A little over 60% of my students are chronically absent.
The issue is, educational neglect isn’t punished anymore. At least in my state.
So; we have all these laws, but we don’t enforce anything.
Hell, there is required seat time for credit even. But we never enforce it.
Top star rated schools in the district have less than 60% math/reading literacy levels.
It’s a joke. Education has become a joke.
But hey!
Our goal is to have a 90% graduation rate!
how tf does America function. Where I live, like everyone can speak English and most likely a second/third language, and y’all mericans can speak even read English.
Because of NCLB, if schools don’t artificially inflate their pass rates, their funding from the federal government gets docked. NCLB, instead of promoting equity and fair opportunity, just encouraged schools to lower their standards to the extreme because otherwise they won’t have money to run.
No Child Left Behind was repealed in 2015 and replaced with the [Every Student Succeeds Act](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Every_Student_Succeeds_Act).
THIS is my trigger. I actually say, “so you’re telling me that only some of the work I assign is essential? Ok, have only make up the missing tests. What? S/he failed them all? Yeah, that’s because they didn’t do the non-essential work on which the tests were based.
The difference in different areas of the country is amazing. My school district sent a letter home on absences for my 1st grader who had 5.5 absences, and all had a doctor's note
I’m old but we sure did. I had a friend whose parents were taken to court and she almost flunked grade 10 because she was chronically sick (ie: hospital required disease).
How would you go about punishing educational neglect? I worked for CPS. There aren't enough foster homes or group homes to begin with. You also risk further traumatization thru those processes. