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Comment by jVinc | Hacker News Reader

> He's a good kid. He didn't deserve that. Where's the mentors? Where is the help for him?

Well obviously at the school but...

> was late or absent 272 days.

I feel like the story here isn't that the schools are failing parents, it's that parents are going to absolutely aburd lengths to try to blames schooles after the fact for their own failures.

She ignore her childs education for 3 years, and so did her kid, and suddenly at the end of it she's going "whaaat!?" when they tell her that this has consequences.

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While I agree, I think there is blame to go around. As the mom said, she knew he was getting a failing grade, but thought it was OK when the kid was promoted to the next grade or next class. Why is it may now they are learning he is still in 9th grade? As there were indications he was promoted to 10th when he shoukdnt have been. And what about the other half the school?

It also says that the school claims to have requested only one parent teacher conference with the parent and the parent denies even getting that one request.

I would expect a little more involvement from the school if any child is doing so poorly. Also, was the kid just not showing up? Or were they showing up and then slipping out before classes started or just not going to class. Because once you drop a kid off at school, I would expect them to make some effort to keep them there or notify the parent when they are not.

> It also says that the school claims to have requested only one parent teacher conference with the parent

Actually, if I read it correctly, it says that school records indicate that only one teacher requested that a parent-teacher conference be held, and there is no supporting evidence that the school acted on that.

As I recall from reading this article the other day, she's also working three separate jobs to support three kids.

I guess that’s too much working to check a report card say, once a year? I get being busy but the choice parents face isn’t “micromanage every aspect of your child’s education” and “do absolutely nothing.”

Is your theory that checking the report card once a year would’ve been a meaningful intervention of some sort?

It would have shown some minimal involvement.

For me, I don’t think checking a report card once would matter. But never checking in three years is indicative of many other problems.

> 272 days

That's more than the number of days in a school year. She admitted she knew he was failing. He missed more than a full year of school. And now she's trying to blame the school for it instead of taking responsibility for her own parenting. The clear fuck-up I see on the school's part is the school moving him on to the next year's classes when he's failed the previous year so thoroughly.

> The clear fuck-up I see on the school's part is the school moving him on to the next year's classes when he's failed the previous year so thoroughly.

Can you 'fail' a year of school? Where I am school years are based on age. You can't fail to get older so you can't fail to get into the next year of school.

You’re getting downvoted because this isn’t how US systems generally work in theory, but it’s a good point because this actually is how many of them work in practice. Schools are extremely loath to fail students because, well, parents flip.

So if you're just very academically limited and have a ceiling to what you can achieve what do you do? Repeat one school year for the rest of your life? After how many attempts do they let you out so you can earn some money?

If you’re “academically limited” ie you have learning disorders, you have a different rubric and track through the system obviously.

What is the plan if like this individual you just don't turn up or apply yourself? Are you never officially released from school? Are you truant for the rest of your life? Are you able to get a job or do you show up on background checks as being 'still at school'?

>After how many attempts do they let you out so you can earn some money?

You have to be in school until you're 16 (age varies depending on state), so the number of attempts is entirely dependent on your grade. If you fail at 10th grade you can drop out right there.

> So if you're just very academically limited and have a ceiling to what you can achieve what do you do?

You can choose to keep applying yourself until you pass. Or, in the case of a student who doesn't apply themself or wish to continue with school they simply leave. Job opportunities will be limited to those which do not require an education, of course.

> Or, in the case of a student who doesn't apply themself or wish to continue with school they simply leave.

But other people are talking about truancy laws? You can't simply leave if you're truant and can be arrested for it?

It varies by state. Once you're 18 (or in some states, as young as 16) you can just drop out.

In elementary school, back in the 80's, I remember kids being held back. I never saw that happen in higher grades.

In all states there is a process for exiting school by or before the age of 16. And you're right: Societal pressures and funding tied to student failure rates caused many schools to abandon the traditional method of holding back students who were not ready to proceed to the next year's studies.

> Can you 'fail' a year of school?

Yes, as shown by the school in question deciding that he was actually still a ninth-grader after three years of social promotion.

More critically, you can and should also not be promoted in a particular subject when you fall the prerequisite, whether or not you are promoted in overall grade, which for some reason didn't happen here, either.

> > was late or absent 272 days. [...] > I feel like the story here isn't that the schools are failing parents

If it's possible to miss that much school in 3 years without repeated, urgent, in-person contact with parents long before reaching that point, the school has horrendously failed the parents.

> She ignore her childs education for 3 years

But did she ignore it, or fail to understand mixed messages and place inappropriate trust in authorities.

On its face, the assumption that promotion means adequate progress to advance to the next level is not unreasonable.

Now, as someone who has a college degree, who has worked in education, whose parents both had college degrees and both worked in education, whose social network is full of people who have college degrees and who have worked in education at various levels, I'm quite aware of the existence of a variety of differences in promotion policy, the potential disconnects between promotion and assessments of progress, and that the fact schools cannot be trusted to provide a clear picture of what is going on, especially to minority parents (because of both classic racism and neglect-as-conflict-avoidance.)

But I'm also aware that other people with different backgrounds are very often very much less aware of those things.

It sounds like the school is overwhelmed. Special protocols and interventions can't realistically be applied to the entire student body.

If a school is so overwhelmed that it can't do its basic legal duties, it shouldn't be news after it's gone on for at least three years. It should have worked it's way up from the administration to the local district and from there to both the local public and state authorities immediately after each body found itself unable to do what it is required to do (and there appear to be fairly black-and-white legal requirements being missed here, especially concerning handling attendance.)

“The job the taxpayers are paying me to do is hard, so i just won't do it and hope that nobody who matters notices” isn't acceptable.

A kind of nonfeasance that is all-too-common in entities serving poor and/or minority communities when they aren't actively malfeasant out of malice toward those they notionally serve, sure, but not acceptable.

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