There are usually about 180 days in a school year meaning this student was absent more than than 50% of the time. At what point is it no longer the school's fault?
Specifically: "Under Maryland law, a truant student is one who is “unlawfully absent” from school for more than: 8 days in any quarter, 15 days in any semester, OR 20 days in a school year."
Also, "What happens when a student is found to be truant? The student will be referred to the county board’s system of active intervention. Note that each county must develop a system of active intervention for truant students.
A school system representative will investigate the cause of the truancy. This representative may provide counseling or even notify the Department of Juvenile Services. "
There is whole system designed to handle such cases and it failed miserably
They were very slow and weak about responding, but you're overstating. They did a few things over the three years, up to and including finally bumping the child back to 9th grade.
The mother apparently did exactly nothing. Until the school's actions finally hit home hard enough.
My complaint is with your misuse of language to make a point. "Exactly nothing" means beyond zero is excluded. At worst you need to use "essentially nothing" or some such vague/weasel words rather than stating logical falsehoods.
It seems very logical (however shameful) that the system would optimize for passively allowing students to age out of the system, as letting minority students fail doesn't have anywhere near as much blowback as fining or locking up disadvantaged people for truancy.
Focus on actual outcomes would be a good start. I would replace the whole school administration with someone more capable.
A new administator or new system with the same incentives is likely going to give the same results.
Ideally there is a process of incorporating real-world results and revising one's beliefs, but that process seems to have pretty much shut down in favor of strict political orthodoxy.
The world is full of tangled messes where everybody is acting with respect to their own local incentives and everyone is worse off as a result
Truancy enforcement didn't work too well. Whether laxer truancy approaches end up with better outcomes overall is open to debate, but it's not like there's a clear answer.
Truancy does make teaching effectively much harder. You're forced to either go over the beginning material over and over for the people who missed it, or you just abandon them and teach the handful of people who have attended consistently. No matter what you teach, you're teaching the wrong thing for half or more of the class. Then people get bored, and they skip school...
And imagine being the one new excited, passionate teacher trying to rock the boat and get some effort. You're upsetting parents who wonder why you're all up in their business and don't understand the value. Your gradebook creates issues for your administrators. Other teachers who have given up react defensively and seek to undermine you. And the students are not thankful, and can be extremely disruptive.
I don't know how you fix it. Project-based learning has some evidence that it can work in situations like this, because it can draw out participation and interest by gamifying more of education. But it's not like a little more PBL is going to make the system suddenly work.
I felt like I was pretty successful providing individual instruction. For instance, I found a way to teach basic algebra that worked for guys with 3rd and 4th-grade level test scores. It didn't teach them the principles they would need for greater math education, but none of these guys were ever going to study college-level Calculus. They just needed enough math to pass the GED. Unfortunately, teaching that way involved a lot of moving around the classroom, and I didn't really want predators staring at my ass behind my back. So I didn't stick with it.
It says a hell of a lot that teachers find that kind of environment safer than public school. That suggests to me that discipline & safety have to be comprehensively addressed before any other changes will have a chance to work.
I later took college classes, and that was a different story. One teacher said that his prison students were much better than his free-world students, as they generally weren't partying all weekend etc. and were motivated to be in school.
[0] https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/10/17/924766186... [1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kamala-harris-truancy-arrests...
We have a mild teacher shortage across the board (which may become major with reports of as many as 40% of teachers seriously considering leaving the profession this year). And then in turn, inner city schools are worse workplaces... which attract worse peers... You need a hell of a martyr complex to take this on, and even if you have it you won't last.
And throwing money at comp won't fix this, either: that's not a great motivator to get the people with the passion to fix this.
Inner city school systems are great at grinding up passionate personnel, making them quit or just surrender to do things that look good on paper but don't improve anything.
I don't know the answers, but I do know this -- it's a hell of a lot less than what gets spent in the NY metro area.
According to the US Census[1], out of the largest 100 US Public School systems Baltimore ranked near the very top in spending per child (5th out of 100). Baltimore spent $15,793 per child. Only New York and Boston spent considerably more.
[1] https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2020/school-s...
The parent comment even mentions that they have the option to contact juvenile services but can also provide counseling. That seems like the real answer in probably the vast majority of cases.
This is an incredible assumption. There are probably millions of people (Paul Graham, for one) who would agree with Scott Alexander's "description of experiencing school as tortuous": one such example, "Scott, your description of school-as-hell deeply resonated with me. I can say without exaggeration that my time in the public school system was more miserable to me, and left me with deeper scars and issues, than my time in Iraq."[0]. Most of these complaints about child-prison hell-schools are from people who went to far better schools than the one in the article. I spent ten years in prison, and I have far more hatred for the public school system than I do for the prison system.
I agree that counseling could help in many cases, perhaps most, but it's deeply mistaken to say that the vast majority of kids are willing to go to school. There will always be a significant number of kids who simply don't want to go, or would rather spend their days involved in drugs or gangs. Plenty of people think that going to school is "acting white".
[0] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/highlights-from-the-co...
Something less drastic?
How about this..
Look at this thread. You’ll read all kinds of excuses for and blame of the mother.
Yet nobody mentioned the father.
A father — under our system — faces no penalty for neglecting a child. None. In a custody order where the mother has primary, the father has NO OBLIgATION to see the kid.
This is so engrained in our culture that, like I said, the thread doesn’t even mention a father...
In my line of work, I know of men who have upwards of a dozen children from just as many women. There is nothing in the law that deters this activity. Nothing. There used to be. And, when there was, it didn't happen.
Penises and Vaginas, orgasms and lust, haven't changed one iota in the past 10,000 years. I have little patience for those who wring their hands, fretting about how to stop this insanity. We know exactly how to stop it. You can open any legal code older than 100 years and see exactly how it is stopped.
The fact is, this society has made the deliberate and intentional decision to eradicate any responsibility on the part of men, leaving women absolutely fucked (and the daughters of these women even more screwed.) Ironcially, it was all done in the name of feminism.
* The law treated illegitimate children as illegitimate. It was harsh to be born out of wedlock. (https://www.hg.org/legal-articles/inheritance-rights-for-leg...). No child support. No inheritance. Etc.
* Until recently, there was no no-fault divorce. You couldn't up-and-leave a marriage without good cause. If your husband was beating you or your wife committed adultery, that was a valid reason. If you got bored, existential ennui, or married for child support in the first place, you were SOL unless the other party agreed. People were expected to make it work.
* All sorts of fraud laws around sex and sexual behavior. If we had sex because I promised to marry you, I was expected to marry you. Marriage was viewed as a legal agreement.
... and so on.
Most of it had problems, but there were some good ideas in there too. Adapting those to a 21st century framework of equal rights would be challenge, both intellectually and politically. There was a history of perverse, unintended consequences, intertwined changes, etc. and a discussion like this would be a political hot potato.
Divorce is also a massive industry and political lobby. It intertwines itself with social justice and feminism, so it's hard to tease out, but a lot of work is actively done to break up families, since lawyers, guardians ad litem, etc. profit. A lot of that hits low-income families, despite low-income divorce happening without bringing this industry in.
https://www.educationnext.org/international-look-single-pare...
In any case, nobody ever linked ‘adultery laws’ with school.
There are many ways to incentivize nuclear families and discourage illegitimacy.
And, many ways to do the opposite.
In US, for whatever bizarre reason, society had been trained to recoil at the idea of a nuclear family. Indeed, some readers will reflexively gag at my use of the term ‘illegitimate.’
It’s strange.
Occasionally you get these stories where people are ‘shocked’ that a kid in Baltimore didn’t go to school! Yet, the fact that he has no father is just ho-hum. Missing the forest for the trees.
In this case, it's quite possible the father is in prison.
We've created a society, a system far too complex for such simple attributions. You're only fooling yourself if you blame any one of those parties.
A whole system analysis and solution is the only way to make meaningful progress.
Parents have to care for a child to do well (or even mediocre) in school. A child isn't going to choose to do difficult homework in lieu of video games if left up to their own choices.
If we examined the parent's school grades, we'd probably find a similarity, unfortunately. Same with the parent's parents. All this ultimately leads to working 3+ low-skill/low-education jobs just to keep a roof over your head. Every statistic about high school graduation rates firmly says so.
You either are or not. My bet would be that the parent is fully aware, but ashamed and in denial about the situation.
A busy mother is still a mother. Should know when their son is lying. She could be tricked for a month, for one year maybe, but when 4 entire years passed and she claims that didn't suspected anything... either she barely talks in the dinner with the boy about his day or she carefully circumnavigated the theme and don't really wanted to know the details of his education.
And some parents just don't like the school system. I know a case of a divorced mother that deliberately boycotted the education of her daughter repeatedly asking her to be at home so she didn't feel alone. The outraged school wanted to do a point and the truant girl had to repeated several years, with the same outcome and less effort put on it each year. Everybody, was relieved when she eventually reached the legal age, was dumped from the school, show the middle finger to everybody and keep with their former life (Partied hard, socialized a lot, found a partner and married). We could say that she is doing fine, in fact.
This is a lie you tell yourself to be able to continue to look down on people.
In the real world, people are affected by their circumstances, regardless of whether they have the ability to change them.
