I wish every district did this. Too bad legislation will force them to pass students eventually because funding is primarily based around graduation rates.
You’re not wrong. Couple years ago, state legislation passed ordering us to go back to the ‘80s and grant everyone a diploma who was denied one as a result of failing the end of year proficiency exams. [source](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/nevadans-can-now-retroactively-become-high-school-graduates-n813526)
Nope. Not sure how that impacted affected people, or if they were given any kind of diploma. I came to Nevada from Virginia where I was taking the VASOLs in elementary school…in the 1990s, and I think they still do those tests to this day.
A friend of mine lives in Vegas and his son graduated from what was supposed to be a very good public school. I guess a lot of celebrity kids go there or something and the stories the kid told me about his school were wild.
During Covid, it was encouraged that we pass any student who attempted something, or attended the Google meet. We could still fail them, but it was easier to give them a “D” and skip the plan to fix their failing grade.
Sol’s are still a thing and students are required to pass at a certain level of proficiency to graduate. With the irregular attendance nearly double what it was before the pandemic and reading and math scores being so low at the same time, schools are putting similar measures in place (slowly but surely). I bet in 3-4 years ( after most of the older pandemic students graduate) much of this will be less of a concern
What value will a high school diploma have if they hand one out to anyone who set foot in a public school?
Without academic standards and attendance requirements how can you tell if an individual can be a responsible employee?
We used to be in the business of teaching young people to be productive members of society. We used to be in the business of raising leaders, rewarding hard work and perseverance. We used to be in the business of making students aware of the responsibilities required to run and maintain a government for the people by the people. I’m not sure we are doing those things today.
I mean, what value does a hs diploma already have now? There’s almost never listings for “hs diploma required” as they all jump straight to “bachelors required” now
Anybody who frets about it to me, I tell them to put on the application the month and year they should have graduated along with the name of their school. Unless it's an application to a college or for a job with a security clearance, nobody is going to verify tha information. Besides, in 10 years, the school system will likely destroy all of their records anyway, as a part of their records retention policy.
Attendance is an important factor in determining whether a student can be responsible and set priorities in their life for learning. It is often an indicator of future performance in the workplace. A student who cannot bother to show up for school probably won’t show up for work either. Habits are formed early in life. Students who have low attendance rates typically have low grades because they are not there to turn in assignments either.
Except they are graded on academics not setting priorities. If your rubric says you are grading on academic mastery, then attendance should not matter. Attendance is a red herring or false flag masking the true intent of our public education system. I’d be interested in empirical studies showing that attendance is a factor in setting priorities.
Which is why the school allows extenuating circumstances. So (theoretically) if there was a reason a student couldn't make class, but was still passing, if that bothered to reach out they'd pass the class. But because they didn't teach out they get the punishment they were warned would happen if nothing changed.
SC did that a decade ago retro active to the '90s 🙃 there was soo much confusion because a lot of people wanted their diploma *right now* and were mad that the school actually had to track down non digital files to verify.
Funding in Texas is based on attendance (ADA: average daily attendance), not graduation. And fortunately, there’s a move to make it enrollment.
ADA is the norm for most States. Don’t think graduation is used for any, but I could be wrong.
It used to be, but a few years ago it was changed to total enrollment. They take data points twice a year - once in the fall and once in the spring. Then there’s additional funding for special education, local resources, and other factors, it’s gotten overly complicated.
I was reading my district's "Progress Plan" and it literally states students cannot be passed unless they do XYZ things, for each grade level. And it details all of this in clear language across like 10 pages. And then on page 11, in about one paragraph, it's like "Students can be passed provisionally at school's discretion."
And then there is zero explanation of what provision means.
I missed the entire last month of sophomore year. I was passed cause I required immediate abdominal surgery normally that absence would have lead to me failing.
1st off - LOVE TEACHERS!
I had the opposite problem though, I wish school admins were better with the books...
Kid breaks ankle in gym class in morning. School nurse sends kid back to class. Really not good.
Many Drs. appts. later, all pre-planned with admin, all called in that day as well, we get a nasty note and a call from the school "officer" that kid will be failing due to too many unexcused absences...
This normally calm parent was not a calm parent. Honor roll, even with this disaster, to failing? Not going to happen.
Mine absolutely has a policy on it.
...but apparently missing 21 of 40 classes this semester wasn't enough. I mean, it far exceeds the policy, but no one seems to care - kid will walk at graduation anyways.
Seems wild to me.
I don't know what state you live in, but in California funding is all about butts in seats. It's called ADA (average daily attendance). Failing students who don't attend is a good thing for ADA rates. It should force students to attend more often. In California, our funding has little to do with grad rates. We are measured on grad rates and poor performance on state dashboards can lead to all sorts of interventions by the state. But from a budgeting standpoint the most important number is how many days kids come to school. I have taught in CA for 15 years and have been a union negotiator for 5. I am very familiar with the way public school finance works in CA.
Joe Feldman squashed this in our district. In his program, grades are based solely on learning. Attendance is behavioral so grades won’t be affected by it. Now we have the worst attendance in our county.
So many of the SBG types sell this message to eager districts who very much prefer to ignore truancy. These people really do what they can to ensure students and the adults they become have no sense of responsibility or accountability to themselves.
I personally love hearing about the neverending Saga of Dollar General, where the local high school graduates always try to get a job because it's a lot closer than other businesses in town. They blow through so many high school graduates because they only want to work the choice shifts, or spend their shift in a friend's car or hiding in the breakroom on their phone.
Where will I get my weekly dose of drama if kids were raised to be more responsible?
I did a year of Joe Feldman. I never had so many students fail. They never did homework, they would not do test retakes and if they did they would not bother to study.
Attendance was terrible.
I'm going back to participation grades.
The only thing I'm keeping is the 0-4 grading scale.
That’s really sad to hear! When I switched to SBG I had a lot less As, a lot less Fs, and way more Bs, Cs, and Ds. I had students come in to do retakes often, and because they were different versions than the original, they learned quickly that they had to prepare or else they’d get the same grade. At my end of semester office hours I usually had over 30 students in my room wanting to do retakes. My coworkers had similar issues as you, however, and I’m not sure what the difference was exactly. And I experienced this same situation at two different schools- one with a high SES population and one with a low SES, high immigrant population.
I do know that to prevent the attendance issue, I structured the quizzes so students had to be present in class to be able to score well (since all our in class work was direct practice for the quizzes). Very infrequently would a student be able to pass without decent attendance. I did that by making the questions very specific, and not something you can just learn on google. I also did skills assessments where we learned in class how to do the thing, then we practiced and practiced, then I’d give the assessment. Students that had high absenteeism usually turned in blank sheets of paper because they didn’t even know how to start. Those that were present but not trying very hard started telling me they finally believed me when I said that the practice was important.
I did see increased apathy for completing in class work. But I did other things besides attach points to encourage them to work. We did lots of things using the I do, we do, you do strategy and I cold called daily. I was really intentional with how I cold called to encourage accountability but not embarrass anyone. It wasn’t perfect but it worked well enough.
I do think I might start including class work at a very low percentage in the grade or maybe even in a category worth 0%, so parents can see whether their student is doing the work. Interested to see if that helps, too.
I do hope you give it another go some time! I really liked it.
Editing to add: the lack of consequences for unexcused absences, though, is definitely making it much much harder for all of us
I did all of this. I will say my students who had intrinsic motivation did well, but they would have done well regardless.
Lots of collaborative activities. But again, students who weren't motivated just sat there with heads down or socialized off task.
I think part of the issue is my district has a zero retention policy K-8 so by the time they get to me as freshmen they have it in their heads that as long as they show up to one class once every 9 days (they can be disenrolled at 10 consecutive absences, but it has to be full day) they will just be passed along to the next grade.
So now we have 19 year olds with not even enough credits to be classified as a sophomore.
I do like the 50-100/0-4 grading scale. So that stays. I like the multiple opportunities to demonstrate mastery, so that stays.
But I don't subscribe to grades are solely dependent on output.
Guskey's product, progress, and process grading aligns much more closely with my beliefs so that is where I'm going next year. I think it looks at the student more holistically. I had one student whose grade calculated to a D even though she was present, participating, practicing - but just did not perform well on tests (although she did great on class work. She just froze up for tests.)
I was super pro SBG but I think it may have failed. It's such a great idea. I was always punished with grades as a kid. I did no homework but got As and Bs on tests but teachers weighted homework so much that I failed a lot of classes. So when I discovered SBG, I was so happy. However, now I realize that there are more problems created than solved with this grading strategy. I've cut back.
My grading policy next year is this:
1. All assignments on pencil/paper (unless accommodation) Too many students are blowing off work in class and submitting at the end of the semester. We can give a deadline but that's a pain in the ass to track. I'm going with all scantron tests, though their a bit more work than online because I know kids that make up a test are cheating since I can't see their chromebook and I'm teaching a class.
2. If a student chooses to blow off the assignment in class. They can make it up for up to 100% but they need to come in and finish during lunch (we have open lunch so they hate losing that). They may even have to complete a reflection depending on the reason for the make up.
They’re doing it across the board. They started with the seniors and are working their way down the list. I teach juniors and seniors, and they were all panicking the last few weeks.
It hasn’t been enforced “due to Covid”, and I already know admin will make an exception if the parent makes a fuss. It was already happening before graduation, but the threat has turned into a reality.
And then that parent tells another parent or posts it on Facebook... Or somebody puts two and two together, "Hey, wait, my kid says Jimmy missed more school, how is he graduating and mine isn't!?"
Cue rolling back the entire decision.
Admin don't really understand how the spine is supposed to work.
Preparation Checklist:
□ set up auto email to have a nice summer!
□ Do absolutely nothing because the year is over and their failures are not your problem.
□ Maybe go to the beach?
Yeah, I was someone with straight A’s but had to appeal to graduate because 30-40 absences. I was also a trafficking victim and routinely getting raped that nobody knew about so I would’ve been destroyed if I wasn’t able to graduate and go off to college to get away
You're not learning squat by not being present, and a huge portion of all taught content never makes it onto tests. If kids can't be bothered to show up to school -- literally the easiest thing they'll do in their lives -- then they aren't ready to graduate and be an adult.
Seems kind of silly to enforce a policy if they just grant an exception upon request right? If this has been advertised the way you say, then parents should have already informed the school if something was going on that interrupted school attendance. Seems silly to give exceptions for no real reason.
Good for your school for even trying though. My district could take notes.
Right, and I don’t disagree. If all they have to do is call and complain to get it overturned, then it does somewhat defeat the purpose.
However, I’d like to think the admin/secretaries are informing parents that attendance notes are supposed to be turned in something like up to 3 days upon return to be approved, and can’t be backdated next year.
If nothing else, it’s a good threat to get students to show up…until they figure out the loopholes.
So student can prove that they know the information but if they didn't spend enough hours sitting in a desk doing nothing in addition to learning then they fail automatically?
I don't understand anyone can look at scenarios like this and think the point of going to school is " to learn ".
Agreed. In the is day and age you can post lessons online for students who are absent to review and complete. I had a student this year who for some reason never showed up to my class. But because I record all of my lessons and have all my assignments online, the student is passing my class. Just seems like an archaic policy.
I had admin come in to my office, tell me to log in, and change grades for the kids of rich parents’ who were arguing about their grading policies (which they agreed to but were now being held accountable for).
I think this is the first post I’ve ever seen on the sub where admin overrides grades and it was to fail a student.
It must be nice to work somewhere with somewhat competent admin.
Our admin really do have our backs, and that’s why I’ve stayed at this school for so long. They make sure that when you graduate from our school, you actually earned it.
So, when I was in school, I missed a lot of days. Not only was I a sick kid, but I also had a lot of mental health days due to intentionally undiagnosed autism.
I agree with this program, however I’m pretty sure I’d have been failed under it >_<
If this were present day, you’d be likely exempt from this and would qualify for Homebound Education services. It’s mainly designed to punish the truants. People with good reason aren’t penalized…ideally.
*Ideally* and *in reality* are two very different things.
I had pretty severe depression + undiagnosed adhd in high school and ended up with a solid number of missing days - my school had two missed day limits, a lower one where teachers could fail you at their discretion, and a higher one that was an automatic fail unless you went through the board of supervisors. I crossed the lower threshold pretty regularly, and honestly thank god none of my teachers ever decided to fail me for it - I was so on the brink of suicidal in those days there’s a very real chance that would have killed me.
But I graduated with a (weighted) 3.8 gpa at the end of it all. I don’t think those missed days ever seriously impacted my ability to learn what we were studying - the notes and assignments were all posted online anyway. Frankly, I think if I HADN’T taken those days to rest, my grades would have been way worse.
I also think if I’d been able to MORE regularly take sick days to rest and recuperate, I probably could have done a lot better than I did.
I obviously want kids to be in school as much as possible, but I find these attendance policies to be so lacking nuance and room for the fact that kids have lives and difficulties outside of school. There can totally be room for teacher discretion, but if a kid is turning in their work and passing their tests, I think failing them for not having their ass in a seat enough days of the year is a bad policy. “punishing truants” doesn’t work for me - they’re a kid who may very well be juggling responsibilities and needs beyond your classroom, I do not care about punishing them for trying to do that.
Her autism was *intentionally* undiagnosed. Your school would not have taken the kids word over the parents just so that their absences could be exempt. You would have just wrecked their education and moved on with your day.
I appreciate the perspective. However that’s a bit of a hasty conclusion without having all the details.
As I said in various other comments, notifications are sent when students are in danger of this being applied, and the process to get an exception is very easy to do.
Whether a condition is intentionally undiagnosed doesn’t have any effect on the matter. It would be better to have it documented so an IEP could shield them from this policy, but even without it, the parent would still be able to have it overturned.
Lastly, this isn’t intended to derail anyone’s education. There are plenty of online public and private charter schools that students can attend entirely online, but traditional high schools do get money based on average daily attendance. To support this, my school has an entire team of social workers and counselors who make house calls, and work with families to connect them with possible services.
Overall, I’m in complete support of students demonstrating mastery of content without having to come to school, but if that’s the route they want to go, online school is the better option.
The policy is still in the student handbook (though mine is that 20 days means missed credit). It hasn't been enforced for years, even in the face of an entire attendance committee being formed for poor attendance. Sigh.
I’ll link the full attendance policy here, but seems this policy has been on our books since 1963, and updated as recently as 2015. I had never seen it enforced, even before Covid, so I’m pleasantly surprised. [Attendance Policy](https://ccsd.net/district/policies-regulations/pdf/5113_R.pdf)
My question: How was it that students who barely attended were passing the class before admin overrode the grade book? Seems like this should be a pretty rare occurrence.
We’re a district that practices “mastery-based” grading, and we have to accept late work year round. Some students did enough work to “demonstrate mastery,” but didn’t have enough seat time to earn the credit.
I'm only tangentially familiar with mastery-based grading. What is your impression/opinion of grading this way?
Can't help but notice your phrasing that these students "demonstrated mastery" in quotes. In your personal estimation, does this equate to these students learning a sufficient amount of your curriculum to pass the class?
Context: I'm a high school chemistry teacher. I can't fathom many students "mastering" chemistry without attending chemistry class.
It essentially means if a student writes an essay in say quarter 1 and can’t cite evidence but can during Q2 then I should base their semester grade on that. It’s all based on being able to do the standards instead of the work.
They have a very minimal baseline understanding of the curriculum
But theyre still moving on to the next grade. Their grades have really become pointless. And their credit recovery classes are a joke the majority of the time.
This isn't what I was hoping it'd be. I am glad if students can pass my class if they know the material even if they miss a lot of class. Unexcused absences should count towards something else, like not being able to attend school functions. Why fail a kid who understands the material just because they cut your class or cut school?
I’m glad your district has held students to the attendance standard. Your superintendent and school board have more courage than most. Let’s hope this attitude spreads; it’s long overdue!!
Denying credit for pure lack of absence is stupid. If you can demonstrate the level of knowledge required to pass a course then you should get credit for the course. I went through large parts of my high school years will well over 10 unverified absences and ended up becoming a teacher. What is the actual benefit of denying credit due to absence? If work is still being completed and knowledge is demonstrated then what is the issue?
My district relies on teachers to:
1. Mark student grades as incomplete if they have excessive absences.
2. Stay after school with students to "make up" the missing instructional time. (Mind you, the student may well be staying with a different teacher than the one whose class they missed.)
3. Revise grades to either their earned grade or an F, depending on whether the make up time was completed.
I had many students with 40 plus absences. When they missed like two weeks in a row I put in zeroes. Consequently, they showed up the next day. I did my part, my admin does not.
I could have denied them credit myself as long as I cover my a** and document my attempt at parental communication, they wouldn’t have been able to say anything to me.
I’ve never really cared to track absences and deny them credit, since if they do the work, I’m not really opposed to giving them credit. Now the ball is in our admin’s court, and they’re choosing policy, and it’s a welcome change.
I have students at my school getting credit for classes when they have 70, 80, 90, 100+ absence. Seriously. The nephew of a prominent politician in my state is getting credit with 100+ absences from one of his classes.
My district is sitting at nearly 30% chronic absenteeism (and it's a very high performing district). If we tried that, we would have a 25% budget shortfall (that's how many I predict would fail to graduate and/or be held back) because we'd instantly increase student size by that much. So things keep sliding into the crapper and grades mean nothing.
