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Comment by JoeAltmaier | Hacker News Reader

Folks are missing the bigger point: this student is in the top half of the class. This story isn't uncommon; its the norm there.

Why? Because, probably, the school is unsafe for students. Never mind blamethrowing who is at fault for truancy. When half the class is late/absent half the time, what can the county do? It's take an army of truancy officers to even begin to address.

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Their principal, Kamala Carnes, left a different Baltimore school after a scandal where the school was giving students passing marks and diplomas. That might explain why this student was only moved all the way back to 9th grade recently. The initial plan to just shuffle everyone through got outed.

https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/14-months-la...

Does that mean they took an 18 year old and put him back in class with 15 year olds expecting him to stay there for four more years from 19-22? That can’t be right. What does sent him back to the 9th grade mean in this context?

I would assume he would just have to get a ged at that point right?

It varies in the US, but 21 is commonly the maximum age to be in a public high school.

State by state data: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/statereform/tab5_1.asp

Texas allows up to age 26...heh.

This lists the "maximum age limit to which free education must be offered" which may not be the same as the "maximum age limit to which free education can be offered"

It's possible at age 22 the state is not required to provide him an education, but chooses to do so anyways

It's a little hard to summarize as the rules are complex and different for each state.

Here's Texas, for example: https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/ED/htm/ED.25.htm

Nothing new, as this has been going on for decades now. In Hartford, CT. they are lucky to get 50% attendance rate. And that's on the first day, and going door-to-door the day before reminding people that school begins the next day. Nothing to do with safety, it's no motivation. No parents they look up to telling them why they need to even be there.

When all you have is a hammer you end up with a lot of bent screws. I am not close enough to the situation to know what the root problem is, but I bet it can't be solved with LEO's of any stripe.

This is a bad analogy. If you have cut nails you will also bend them (or split the wood) if you only have a hammer and no way to drill pilot holes. If your screws are thin or you have pilot holes, you’ll do fine hammering them in.

I think it’s generally better for one to write what one means rather than using stale or disjointed metaphors.

The guy wrote an internet comment and his analogy was immediately logical to me. I actually had to read your response 3 times before I understood the problem. I think your standards are a little high for basic communication.

Not so for me. I was baffled. Wood screws are commonly hammered in. My Dad used to say "The threads are for removing them"

> If your screws are thin ... you’ll do fine hammering them in.

Wouldn't that depend on the hardness of the material you're hammering into? Even with woods, there are some very dense and hard ones around... ;)

Our core beliefs on communication probably vary considerably on this matter.

Analogies are a method to quickly transmit wealth of information, cultural biases, and to determine a set of shared assumptions which become to a "common ground" on which the relevant points of the argument can be discussed, rather than fighting back on forth on every property of the scenario under discussion.

> I think it’s generally better for one to write what one means rather than using stale or disjointed metaphors.

If I was offering instruction, then maybe. If I am writing to convince then I use the literary tools which convince the most people; analogy and thematic devices. In this case I am asserting a social argument and bald data convinces very few people.

If all you have are the facts, then all you will receive is an argument over the facts.

I think a major cause is the promotion. Once the student fails to master the 1st class, attending the next class is pointless. The student sees this, and acts accordingly.

The promotion isn't the cause, here. It's a symptom of a societal collapse on many levels.

Well, sort of. Lower class mobility, employment instability, rising housing and medical costs, and the two income trap are all very real rips in the societal fabric.

There are many scenarios where stable homes with good incomes fall apart. On the other hand, there are also plenty of examples of homes where kids were had where there was no stability or income necessary from the get go to provide them with the support they'd need to work their way through the educational system and come out successful on the other end. How do you address the elephant in the room of people who decide to have kids without the means and time to properly provide for them (which includes encouraging and cultivating a desire to pursue an education)?

I fail to see an easy solution. Foster homes of well to do families that can put the resources and time into nurturing these kids towards a brighter future? More resources into educating folks to steer clear of parenthood if they're not adequately equipped for the job ahead?

> In the latter example, I fail to see an easy solution. Foster homes of well to do families that can put the resources and time into nurturing these kids towards a brighter future?

More generous state support for low income families would go a long way. Better to help their existing family than to try and transplant them to a new one I would have thought (in most cases anyway)

Direct cash payments have been shown to be very beneficial to those in poverty, so it's definitely a place to start to encourage better outcomes. With that said, it doesn't fix cultural or other challenges around educational value and beliefs. "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

I can already hear certain relatives saying, “they’ve pissed away their opportunities and we’re going to pay them for it?”

The fact that it's somewhat taboo to even suggest that this is a cultural problem, and not a school/government/"system" problem, is a big part of the reason we haven't seen any real improvement.

The presence/absence of a 2nd parent at home continues to be the overwhelming and undisputable primary factor that correlates to student success.

Failing schools are just another symptom.

An army? There were 120 students in the class. Multiply by four classes and that's 480. Even if every student were truant a single truant officer could get to all of them within a single school year. Probably at most three or four of them would be all that's needed to stay on top of things there.

What about the political fallout from pressing truancy charges against hundreds of minority students? Truancy, at least in my experience, involves fines and/or jail time.

for the parent

That varies by jurisdiction. But it doesn't matter much in this case, as pressing charges against hundreds of minority parents is just as unacceptable.

Because, obviously, sending the parent to jail will not at all affect the child. Americans' love for retributive justice is really weird.

Every day for 180 days. Lets not fool ourselves. The problem is endemic.

Your larger point stands, but the phrase was "near top half". He was 62 out of 120.

So presumably he was very close to the median performance.

No, he's in the bottom half of his class. "near the top half" is the journalist trying to fool the reader.

In the bottom half, but near the top half, so at the top of the bottom half. In other words: in the middle. That number makes it look like he's an average student, which he clearly isn't, if he never passed any of his classes.

Still in the middle. Almost half the class is worse than this guy.

It could also be that there's a demographic of parents at that school that doesn't know that, the function of the school, is to teach the kids that 'better' students deserve opportunity.

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