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Combating Truancy
The latest Catalyst In Depth found that 11 percent of CPS students are chronic truants, absent without a valid reason for 18 or more days. In the last decade the state's average has been 2 percent. What can schools do to reduce truancy? What about the district?
Truancy is complex and Sarah Karp’s cover story exposes its subtleties. Though, before we provide solutions to “truancy” let us consider its definition. Merriam -Webster’s suggests that one is truant when they “shirk responsibility”. According to Karp’s story many reasons exist causing students to leave school and waywardness is the least of these. Perhaps the problem is not truant students, but a truant citizenry.
Mature educators know mobility and truancy rates are higher in poor communities. Dealing with the anxieties of poverty is often all consuming for parents and certainly has ill effects on the education of children. Principals have a difficult time tracking down students with disconnected phone numbers and frequent address changes. Extra hands are needed to reach out to parents. External support is warranted.
An increase in efficiently managed community school programs with school-based parental support services can be helpful. Parents trained to work with families and armed with access to community-based resources may decrease some attendance issues. A volunteer corps of retired educators working with principals in engaging parents during the school day and in after school hours may be a useful innovation. Considering the number of churches and community groups in many of our most truant neighborhoods, manpower exists to engage parents and students in a collective effort to overcome the effects of poverty in achieving a quality education. Attendance and parental engagement is a great place for these groups to start.
Or incentive based policy prescriptions may be the answer, linking school attendance to federal family benefits or to a teenager’s ability to obtain a driver’s license?
Regardless of the plan implemented it is clear to me, schools, alone cannot solve this challenge and many other issues that hinder our poor communities and neighborhood schools. We are facing urgent challenges and urgent responses are needed. Schools cannot provide total solutions. Communities are culpable too.
Education is a moral issue. There can be no blaming of students for our collective failures whether they are in the voting booth, boardroom, classroom, or on our neighborhood blocks. Unfortunately, public education students are bound to suffer the consequences we set in motion and so do we as citizens. Until public education becomes more than a policy issue, a legislative vote, a cash cow, a secure pension, a source of entrepreneurial excitement or a day care arrangement, all citizens are truant. See you in the principal’s office.
When I taught in CPS, we had Truant Officers. This program was killed. Together with the School Social Workers, families were called and visited to determine the problems, and solutions were generated. These solutions could range from making school more relevant to the student, to providing other kinds of needed support services to placement in alternative educational settings. We believed in identifying problems, finding solutions , and working with all involved to keep the students in school. The idea was not to expel students or punish them, but respond to their needs. Discipline was meant to lead to responsibility not pushing people out on to the streets. The whole community had to be part of the solution. In many cases, students had learning disabilities that were not being addressed. They needed concerned mentors. I taught in a general, not a magnet high school, and we had all kinds of programs, including dramatics and small group counseling opportunities. What has happened to these programs? Catalyst recently told the story of a student with a severe learning disability, whose files were not received in a timely way so that she did not receive the help she needed. Even with the knowledge of her disability, it seemed that she was not being truly educated. I believe this was at Marshall High School, which has instituted "high standards" with seemingly no interest in what the real needs of students are. Standards and expectations are important, but if the needs of students are not identified and respected, they are meaningless. When I taught at Gage Park, we identified our LD students right away, in fact I recall visiting the feeder schools to find out ahead of time who was coming to the high school. As LD teachers, we worked closely with the regular faculty. LD students received most of their help in pull-out classes rather than being segregated. Presumably, there is now a policy of "inclusion" rather than "exclusion", but what was described about this student's situation was not "inclusion." I did teach some classes in American and English LIterature to a few students with serious reading problems. We used the same curriculum as the regular students, but with modifications and teaching of basic skills. In addition, there were workshops for teachers so that appropriate reading skils were taught in all subjects.I would like to know just what is being done constructively to teach these students. I am sure there are some good teachers and programs out there. The other concern I have is that more attention seems to be on college as a goal, instead of making certain that high school students are well educated no matter what their eventual career goals might be. I am not advocating "dumbing down" or creating graduation certificates of lesser value, but educating everyone. By the way, learning disabled students have at least average intelligence, but have problems learning in traditional ways. It is disheartening to read and hear that 17 years after I retired, these problems are not being addressed.
Here's an idea. Cut back on the thousands of unnecessary out of school suspensions and jailing of thousands of CPS students. One out of every 4 black male students was suspended last year. Nearly 1,000 students, 12 years old or younger were arrested right out of their classroom. These arrests, nearly all of children of color, were mainly for offenses that white students would rarely be arrested for. Let's drop all the Zero Tolerance nonsense once and for all. It doesn't make schools safer. Rather it takes power and autonomy away from educators. Just what we don't need.
Another way to reduce truancy is to end the testing madness which turns schools into boring test prep factories and takes play and fun out of the learning process. Let's give kids a better reason to come to school than legal mandates. Smaller schools and classes are essential to personalization and building relationships between students and teachers. It's these environments that drive up attendance rates.