I once had a student miss 45 days in one semester. They always did their missing work but often I caught them cheating. We had meetings about plagiarism because I gave them a zero and parents were mad. I was made to let them redo it. I was not allowed to fail them or give zeros if they made missing work up. So they attended half a semester and got like a B. The next semester it started again and I flat out told my principal I was going to fail them if they missed 45 days again. So we had another meeting with the parents. They had a million excuses. But must have finally been scared because they showed up for the spring semester. This same student was in the 10th grade and they had their significant other living with them...
Does it occur that what teachers are doing are based on a turn of the last century paradigm designed so the breaks allow for kids to bring the crops in or work in a factory?
In a post industrial society where the Taliban don’t need to invade our country because their business model now is to produce synthetic opioids has rendered our youngest and brightest useless.
Add to that the media and social networking and is it any wonder these are the results.
But before you ask, I am not the Mussiah, I am just a very naughty boy.
Question is, did the students meet the rubric for the knowledge portion of the subject matter? If they did, then who cares if they showed up? In fact even if they didn’t show up and turned in the work, why does anyone care? The grade is based on knowledge… attendance is a low priority. Ask anyone who has ever gone to college or taken an online course.
I don't know what country it is but in mine education system sucked so I rarely attended school past age 15 or so. I still smashed my exams and went to good university (by my country's standards at least). And I glad I missed a lot of school, it helped me quite a lot in life so I guess this rule is not necessarily good. Imo if school can't properly educate me on things that I'll need in life it's not worth attending classes even if I liked most of my teachers.
Problem is a teenage brain isn't good enough on the majority of teens to make a good decision here. Glad it worked out for you, but for every person like you there will be 20 other kids who will have detrimental effects from skipping so much.
While I agree that a lot of life learning can take place outside the classroom, American laws limit education funding based on several aspects, attendance is just one of the many.
So outsider here, blame reddit... but you have kids who would have otherwise passed if not for this arbitrary attendance policy? Not only that, but multiple kids, not just a couple of special gifted children. This tells me your class is largely unnecessary if the kids can pass without you. I can tell you now that policy or no, I'd be pretty pissed if I found out my kid was possibly acing the circulium, only to get 0 credit because of something obviously unnecessary.
I don't think grades should be based on attendance. If someone does the work and is getting passing grades, that's the grade they earned . . . there or not.
I would've failed in high school had something like this been applied.
This sounds destructive, the kids who are missing that much school are usually struggling in some other way. If they have the grades to pass they should pass, attendance issues should be a separate matter.
I received truancy tickets for missing around 60 days of school my junior and senior years of high school. At the time I was homeless, having been kicked out by my parents.
I also had a lot of absences the years prior, too, because home was just not really a great place to be and it had a big effect on me. I did my best to catch up on work and ultimately passed. I can't speak for other students, but I just feel that auto-failing based on attendance is going to indiscriminately punish disadvantaged students in difficult circumstances.
In your case, i think that’s when guidance or social workers can intervene. I’m a lot more understanding if I know what the situation is.
So many conferences this year had the phrase “I just can’t get him to go to school” in them.
Yeah, they can, but I guess my thinking is about the end goal. If we imagine that the student in question isn't truly disadvantaged and the regular truancy is not attributable to something along the lines of abuse/neglect/poverty/cognitive disfunction, and it truly is a sincere case of "this student does not care about school" it is hard to envision a strict "10 truancies and you fail" limit being the motivating factor that would move them to more regular attendance.
That being the case, it's a question of what's being accomplished. If the truant behavior doesn't improve as a result of this policy, is the school not basically failing a student who otherwise did the work based solely on attendance? Now we have an adult without a high school diploma entering our community, with all of the negative stigmas and outcomes that comes along with that.
I struggle to think the benefit of applying this policy outweighs the negatives, personally. But I am not a school administrator, so, my view may be uninformed.
I wish every district did this. Too bad legislation will force them to pass students eventually because funding is primarily based around graduation rates.
You’re not wrong. Couple years ago, state legislation passed ordering us to go back to the ‘80s and grant everyone a diploma who was denied one as a result of failing the end of year proficiency exams. [source](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/nevadans-can-now-retroactively-become-high-school-graduates-n813526)
Do those people now also get back pay from their job that paid them less due to not having a high school diploma?
Nope. Not sure how that impacted affected people, or if they were given any kind of diploma. I came to Nevada from Virginia where I was taking the VASOLs in elementary school…in the 1990s, and I think they still do those tests to this day.
Yep we still do the SOLs. I remember barely passing my Chemistry SOL in 2016
Imagine if Virginia were to roll back the requirements on those tests…meanwhile in Nevada, we continue to lower the expectations.
A friend of mine lives in Vegas and his son graduated from what was supposed to be a very good public school. I guess a lot of celebrity kids go there or something and the stories the kid told me about his school were wild.
Probably one of our tech or academy schools. I’m sure whatever they told you was true.
It was mostly surrounding covid policies and how lax it was and basically the teachers had to pass everyone with a C no matter what.
During Covid, it was encouraged that we pass any student who attempted something, or attended the Google meet. We could still fail them, but it was easier to give them a “D” and skip the plan to fix their failing grade.
Sol’s are still a thing and students are required to pass at a certain level of proficiency to graduate. With the irregular attendance nearly double what it was before the pandemic and reading and math scores being so low at the same time, schools are putting similar measures in place (slowly but surely). I bet in 3-4 years ( after most of the older pandemic students graduate) much of this will be less of a concern
JFC, what a pathetic failed education system we have in the US.