Not, this is a dichotomy covering all the possible outcomes, thus can't be a lie, by definition.
Some people are good parents, other are terrible at parenthood. Where is the lie in my statement? There are millions of examples.
If your son failed the school for four years, failed in ALL classes, didn't learn anything in your face, and you are clueless about that, don't blame other people. You have a responsibility in this train crash. You must calm down, do damage control and exercise more the communication part in your parenthood. You can be busy and tired, but this is no excuse for not showing the slighest interest for your boy's life, future plans, interests, or education. Not at this level.
Being a good parent is more than being just a food providing machine.
... you even assume that the family has internet at home...
In Florida, my mom taught students whose homes *didn't even have floors*.
BUT that's a very challenging process, and we should still have compassion for people who haven't managed to pull it off yet.
(I have no input on the specifics of this situation though, just trying to provide some context)
- The mom holding an iPhone 12
- Her son playing video games on a large TV then pulling a smartphone out of his pocket.
I think it's reasonable to assume they have internet access, at the very least through their phones.
It's fine to challenge someone's assumptions, but it kind of feels like you're trying to pull a "gotcha" that doesn't apply in this case.
What we're seeing here is the breakdown of extra-legal authority and responsibility. Truancy laws and CPS only work when the vast majority of parents do their job.
That is a dangerous thought. The next thing one might say is why we need truancy laws and CPS if not to harass well-behaved middle class parents.
But they aren't a substitute for "well-behaved" parents. No matter how much money the government spends it will not be able to raise children.
I don't know how to solve this problem but I am sure any solution involves recognizing what's going on here, which you are not doing.
Should we discourage some people having children then?
What the hell happened to personal responsibility? The parents are 1000000% to blame here. The school system isn’t your nanny.
> and was late or absent 272 days
And the mother's statement:
> He didn't fail, the school failed him. The school failed at their job. They failed. They failed, that's the problem here. They failed. They failed. He didn't deserve that.
There's got to be far more than just the school failing here.
It's almost ridiclous.
If students don't show up, don't care, have absolutely no interest in paying attention, are more concerned with social structure etc. then a top prep-school would have the same outcomes.
The blame and externalizations is part of the problem.
The teachers are basically heroes.
The families, students, communities are completely broken, that's the problem.
What? Why are the teachers basically heroes for letting a student to the next grade while he's failing that much? And also not informing the parent about it? Huh?
This line of thinking is really insulting to teachers.
Do you think for a moment the teachers have a right one way or the other to fail those students?
What would happen when the teacher decides to fail 80% of a class? Do you think that's allowed? Not for a second.
And 'informing the parent about attendance'?
You think the parents generally care one bit?
You think the parents don't know their kids are never in class?
What kind of parent 'discovers' their kid has not been in school for 2 years?!?
That it's the teachers responsibility to spend 4 hours on the phone every day as 70% of her class doesn't show up?
It is the expectation that students:
1) Show up. 2) Paid attention. 3) Don't join gangs. 4) Try to finish the work.
If they do those things, they will get an education.
Beyond that, it's really hard for schools - a school can handle a 'small handful' of special cases, but not much more.
The fact that this parent didn't know so many things for so long means that they are absentee. But they are holding 3 jobs, and for them to not know also indicates the failure of the school to keep the parent informed.
Sure, but it's also typical for school admin to lie about the same thing happening when it did not.
parents are normal people too, they sometimes suck too, just move on.
Promotion policy is probably administrators, not teachers. (There are other reasons, like the lack of apparent attempted active contact from teachers despite the number of failed classes, absences, etc., why the teachers here are not heros, but promotion policy probably isn't something they control.)
They basically just showed up to work and rubber-stamped everyone on to the next grade. Tell me what about this makes them heroes.
Most of them could quit and just go elsewhere - often they do the work because they view it as a social responsibility.
Everything they do beyond 'showing up and teaching' is beyond their duty, and most of them do.
This whole bit about 'rubber stamping to the next grade' is a misunderstanding of the situation -> they don't have the power to fail students en masse.
I suggest >80% of teachers would be happy to 'fail' students if that were allowable. They'd probably love to have classes of 8-10 students which is probably the necessary level of attention required.
If teachers acted rationally they would quit and leave - frankly I think they should, let the communities deep problems be exposed for what they are.
It’s quite rationale to stay in a position and get paid in order to pay bills, manage life, etc.
In this case it’s not really to the benefit of their students, so they are sacrificing their happiness in vain.
If most people are failing, then it's not a case of bad decisions, it's a systems issue.
It's stupid to try to apply personal responsibility to average behaviour. Groups of people do things for reasons.
If a kid is doing a job or twoand the mom 3 and he's missed several days of class because the family is literally trying to keep its life afloat, can you fault that kid for not knowing how to read?
It's easy to make bold statements and declare the failing of others when you're not the one living it.
Life. can. be. hard. To a degree that nearly everyone on this forum especially cannot begin to comprehend.
Bullshit. I'm exactly who you describe. I went to a top prep highschool. I jerked off for four years, doing no serious work and giving no fucks. I coasted to graduation with a 2.0 grade average, a feat that I repeated in college for my five-and-a-half year bachelor degree.
I now have a career, a house, and various other fixings of middle class life because I was a white kid in a wealthy area code, and was thus afforded enough attention to spare me from my own foolishness.
> “He feels embarrassed, he feels like a failure,” France said of her son. “I'm like, you can't feel like that. And you have to be strong and you got to keep fighting. Life is about fighting. Things happen, but you got to keep fighting. And he's willing, he's trying, but who would he turn to when the people that's supposed to help him is not? Who do he turn to?”
Her son is the victim? Maybe that school is not the best, but the student made the choice to skip classes and not tell anyone. He's not the victim, he's actually a failure because he failed most of his classes, and he needs to learn from that and take school seriously, or stop pretending he's studying.
Losing three years is a fair exchange for the three years of freedom he loaned from his future.
He's a kid. He made bad decisions. He needs support, role models and being gently but firmly held accountable for his decisions in a way that ramps up gradually. I don't see these things in this story.
The school informed his mom of his grades but - at least as reported here - didn't explain the eventual consequences to her. They did not impose the 'natural' consequences of not progressing in classes that she was expecting. There's a communication failure there, a weird policy, and a failure to escalate this case. He was not held accountable for his decisions regularly with gradually increasing stakes. There's also the bad reassuring incentive provided by publishing his peer ranking in a failing peer group.
The mom also apparently did not escalate these very bad grades and attendance into a major issue for her son. She didn't go down there and dig into it. And now she is avoiding any overall responsibility for the bad situation he is in. Perhaps she didn't learn personal accountability at school. Certainly she trusted the school too much.
Shit is messed up.
But we take schooling as a shared responsibility, and that's the only piece of this puzzle we have collective control over, so let's focus on how that can be improved. It's a long game. The kids of educated kids will almost always be educated. Blaming the mom is not productive. Calling the kid a failure is unhelpful.
This is not exclusive to failure. He failed AND he needs help.
I think the issue here is that missing 270 days of school requires some detailed explanation. There’s a reason, but having once been a teenager the most reasonable is that he skipped a lot of school.
Blaming “the system” for this level of just plain missingness is not telling the whole story.
Unless you want to go deeper in that the underlying condition that made it hard for the parent to not check grades in 4 years and the kid to skip that much school without anyone noticing.
Bingo. Not the only thing of course (as you mention some issues with schools government funding structures) but a critical one.
Although I've learned talking about culture is often taboo in academia and polite serious conversation. You have to be extremely careful so many don't breach the subject at all, so it gets ignored like many important obvious things. Like "The Wire" it's easier to show it in it's raw form than to analyze it in discussion or in papers.
But still it's a giant elephant in the room which I experienced heavily as a poor performing student early on in my life. Before I (fortunately out of circumstance with my single mother) moved to a better environment and set of friends.
That's the difference. This kid was failed by the all of the adults who's fucking job it is to care for him.
- That the school will teach what they are required to teach
- That the school will track absences/lates
- That the school will notify the parent if they see that the child is falling behind at either of those
Having seen similar cases myself, I can say almost definitively that one of the other huge parts going on here is that at some point the student fell behind and was ashamed to speak up. If no one is being accountable, students in this position can show up every day and still fail because they simply don‘t have the foundation to understand what’s being taught. It doesn’t take much at that point for them to simply disengage and stop showing up. By not being “disruptive” I would argue that they are more at risk of failing as these issues fly under the radar.
This lady is in a hole and sometimes I feel our society just throws a shovel at her and thinks poorly of her when she doesn't use it.
You (and anyone else) have my full and unrestricted permission to copy/paste it.
The immediate 'bad justification' is that if I didn't attend, I might get labelled as the problem.
The 'more rational' justification is that by attending and listening I get a better understanding, and by meeting #2 and #3 hope I can contribute constructively.
I know I'm definitely not going to be able to help by dodging the discussion.
Now there are exceptions - if I think others are better able and willing to solve an important issue, or I think the issue is ultimately unimportant - but that's high risk. Like saying I don't need school, so I won't go.
All the schools I attended would place an automated call to my parents if I was absent for a class or the day. Mid-Semester progress reports were mailed to my house for my parents to review. If a student fell severely behind, the teacher could request a conference with the parent.
