in their lagging education, often unsuccessful. As such, they pose difficulties for other students in the classroom as well, which is why parents know to try to get their kids in schools where the “good” students are.
In turn, it is recognized that patterns of home life are one key element in why students from identical poverty backgrounds do well or poorly in school as separate groups. Any look at most “failing schools” shows that many if not the majority of Title 1 students are performing well, but it is a large sub-group of students who lower the schools total rating to “failing” status. Personally, I applaud Geoffrey Canada’s efforts to link schools to parental and community family services for his students. This is simply the liberal idea of addressing community and family issues for school failures but in this case captured by a charter school advocate. It is also why I believe not much is going to change in education until we expand pre-K initiatives.
GUest
Psychologists might say that, but any teacher with five days or more experience will tell you that attendance is the most important piece of data we have on a kid. Can almost single handed predict failure. Yet another piece of data not included in any value added or growth measure.
KitchenSink
Hello? Does anyone out there think that SCHOOLS have a role in setting expectations for attendance?
This problem is the fault of the school system AND the families.
Whatever the poverty-related issues, the fact that our school system does nothing systematically to raise and address these concerns is a missing part of the tragedy.
When I was teaching I remember there being an “attendance teacher” floating around the district. What did she do? I had no idea. Whatever it was, it had nothing to do with the trusting relationships between families and school that are vital to this issue. Wasted resource, lack of focus, lack of goals, lack of communication.
I don’t think the answer is to lower expectations by changing the admissions bar to competitive middle schools, for some of the reasons outlined above by A.S.Neill (although he or she has a “blame the poor” narrative that is just not accurate or helpful). The answer is to tackle the problem with the force multiplier of using every angle: schools holding families accountable, schools building institutional trust with families, social service agencies providing wraparound support, broad goal setting with specific outcomes and resources on the city and district/region/network level, creative thinking with new solutions like the celebrity marketing/wake up call ideas and vouchers for taxi rides in specific circumstances, expanded child care opportunities for families in need, and ACS taking educational neglect seriously. Expanding Pre-K is a necessary but grossly insufficient answer to what is a deep systemic problem, one that NO ONE seems to be talking about except this one parent in Park Slope.
flerp
If you’re a parent who just takes your kids to elementary school and picks them up, and doesn’t have the time or inclination to research the middle-school admissions process, it’s very possible that you have no clue what effect attendance has on your kids’ options. Based on my experience, this appears to include a fair number of educated, professional/upper-middle class parents.
Larry Littlefield
It should be.
Celia Oyler
I missed the news about GS changing hands….what do you mean?
Philissa Cramer
I missed this news, too. –Signed, been here since 2008
A.S.Neill
Thank you for your mention of my post, but I’m not sure how what I wrote is a “blame the poor” narrative since I distinctly distinguished between many if not most Title 1 students who are successful and those who are not, and tried to look behind poverty explanations of absences for other reasons. On the contrary, your expectation that schools should be held accountable seems just a “blame the school” narrative that is woefully incorrect at least if you mean current policy at the DOE. Schools do try, but they currently have limited means. What are the schools supposed to do when they can’t get 25% of their students to school on a school day, suspend the absent student?
I am also sorry to read that you believe expanded pre-K, although “necessary is grossly inadequate”. Before worrying about whether it is inadequate, let’s start try first since almost all research confirms that this is the largest single factor that works in leveling the playing field in early elementary school. The problem is that most existing politicians are resistant to this option and the public is largely unaware of the research to press them for action, so your comments are counter-productive, unhelpful, and just another excuse not to expand pre-K as a top priority which is directly actionable and within our means now.
Of course, there are other systematic factors involved which is why I applauded Geoffrey Canada’s initiative for a much closer community-school link, though I think this should not be left to schools on their own. Many of your other suggestions are quite good and I would agree with them. In fact, many of your suggestions were part of Obama’s educational and community reform promises in 2008 which he never kept after being elected. So the political climate for these kind of changes is not promising at present. But let’s work together and avoid misrepresentation of what we am saying.
Roma Giudetti
Unfortunately, a school is only as good as the kids in it. You can have great teachers and a fine administration but if those kids have huge learning gaps, gaps in their formal education, and a chaotic home life, your school will fail.
Roma Giudetti
It’s not just middle school and high school that are screening out kids. Elementary schools do it too. My neighborhood in Hell’s Kitchen has 3 schools, P.S. 111, P.S. 51, and P.S. 212 Midtown West. 111 and 51 are zoned, but Midtown West is a “choice school.” For enrollment in Midtown West you have to fill out a 3-page application after you take a tour of the school. Then you have to wait to see if your kid is “accepted.” It appears that MTW’s application process screens out free-lunch kids and Latinos who are a large part of the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood. First, working-class parents cannot take a morning off to go on a tour of a school. This is the only way you can obtain an application for Midtown West. Second, the application is a three-pager that requires parent to answer questions about how their experience and interests will contribute to the community. Look at two sets of demographics for these three schools for 2011-12: Midtown West: 20% eligible for free lunch, 22% Latino; P.S. 51: 67% eligible for free lunch and 57% Latino; P.S. 111: 80% eligible for free lunch, 61% Latino students. Midtown West skims the most economically viable parents and their kids. School choice creates inequity.
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