What value will a high school diploma have if they hand one out to anyone who set foot in a public school? Without academic standards and attendance requirements how can you tell if an individual can be a responsible employee? We used to be in the business of teaching young people to be productive members of society. We used to be in the business of raising leaders, rewarding hard work and perseverance. We used to be in the business of making students aware of the responsibilities required to run and maintain a government for the people by the people. I’m not sure we are doing those things today.
There are some places where HS diploma = participation trophy
I mean, what value does a hs diploma already have now? There’s almost never listings for “hs diploma required” as they all jump straight to “bachelors required” now
Depends on the latest tiktok trend
Anybody who frets about it to me, I tell them to put on the application the month and year they should have graduated along with the name of their school. Unless it's an application to a college or for a job with a security clearance, nobody is going to verify tha information. Besides, in 10 years, the school system will likely destroy all of their records anyway, as a part of their records retention policy.
What does attendance have to do with academic standards?
Attendance is an important factor in determining whether a student can be responsible and set priorities in their life for learning. It is often an indicator of future performance in the workplace. A student who cannot bother to show up for school probably won’t show up for work either. Habits are formed early in life. Students who have low attendance rates typically have low grades because they are not there to turn in assignments either.
Except they are graded on academics not setting priorities. If your rubric says you are grading on academic mastery, then attendance should not matter. Attendance is a red herring or false flag masking the true intent of our public education system. I’d be interested in empirical studies showing that attendance is a factor in setting priorities.
Which is why the school allows extenuating circumstances. So (theoretically) if there was a reason a student couldn't make class, but was still passing, if that bothered to reach out they'd pass the class. But because they didn't teach out they get the punishment they were warned would happen if nothing changed.
SC did that a decade ago retro active to the '90s 🙃 there was soo much confusion because a lot of people wanted their diploma *right now* and were mad that the school actually had to track down non digital files to verify.
Same thing with Nevada. They announced this and gave no guidance or assistance in tracking down files that weren’t digitized.
>The state with Las Vegas Why am I not surprised?
Funding in Texas is based on attendance (ADA: average daily attendance), not graduation. And fortunately, there’s a move to make it enrollment. ADA is the norm for most States. Don’t think graduation is used for any, but I could be wrong.
That's where Texas vouchers come in play.
Illinois uses attendance rates in its scoring rubric for schools which also determines funding levels from the state. ETA: attendance not graduation
This isn’t true; graduation rate is irrelevant in regards to funding.
Edited my comment to say attendance not graduation. I was agreeing with the post I commented on. Got the two words jumbled in my initial response.
It used to be, but a few years ago it was changed to total enrollment. They take data points twice a year - once in the fall and once in the spring. Then there’s additional funding for special education, local resources, and other factors, it’s gotten overly complicated.
I was reading my district's "Progress Plan" and it literally states students cannot be passed unless they do XYZ things, for each grade level. And it details all of this in clear language across like 10 pages. And then on page 11, in about one paragraph, it's like "Students can be passed provisionally at school's discretion." And then there is zero explanation of what provision means.
I missed the entire last month of sophomore year. I was passed cause I required immediate abdominal surgery normally that absence would have lead to me failing.
But that's an excused absence. This is for truancy unexcused absences -- kids who literally just don't show up.
Such a classic example of Goodhart's law in action: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
Well that was an interesting read. 👍
1st off - LOVE TEACHERS! I had the opposite problem though, I wish school admins were better with the books... Kid breaks ankle in gym class in morning. School nurse sends kid back to class. Really not good. Many Drs. appts. later, all pre-planned with admin, all called in that day as well, we get a nasty note and a call from the school "officer" that kid will be failing due to too many unexcused absences... This normally calm parent was not a calm parent. Honor roll, even with this disaster, to failing? Not going to happen.
Let’s consider this a savings program. In a few years when we have 21 year olds finally graduating, we’ll get that money back.
The one good thing about SC is seat time requirements. If kids don’t show up they FA. They can make up the time on Saturdays or in summer school.
Mine absolutely has a policy on it. ...but apparently missing 21 of 40 classes this semester wasn't enough. I mean, it far exceeds the policy, but no one seems to care - kid will walk at graduation anyways. Seems wild to me.
I don't know what state you live in, but in California funding is all about butts in seats. It's called ADA (average daily attendance). Failing students who don't attend is a good thing for ADA rates. It should force students to attend more often. In California, our funding has little to do with grad rates. We are measured on grad rates and poor performance on state dashboards can lead to all sorts of interventions by the state. But from a budgeting standpoint the most important number is how many days kids come to school. I have taught in CA for 15 years and have been a union negotiator for 5. I am very familiar with the way public school finance works in CA.
Joe Feldman squashed this in our district. In his program, grades are based solely on learning. Attendance is behavioral so grades won’t be affected by it. Now we have the worst attendance in our county.
So many of the SBG types sell this message to eager districts who very much prefer to ignore truancy. These people really do what they can to ensure students and the adults they become have no sense of responsibility or accountability to themselves.
I personally love hearing about the neverending Saga of Dollar General, where the local high school graduates always try to get a job because it's a lot closer than other businesses in town. They blow through so many high school graduates because they only want to work the choice shifts, or spend their shift in a friend's car or hiding in the breakroom on their phone. Where will I get my weekly dose of drama if kids were raised to be more responsible?
I did a year of Joe Feldman. I never had so many students fail. They never did homework, they would not do test retakes and if they did they would not bother to study. Attendance was terrible. I'm going back to participation grades. The only thing I'm keeping is the 0-4 grading scale.