Perhaps... perhaps this school did none of that (hard to believe). But on some level, the parent has to actually give a sh*t about their child and their education. Working 3 jobs or whatever is not an excuse to be an absent parent.
I'm close with several elementary school teachers, and we've had this discussion before. A parent that doesn't care at all, will nearly always yield a child that performs poorly, no matter how much individual attention the teacher applies to the child. Parents must be engaged in a child's upbringing - they are the primary role model for the child and are the only people that can enforce desired behaviors like doing homework instead of playing video games.
Accessing that portal is a technological barrier not every parent can overcome. Judging by the extent of the problem in that particular school, it might be a common issue in the community it serves.
Sure the parents could take computer literacy courses, access internet at the library if they don't have access at home, or navigate the school bureaucracy (not easy and not always friendly, trust me!), and we could still play the blame game. But ultimately if we add enough friction that 50% of our users fail to engage, perhaps a review of the system is warranted.
[0] https://www.air.org/resource/description-u-s-adults-who-are-...
I don’t want to tell someone what their ability is, but I have to believe that at least one of those will be the right choice for any individual parent.
Even my dentist sends both SMS and phone calls for appointments. And they are a 2-bit operation. My doctor has a web portal but they rely on phones for important information like 'you missed an appointment without warning us'.
I'm struggling at the idea some random locked we form was sufficient for this critical information.
> But in those three years, only one teacher requested a parent conference, which France says never happened. No one from the school told France her son was failing and not going to class.
And that's after this child received dozens of failing grades and hundreds of absences the parent also ignored. Instead of disciplining this child, the parent bought him a video game console and a giant wide-screen TV (shown in the article!).
People need to take responsibility for their own inaction at some point.
The teacher requested it: is parent saying that the request never happened?
If the request did happen and it was only sent/seen once, where do the lawmakers draw the line between “The teacher asked once and the parent never took them up on it, therefore it’s the parent’s fault.” and “The school didn’t share what the concerns were and only tried to contact the parent once in 3 years. The school is at fault.”
The school I went to would not let you advance if you failed a subject (with a few exceptions). You failed math? You don't get promoted. No exceptions.
Of course, my school may have had its own set of problems, but this sounds like the opposite extreme.
I'm British and school (at least when I was there)'s purpose was passing a set of exams when you're 16 and then another optionally at 18. There were informal exams throughout, to tack progress.
Occasionally it was suggested a pupil was held back a year (if they were so far behind, they wouldn't benefit from the next year) - but that was pretty extreme.
Normally pupils were just streamed, so they were put in a class of comparable ability the next year. If they did well they might go up, if they didn't they might go down.
If you hit an exam in a low stream, you might get pushed towards an easier exam (with a lower maximum grade available)
Basically you as a pupil, were never in any doubt as to your trajectory.
The tech lead. Sure, the system is broken to have even allowed this situation to occur, but the tech lead failed everybody by approving those patches.
This kid may have been absent and neglecting their studies, but the school kept promoting them to the next grade and didn't even attempt to take corrective actions by contacting the parent. They failed to do THEIR job and allowed for it to get to this point.
The system is broken and in cases like these the school is put in an impossible situation. And remember this isn't just one kid they're trying to deal with: it's more than half of the student body. So the tech lead probably has dozens of junior devs constantly pushing code that he has to deal with.
You're probably right: the tech lead makes a nice scapegoat when a news article gets published that riles everyone up. Firing him won't solve the problem though.
>This kid may have been absent and neglecting their studies, but the school kept promoting them to the next grade and didn't even attempt to take corrective actions by contacting the parent.
Let's say all that is true. It's still the mother's fault. How could you raise your child and not know he is failing every class and skipping half the time FOR YEARS. Come on man, be serious.
>They failed to do THEIR job and allowed for it to get to this point.
What are you talking about? It isn't the school's responsibility to raise children. Schools are part of a huge government bureaucracy staffed by well meaning bureaucrats providing a particular social service. You, as a parent, CANNOT delegate the responsibility for raising YOUR child to them.
One of the insidious things about this is that we've got an underclass that just doesn't understand at all how the basic systems of life work. How school works; how school can improve economic outcomes in the future; how to do basic legal and organizational things. They've also got severe lacks of attentional resources-- being poor, often in single parent homes, working high numbers of hours.
In turn, they produce another generation with largely the same impediments.
It's easy to blame the parent or individual actors within the system, but the system produces bad outcomes with costs that are borne both by the children and by society as a whole.
What the school is hoping for is that he'll voluntarily drop out and - maybe - get his GED. That's usually the only out they're given.
Because schools don't fail kids or hold them back as a matter of policy, and honestly, that doesn't matter. That's not excuse for the mother not knowing what's going on.
>hey passed him without even notifying her that he was absent so often
Maybe they did, maybe they didn't, but she should take an interest. She's raising him. And it isn't like he failed one test. It's years of failed classes and truancy. Are you telling me a parent wouldn't see the signs that would make them at least go and talk to his teachers to see what's going on?
If you don't have enough time to raise your children properly, that's 100% on you. Having children is a choice, and the costs of that choice should not be imposed on society at large.
Why not? Why do you accept that as truth? What's the alternative? There's no point in arguing what she should have done because we can't change the past, she's here with three kids, so what do we do now? Just let them rot or help them out? I mean I suppose we could just murder all poor people and be done with it, but that's not really a society I want to be a part of.
When you see someone trip and fall, do you get down and tell them they should have watched where they were walking then kick them in the ribs before you walk off?
There is, so we can prevent the next person from making the same mistake.
You can't save a sinking ship with a bucket alone. You have to plug the leak.
So you’re opposed to parents who take whatever work they can get in order to support their families. By your previous statement, you’re probably also against welfare, as that also externalises the costs. It sounds like you’re against the idea that people should be allowed to procreate unless they’re rich?
That's of course not to say that there aren't genuinely awful people and parents out there, but often they're not spending every waking hour working to support their kids, with little to nothing remaining after bills are paid.
Are you saying that's the most likely case here?
Better to figure out how we can support these people so that their lives aren't filled with such abject suffering than to say "they (retroactively) shouldn't have kids."
Yes, by supplying them with adequate family planning education and free access to contraceptives so they understand the risk and burden of parenthood before inflicting it upon themselves.
Let's also help those that have been left behind though. We have the ability to help everyone.
But promoting students as they fail all classes is just atrocious education. It’s warehousing.
(the point being that the count of 'late and absent' probably doesn't paint enough of the story)
It is more, not less, the school’s fault if they aren't actively reaching out to parents with significant absences.
Progress reports show the number of absences and late days (at least all I've seen). So do semester grade reports. It's extremely unlikely a present and engaged parent doesn't notice report card after report card coming home with C's, D's and F's, and hundreds of absent days piling up.
The article even states the parent claims to have been aware of all the failing grades, but somehow assumed her son was doing fine because he graduated to the next grade? How is that even remotely possible and not a major point of concern?
What we likely have here is an absent parent complaining that someone else didn't raise her child correctly.
Nobody ever claimed being a parent is easy... and working 3 jobs isn't an excuse to check out of your parental responsibilities.
Since the article involves review of records which include contact requests initiate by school staff, and does not cover any regarding attendance/truancy from administration, we can most justifiably assume that, like those concerning class performance from teachers (other than the one teacher request that there is no evidence ever went beyond the school office), there was nothing.
And we can be fairly certain, again, given the absence of remark on this being in the records, that despite absence far above the level that is legally defined a truancy in Maryland, the student either was not referred to the district by the school for truancy (most likely, as even a report without follow up would be reflected), or, if they were referred, the follow-up of either active contact by the district (if the school's own contact records did not show sufficient active effort) or referral to law enforcement (if the school's records showed all reasonable efforts at outreach had been exhausted or the districts own followup was unsuccessful) did not occur.
Even if the parent was actively and willfully wrong here, the authorities at the school and/or district failed their duty that exists for the the benefit of the student and for the benefit of the other students whose education the occasional presence of the intermittently attending student would interfere with.
So, while there is certainly a parental failure (the precise degree of culpability for which cannot be assessed from the information at hand), the parent is also completely correct (almost irrespective of the degree of their own culpability[0]) that school authorities failed her child (and, though she did not make this charge, in doing so they failed the public, as well, and the fact that her son was apparently fairly typical for the school tends to indicate that the failure by the school authorities was massive and systemic, not an isolated individual falling through the cracks.)
[0] absent some bizarre scenario llke a massive, elaborate documentation fraud that provided a plausible legitimate narrative supporting the degree of absenteeism, which not only strains plausibly initially, but is implausible would not have been noted were it documented.
The report card noted the teacher requested a conference. It's flatly on the parent to follow-up and schedule one. How else does that work?
The article writer looked at the report cards and totaled up 200+ absent days for crying out loud. How is it even reasonable to excuse the parent from just ignoring all these warning signs?
Could the school have done more? Sure, they could have jailed the child for delinquence, but putting children in jail really does more harm than good. What else was this school supposed to do? They quite literally gave the child and parent every opportunity to be included on the child's progress, and even (on record!) reached out in an attempt to discuss things with the parent.
