> 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.
- 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.
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.
> 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.”
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.
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.
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-...
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.
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.
> “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.
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.
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.
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?
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.