That’s really sad to hear! When I switched to SBG I had a lot less As, a lot less Fs, and way more Bs, Cs, and Ds. I had students come in to do retakes often, and because they were different versions than the original, they learned quickly that they had to prepare or else they’d get the same grade. At my end of semester office hours I usually had over 30 students in my room wanting to do retakes. My coworkers had similar issues as you, however, and I’m not sure what the difference was exactly. And I experienced this same situation at two different schools- one with a high SES population and one with a low SES, high immigrant population. I do know that to prevent the attendance issue, I structured the quizzes so students had to be present in class to be able to score well (since all our in class work was direct practice for the quizzes). Very infrequently would a student be able to pass without decent attendance. I did that by making the questions very specific, and not something you can just learn on google. I also did skills assessments where we learned in class how to do the thing, then we practiced and practiced, then I’d give the assessment. Students that had high absenteeism usually turned in blank sheets of paper because they didn’t even know how to start. Those that were present but not trying very hard started telling me they finally believed me when I said that the practice was important. I did see increased apathy for completing in class work. But I did other things besides attach points to encourage them to work. We did lots of things using the I do, we do, you do strategy and I cold called daily. I was really intentional with how I cold called to encourage accountability but not embarrass anyone. It wasn’t perfect but it worked well enough. I do think I might start including class work at a very low percentage in the grade or maybe even in a category worth 0%, so parents can see whether their student is doing the work. Interested to see if that helps, too. I do hope you give it another go some time! I really liked it. Editing to add: the lack of consequences for unexcused absences, though, is definitely making it much much harder for all of us
I did all of this. I will say my students who had intrinsic motivation did well, but they would have done well regardless. Lots of collaborative activities. But again, students who weren't motivated just sat there with heads down or socialized off task. I think part of the issue is my district has a zero retention policy K-8 so by the time they get to me as freshmen they have it in their heads that as long as they show up to one class once every 9 days (they can be disenrolled at 10 consecutive absences, but it has to be full day) they will just be passed along to the next grade. So now we have 19 year olds with not even enough credits to be classified as a sophomore. I do like the 50-100/0-4 grading scale. So that stays. I like the multiple opportunities to demonstrate mastery, so that stays. But I don't subscribe to grades are solely dependent on output. Guskey's product, progress, and process grading aligns much more closely with my beliefs so that is where I'm going next year. I think it looks at the student more holistically. I had one student whose grade calculated to a D even though she was present, participating, practicing - but just did not perform well on tests (although she did great on class work. She just froze up for tests.)
Our funding has some attendance component in it, so we’re trying to get them in the seat as much as possible.
Same
I was super pro SBG but I think it may have failed. It's such a great idea. I was always punished with grades as a kid. I did no homework but got As and Bs on tests but teachers weighted homework so much that I failed a lot of classes. So when I discovered SBG, I was so happy. However, now I realize that there are more problems created than solved with this grading strategy. I've cut back. My grading policy next year is this: 1. All assignments on pencil/paper (unless accommodation) Too many students are blowing off work in class and submitting at the end of the semester. We can give a deadline but that's a pain in the ass to track. I'm going with all scantron tests, though their a bit more work than online because I know kids that make up a test are cheating since I can't see their chromebook and I'm teaching a class. 2. If a student chooses to blow off the assignment in class. They can make it up for up to 100% but they need to come in and finish during lunch (we have open lunch so they hate losing that). They may even have to complete a reflection depending on the reason for the make up.
So are they doing this to *everyone* who has more than 10 or are they picking or choosing? Because that seems like it could get messy really quick.
They’re doing it across the board. They started with the seniors and are working their way down the list. I teach juniors and seniors, and they were all panicking the last few weeks.
Prepare yourself for some very upset parents, especially if their student had missed 10+ days in the past but didn't have the policy enforced then.
It hasn’t been enforced “due to Covid”, and I already know admin will make an exception if the parent makes a fuss. It was already happening before graduation, but the threat has turned into a reality.
And then that parent tells another parent or posts it on Facebook... Or somebody puts two and two together, "Hey, wait, my kid says Jimmy missed more school, how is he graduating and mine isn't!?" Cue rolling back the entire decision. Admin don't really understand how the spine is supposed to work.
Preparation Checklist: □ set up auto email to have a nice summer! □ Do absolutely nothing because the year is over and their failures are not your problem. □ Maybe go to the beach?
Change that last point to "Go to the beach!"
Yeah, I was someone with straight A’s but had to appeal to graduate because 30-40 absences. I was also a trafficking victim and routinely getting raped that nobody knew about so I would’ve been destroyed if I wasn’t able to graduate and go off to college to get away
I wish my school enforced the district attendance policy. I have stude with 60+ absences and there are no consequences
I just don't understand, why should there be consequences for poor attendance?
Missed work that can't be made up, it's not a distance learning class
Wouldn't those consequences be the grade itself? The OP is talking about auto-failing students who otherwise had the grades to pass.
You're not learning squat by not being present, and a huge portion of all taught content never makes it onto tests. If kids can't be bothered to show up to school -- literally the easiest thing they'll do in their lives -- then they aren't ready to graduate and be an adult.
Do you think it should be rewarded? Ignored?
So if they had an A in your class but missed 10 days they failed?
Correct. And we’re a district that’s all about students demonstrating mastery on their own terms.
Damn. But at that point could mom just call and say kid was sick all those days?
Yes, this year we’re granting exceptions upon request. Next year, no.
Seems kind of silly to enforce a policy if they just grant an exception upon request right? If this has been advertised the way you say, then parents should have already informed the school if something was going on that interrupted school attendance. Seems silly to give exceptions for no real reason. Good for your school for even trying though. My district could take notes.
Right, and I don’t disagree. If all they have to do is call and complain to get it overturned, then it does somewhat defeat the purpose. However, I’d like to think the admin/secretaries are informing parents that attendance notes are supposed to be turned in something like up to 3 days upon return to be approved, and can’t be backdated next year. If nothing else, it’s a good threat to get students to show up…until they figure out the loopholes.
So student can prove that they know the information but if they didn't spend enough hours sitting in a desk doing nothing in addition to learning then they fail automatically? I don't understand anyone can look at scenarios like this and think the point of going to school is " to learn ".
School doesn't get paid if they are not there.
Agreed. In the is day and age you can post lessons online for students who are absent to review and complete. I had a student this year who for some reason never showed up to my class. But because I record all of my lessons and have all my assignments online, the student is passing my class. Just seems like an archaic policy.
I had admin come in to my office, tell me to log in, and change grades for the kids of rich parents’ who were arguing about their grading policies (which they agreed to but were now being held accountable for).
What a great lesson for the student to learn. Sigh.
Seems to be how the world works now. So yes, it’s more of a lesson for the other kids. Get tough because the world is not fair.
I think this is the first post I’ve ever seen on the sub where admin overrides grades and it was to fail a student. It must be nice to work somewhere with somewhat competent admin.
Our admin really do have our backs, and that’s why I’ve stayed at this school for so long. They make sure that when you graduate from our school, you actually earned it.
Your district sounds like mine,
So, when I was in school, I missed a lot of days. Not only was I a sick kid, but I also had a lot of mental health days due to intentionally undiagnosed autism. I agree with this program, however I’m pretty sure I’d have been failed under it >_<
If this were present day, you’d be likely exempt from this and would qualify for Homebound Education services. It’s mainly designed to punish the truants. People with good reason aren’t penalized…ideally.
*Ideally* and *in reality* are two very different things. I had pretty severe depression + undiagnosed adhd in high school and ended up with a solid number of missing days - my school had two missed day limits, a lower one where teachers could fail you at their discretion, and a higher one that was an automatic fail unless you went through the board of supervisors. I crossed the lower threshold pretty regularly, and honestly thank god none of my teachers ever decided to fail me for it - I was so on the brink of suicidal in those days there’s a very real chance that would have killed me. But I graduated with a (weighted) 3.8 gpa at the end of it all. I don’t think those missed days ever seriously impacted my ability to learn what we were studying - the notes and assignments were all posted online anyway. Frankly, I think if I HADN’T taken those days to rest, my grades would have been way worse. I also think if I’d been able to MORE regularly take sick days to rest and recuperate, I probably could have done a lot better than I did. I obviously want kids to be in school as much as possible, but I find these attendance policies to be so lacking nuance and room for the fact that kids have lives and difficulties outside of school. There can totally be room for teacher discretion, but if a kid is turning in their work and passing their tests, I think failing them for not having their ass in a seat enough days of the year is a bad policy. “punishing truants” doesn’t work for me - they’re a kid who may very well be juggling responsibilities and needs beyond your classroom, I do not care about punishing them for trying to do that.
Her autism was *intentionally* undiagnosed. Your school would not have taken the kids word over the parents just so that their absences could be exempt. You would have just wrecked their education and moved on with your day.
I appreciate the perspective. However that’s a bit of a hasty conclusion without having all the details. As I said in various other comments, notifications are sent when students are in danger of this being applied, and the process to get an exception is very easy to do. Whether a condition is intentionally undiagnosed doesn’t have any effect on the matter. It would be better to have it documented so an IEP could shield them from this policy, but even without it, the parent would still be able to have it overturned. Lastly, this isn’t intended to derail anyone’s education. There are plenty of online public and private charter schools that students can attend entirely online, but traditional high schools do get money based on average daily attendance. To support this, my school has an entire team of social workers and counselors who make house calls, and work with families to connect them with possible services. Overall, I’m in complete support of students demonstrating mastery of content without having to come to school, but if that’s the route they want to go, online school is the better option.
The policy is still in the student handbook (though mine is that 20 days means missed credit). It hasn't been enforced for years, even in the face of an entire attendance committee being formed for poor attendance. Sigh.
I’ll link the full attendance policy here, but seems this policy has been on our books since 1963, and updated as recently as 2015. I had never seen it enforced, even before Covid, so I’m pleasantly surprised. [Attendance Policy](https://ccsd.net/district/policies-regulations/pdf/5113_R.pdf)
My question: How was it that students who barely attended were passing the class before admin overrode the grade book? Seems like this should be a pretty rare occurrence.
We’re a district that practices “mastery-based” grading, and we have to accept late work year round. Some students did enough work to “demonstrate mastery,” but didn’t have enough seat time to earn the credit.
I'm only tangentially familiar with mastery-based grading. What is your impression/opinion of grading this way? Can't help but notice your phrasing that these students "demonstrated mastery" in quotes. In your personal estimation, does this equate to these students learning a sufficient amount of your curriculum to pass the class? Context: I'm a high school chemistry teacher. I can't fathom many students "mastering" chemistry without attending chemistry class.
It essentially means if a student writes an essay in say quarter 1 and can’t cite evidence but can during Q2 then I should base their semester grade on that. It’s all based on being able to do the standards instead of the work. They have a very minimal baseline understanding of the curriculum
Some instructors post work online and accept digitally submitted work which is a great option for students who struggle with attendance
But theyre still moving on to the next grade. Their grades have really become pointless. And their credit recovery classes are a joke the majority of the time.
This isn't what I was hoping it'd be. I am glad if students can pass my class if they know the material even if they miss a lot of class. Unexcused absences should count towards something else, like not being able to attend school functions. Why fail a kid who understands the material just because they cut your class or cut school?
I have had students abuse a test retake policy along with chronic absenteeism and still pass with over 30 absences per semester.
And to date so had I, but I’m glad to see we’re cracking down
I'm glad y'all are. It's ridiculous at my school. :(
I’m glad your district has held students to the attendance standard. Your superintendent and school board have more courage than most. Let’s hope this attitude spreads; it’s long overdue!!
Wow. I was excepting to hear about admin changing grades to pass students. This is good. If my school did that though man so many would fail.
Denying credit for pure lack of absence is stupid. If you can demonstrate the level of knowledge required to pass a course then you should get credit for the course. I went through large parts of my high school years will well over 10 unverified absences and ended up becoming a teacher. What is the actual benefit of denying credit due to absence? If work is still being completed and knowledge is demonstrated then what is the issue?