I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on the rest of things. Raising children is a parent's responsibility... and now this part-time parent is aghast her son will have to repeat all the failed classes she was 100% aware of - as-if there's some plausible scenario where her child could just be graduated and go out into the real world on their own.
“50% of days late or absent” can mean anything from being a second late every other day to being not at school half the days.
That’s a range from almost no absences down to 50% of them.
I could imagine he showed up more the 1st year, did not master the material, and then found the 2nd and following years impossible/pointless so stopped going.
It wasn't just one school, either. My dad being in the Air Force, we moved around a lot. The schools were the same everywhere.
1. "No child left behind".
2. Common core. Which is inherently very racist and damaging to high performing kids.
Often the war on white privilege manifests itself as preventing white success rather than helping PoC. Families that help their children with math homework have been irritated that students often get no credit on math homework if they use the older arithmetic methods. Rather than allowing students to use any valid mathematical principles to learn, children are forced to use a new system that (in my opinion) generates extra work to achieve the correct result.
I dated a teacher many years ago, long before the political climate shift, and she constantly ranted about how common core was slowing her students down. At the time I didn’t understand much (and didn’t ask her to elaborate much), but it’s been interesting seeing her rants validated the last couple of years.
Common core makes sense when a student struggles with the traditional methods. But forcing all students to use it, and it’s historical background of being driven by racial issues, is a damning sign that it’s intentionally holding high performers (often White or Asian) back.
I have enough time to get the nuance of common core and help my child but plenty of others don't have that luxury of time.
Khan Academy, for example, conforms to the Common Core perfectly.
In the Age of Google, it shouldn't be hard to summon the relevant passages which are problematic so that everyone can discuss them. But the vagueness of critique is a tell that someone doesn't care to lead with detail.
For instance on the math side, a focus on numeracy rather than rote memory gives students without access to extra out of school resources another set of tools to approach later math classes on their own.
On top of that, a focus numeracy also helps out privileged students as well and IMO actually teaches math rather than just arthimetic. It'll actually be useful in an age where everyone has multi ghz calculator in their pocket.
Everyone wins.
This whole discussion reminds me of the push back against New Math, where the changes in education were described by some as a soviet plot. No, we just keep making improvements to how we teach each generation, using the data we got from the previous gens.
How does "everyone win" when students who understand math are failing tests because they're not using an absurd roundabout method of multiplying numbers?
You did, by implying that an emphasis on less privileged students harms more privileged students, and that this was in fact the goal of common core. You continue down this assumption further in your post.
> What I did mention was that students who were able to comprehend mathematics using the traditional arithmetic techniques were not getting credit for their work, because the education system was forcing a new thought model for learning elementary math.
The whole point is to demphasize lucking into or remembering the right answer, but demonstrating true mathematical understanding via different forms of symbol manipulation. Memorizing times tables doesn't help students when they have a computer measured in 10s to 100s of GLOPS in their pocket, but a deeper understanding of numerical relationships does.
They don't get credit for their assignment, because they didn't do the assignment, or fulfill the assignment's goals.
> The fact that this new model, Common Core, was specifically designed to reduce privelege[sic]
Giving less privileged children more tools to understand higher math takes nothing away from more privileged children.
> How does "everyone win" when students who understand math are failing tests because they're not using an absurd roundabout method of multiplying numbers?
Because the point of the assignment isn't teaching them multiplication, it's to teach them numeracy. Just because parents (and a lot of K-5 teachers) were failed in that regard doesn't mean we should lower the bar or continue teaching in ways that don't prepare students for the modern world.
I'm not sure how familiar you are with common core, but it starts actually at addition and subtraction, before students even get to memorizing multiplication tables. The traditional method of "borrowing a 1" from the next digit is no longer a valid method of showing work for multi-digit subtraction. This is the method most of us learned on just fine. It works, it doesn't abstract away any numerical concepts. Again, if students struggle, I'm all for alternative methods. But forcing students with solid comprehension into "finding a zero" can do more damage than good.
>Giving less privileged children more tools to understand higher math takes nothing away from more privileged children.
I just explained how students who grasp the math are forced to learn a new method, one that often adds unnecessary confusion. You would be correct if students were allowed to use the methods they understood (assuming the methods are mathmatically sound)
You're clearly arguing in bad faith, I wish you all the best with your trolling career
These students aren't successful by definition. They're students that are failing the assignments. The goal isn't arithmetic, it's numeracy. Greater numeracy helps "successful" students as well.
> I'm not sure how familiar you are with common core, but it starts actually at addition and subtraction..
