FALL RIVER (CBS/AP) – Chronically late and absent students at Durfee High School are about to get a wakeup call. Actually, several early morning wakeup calls.
Principal Paul Marshall told WBZ NewsRadio the school department’s automated calling system will make calls to students considered chronically tardy or absent at 6:15 a.m. starting this week.
Okay. Let me try to wrap my head around this. It is now, somehow, the school's responsibility to make sure that the student shows up? Really? Are they going to send ninja tutors to failing kids' houses to force them to learn at shuriken-point? I fail to see why or how this is the school's responsibility. And can't you just hear the howls if the system fails? "It's not my fault - I never got the call!"
Here's the best part, though, coming from the school principal:
“What we’re doing is preparing them for the next step in life. In the next step in life, no one’s going to be telling them to get up and go to work.”
[wraps head in duct tape so the cognitive dissonance doesn't make his head explode]
WHAAAAAATTT?????
You're going far above and beyond what can be reasonably expected right now. You are not "preparing them for the next step in life", you're teaching them that if they slack off enough, someone will do their job for them. Then again, maybe that is preparing them... All kidding aside, it is not, nor should it be, the school's responsibility to get the kids in the door on time. No way, no how.
Besides, "a tired child cannot learn" - shouldn't we be letting the little dears get their beauty sleep?
That is all.
9 comments:
Parents. Where are the parents?
If I'd gotten into the habit of just not waking up to go to school dad would've forcibly dragged me out of bed. It would've been very unpleasant.
Does this have anything to do with funding? In the Peoples Repbulik of Illinois, state funding is tied directly to attendance. If the count is down, the money is down. Get their little butts in the chairs at all costs. Like Mike said, Where are the parents? Oh, wait, It Takes a Village, remember.....?
[moral superiority] When I was in high school, I would wake up at 5:30 and be to school at 6:15. School didn't start till 7:15, so I usually spent that extra hour talking with my physics teacher.[/moral superiority]
Yes, I am an enginerd. Why do you ask?
Couple of things that bug me about this: 1) Does this mean that the Intertube Not-so-Smartphone is replacing the Truant Officer, and does the Truant Officer's money go back into the school budget? 2) Is the school district really concerned that little Johnny is getting Edumacated, or does Mass have a State Funding Plan like Ohio, wherein each District gets "X" amount of bucks for "Y" amount of students attending on a Daily Basis? After all, if the number of students drop, then they don't need as many Teachers, which would cut into the Union Thugs Leadership cash flow viv-a-vis dues.
As a wise man once said, "Follow the money, it'll lead to the fact of the matter".
It's as crazy as you think, but the answer to your question is "yes." Under the No Child Left Behind act, every school and district must make the required "AYP" or Adequate Yearly Progress. That means their scores on standardized testing must rise by a specified percentage every year. No matter how high you get your scores, it's always higher the next year, so even districts like my old one--where the rates of "Exceeds Expectations" were in the mid 90% range--have to find a way to get better scores and, theoretically, always will, until they score 100%.
Attendance is a factor not only for the school, but for any of several categories that represent "cohorts" if you have enough students in them. For instance, if you have enough special education students, they become a cohort and must make AYP within their sub-group as well as the rest of the school. If your school is at 94% (very good) overall, but your cohort of special education students is at 91%, you failed to make AYP that year. Next year it'll be higher.
Attendance is a factor in all this, and it gets pretty crazy. Somebody mentioned what their parents would have done . . . . but chronically absent students, by and large, have parents who have given up entirely or have failed to parent at all. Often their parents hate the school system and see no value in education. We're not talking homeschoolers here.
As for truant officers . . . . as far as I know, my city has none. Certainly none have ever brought a truant student into the alternative school.
Ridiculous, and yeah, where are the parents???
Jay,
When are going to move to Texas and rejoin the real world. I'd think those cold winters and liberal attitudes would be driving you crazy about now. There's always room for another conservative down here in Texas. No unions, no nanny-state policies and few firearm laws.
Oh and one more thing. We have JOBS here in the "oil patch". Come on down.
Hunh. Out here in central Nowhere, we have rural school districts that are considering going back to having an in-town dormitory for students because of 1) district consolidation and 2) driving distances. No sleeping through your 0830 class if that comes to pass.
LittleRed1
Were i a student again under something like that, I would devote my time to trying to modify that so that it would call everyone in the system, including teachers and the principal continuously starting at say 0230.
Just to see if it could be done, of course.
:-D
tw: I used to bulls-eye PANDAWAMPs from my speeder back home, They're not much bigger than two meters
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