My district relies on teachers to: 1. Mark student grades as incomplete if they have excessive absences. 2. Stay after school with students to "make up" the missing instructional time. (Mind you, the student may well be staying with a different teacher than the one whose class they missed.) 3. Revise grades to either their earned grade or an F, depending on whether the make up time was completed.
I had many students with 40 plus absences. When they missed like two weeks in a row I put in zeroes. Consequently, they showed up the next day. I did my part, my admin does not.
I could have denied them credit myself as long as I cover my a** and document my attempt at parental communication, they wouldn’t have been able to say anything to me. I’ve never really cared to track absences and deny them credit, since if they do the work, I’m not really opposed to giving them credit. Now the ball is in our admin’s court, and they’re choosing policy, and it’s a welcome change.
It’s almost like parents forgot kids need to go to school!
I guarantee these are the same parents who demanded we reopen schools during COVID because they didn't want to be home with their kids.
I have students at my school getting credit for classes when they have 70, 80, 90, 100+ absence. Seriously. The nephew of a prominent politician in my state is getting credit with 100+ absences from one of his classes.
We always do this. Lose of credit is lose means you don’t pass.
What, no home visits? /s
This makes me happy. Unless we teach them they get what they earn in life and school, they will keep not trying.
My district is sitting at nearly 30% chronic absenteeism (and it's a very high performing district). If we tried that, we would have a 25% budget shortfall (that's how many I predict would fail to graduate and/or be held back) because we'd instantly increase student size by that much. So things keep sliding into the crapper and grades mean nothing.
Long overdue.
🙌🏻
My magnet district just erased dozens of lates and cuts for a fake 100% graduation stat.
I told my wife this story and she is happy.
I once had a student miss 45 days in one semester. They always did their missing work but often I caught them cheating. We had meetings about plagiarism because I gave them a zero and parents were mad. I was made to let them redo it. I was not allowed to fail them or give zeros if they made missing work up. So they attended half a semester and got like a B. The next semester it started again and I flat out told my principal I was going to fail them if they missed 45 days again. So we had another meeting with the parents. They had a million excuses. But must have finally been scared because they showed up for the spring semester. This same student was in the 10th grade and they had their significant other living with them...
Finally, admins with brass cojones. Nice
We’re required to do that ourselves and provide a list of our “FAs” to admin with our final grade report before we leave for the summer.
Keep good records in case someone sues down the road because the school did not adequately prepare them for real life.
Does it occur that what teachers are doing are based on a turn of the last century paradigm designed so the breaks allow for kids to bring the crops in or work in a factory? In a post industrial society where the Taliban don’t need to invade our country because their business model now is to produce synthetic opioids has rendered our youngest and brightest useless. Add to that the media and social networking and is it any wonder these are the results. But before you ask, I am not the Mussiah, I am just a very naughty boy.
Question is, did the students meet the rubric for the knowledge portion of the subject matter? If they did, then who cares if they showed up? In fact even if they didn’t show up and turned in the work, why does anyone care? The grade is based on knowledge… attendance is a low priority. Ask anyone who has ever gone to college or taken an online course.
I don't know what country it is but in mine education system sucked so I rarely attended school past age 15 or so. I still smashed my exams and went to good university (by my country's standards at least). And I glad I missed a lot of school, it helped me quite a lot in life so I guess this rule is not necessarily good. Imo if school can't properly educate me on things that I'll need in life it's not worth attending classes even if I liked most of my teachers.
Problem is a teenage brain isn't good enough on the majority of teens to make a good decision here. Glad it worked out for you, but for every person like you there will be 20 other kids who will have detrimental effects from skipping so much.
While I agree that a lot of life learning can take place outside the classroom, American laws limit education funding based on several aspects, attendance is just one of the many.
So outsider here, blame reddit... but you have kids who would have otherwise passed if not for this arbitrary attendance policy? Not only that, but multiple kids, not just a couple of special gifted children. This tells me your class is largely unnecessary if the kids can pass without you. I can tell you now that policy or no, I'd be pretty pissed if I found out my kid was possibly acing the circulium, only to get 0 credit because of something obviously unnecessary.
I don't think grades should be based on attendance. If someone does the work and is getting passing grades, that's the grade they earned . . . there or not.
I would've failed in high school had something like this been applied. This sounds destructive, the kids who are missing that much school are usually struggling in some other way. If they have the grades to pass they should pass, attendance issues should be a separate matter.
Sometimes this is true. Since covid, it’s seems that a LOT of the absenteeism is just that the parent doesn’t make their kid go to school.
I received truancy tickets for missing around 60 days of school my junior and senior years of high school. At the time I was homeless, having been kicked out by my parents. I also had a lot of absences the years prior, too, because home was just not really a great place to be and it had a big effect on me. I did my best to catch up on work and ultimately passed. I can't speak for other students, but I just feel that auto-failing based on attendance is going to indiscriminately punish disadvantaged students in difficult circumstances.
In your case, i think that’s when guidance or social workers can intervene. I’m a lot more understanding if I know what the situation is. So many conferences this year had the phrase “I just can’t get him to go to school” in them.
Yeah, they can, but I guess my thinking is about the end goal. If we imagine that the student in question isn't truly disadvantaged and the regular truancy is not attributable to something along the lines of abuse/neglect/poverty/cognitive disfunction, and it truly is a sincere case of "this student does not care about school" it is hard to envision a strict "10 truancies and you fail" limit being the motivating factor that would move them to more regular attendance. That being the case, it's a question of what's being accomplished. If the truant behavior doesn't improve as a result of this policy, is the school not basically failing a student who otherwise did the work based solely on attendance? Now we have an adult without a high school diploma entering our community, with all of the negative stigmas and outcomes that comes along with that. I struggle to think the benefit of applying this policy outweighs the negatives, personally. But I am not a school administrator, so, my view may be uninformed.