The whole point of common core is that there's next to no emphasis on teaching arithmetic but instead numerical relationships. Yes, the borrow a one method is still taught _in addition_ to other numerical relationships. The point of these assignments isn't to get to 3 + 9 = 12 (because everyone is surrounded by equipment that'll make that determination before your brain has processed what your retina sees). If you have children who can't demonstrate these different forms of numerical relationships, but only have a memorized algorithm, then sort of by definition they don't have solid comprehension of the concepts being taught, and unsurprisingly fail the assignment.
> I just explained how students who grasp the math...
And I explained how your view of the goal is wrong. We're not teaching arithmetic, we're teaching numeracy. It's like how in higher math if you just state an answer without your proof chain, you fail. The point isn't seeing if you can crank away at the calculations, it's if you understand the different, specific logical relationships between numbers.
These students failing aren't "grasping the math", they're not demonstrating the mathematical concepts being taught and falling back to another (most likely rote) method.
Math isn't arithmetic.
> You're clearly arguing in bad faith, I wish you all the best with your trolling career
I'd prefer if you kept HN conversations civil even if you disagree with the person you're communicating with.
Same, which is why I will continue to walk away from straw man arguments.
> Often the war on white privilege manifests itself as preventing white success rather than helping PoC.
other than you intrinsically view common core as a zero sum strategy, that's taking from privileged students to as a strategy to relatively help less privileged students?
Addressing your point head on isn't making a strawman argument, and doesn't make me a troll.
Would you care to address my point, that your understanding of student success is wrong here, and that's the core of your misunderstanding, and they are in fact helping students across the privilege spectrum? Or will you just continue to call people who disagree with you trolls?
* I didn't say education was a zero sum game, I said that forcing this pedagogical style was harming successful students.
* I don't even know how to address your arguments because you're inserting claims I did not make. Again you're saying I intrinsically view common core as a zero sum strategy? When I just want students to be able to learn in the method they understand, whether that is Common Core, or not.
These are straw man arguments, you are the one who is not addressing my points. So yes, you are trolling, currently. And I call it out when I see it.
That person _is_ a teacher in addition to creating common core. Common core was designed by teachers overall.
The title of the video is literally "Teacher admits he helped write Common Core to end white privilege"
> I didn't say education was a zero sum game, I said that forcing this pedagogical style was harming successful students
..to help non "successful" students. When someone says "we did this to help this subset" and you use that as proof that they're intending to harm another subset, that's the definition of a zero sum argument.
You're also continuing to not address the root of my argument, falling back on name calling.
The Common Core specifications for any grade are very sparse, and simply lists learning goals for the year. It takes 5-10 minutes to read over an entire grade.
> Find whole-number quotients and remainders with up to four-digit dividends and one-digit divisors, using strategies based on place value, the properties of operations, and/or the relationship between multiplication and division. Illustrate and explain the calculation by using equations, rectangular arrays, and/or area models.
This is the level of specification that the Common Core will offer. Where do you find the story that borrowing is not to receive credit, or is not to be taught?
To anyone who has been paying attention, the Common Core advances the CA math curriculum by about 0.5 years, and that's really about it. Students are absolutely learning the same math. Khan Academy is an example of a curriculum which conforms Perfectly to the Common Core.
There's nothing racial about it, and it's quite a reasonable curriculum for math in the sum of all things.
That's the idea, but there's no evidence of actual improvement in, say, student math skills.
For instance:
https://www.brookings.edu/research/a-progress-report-on-the-...
"The 2012 Brown Center Report predicted, based on empirical analysis of the effects of state standards, that the CCSS will have little to no impact on student achievement. Supporters of the Common Core argue that strong, effective implementation of the standards will sweep away such skepticism by producing lasting, significant gains in student learning. So far, at least—and it is admittedly the early innings of a long ballgame—there are no signs of such an impressive accomplishment."
That's the context of your cherry picked sentence, that even a foundation expecting no benefits found them, and is left with trying to downplay those findings.
And that's to be expected, a long tail of continued improvements as the students get older and the benefits of increased numeracy in higher math pay off, and as we get better at communicating to K-5 teachers (who, frankly probably didn't have the best math background either) start grasping the meta point of what's being taught.
> States that more aggressively implemented the CCSS registered larger gains from 2009-2013. That’s an optimistic finding for CCSS.
Even they find that clear data that states implementing CCSS have better outcomes, only a few years after implementation, that correlates with how aggressively CCSS was rolled out in the state.
I provided this source because they're ideologically opposed to CCSS, but even they admit that there's a positive effect early in the roll out. The rest is them bending over backwards trying to explain why their own data doesn't actually matter. In short I cited them because it's one of the best cases for the antithesis of my argument and it still proves what I'm saying.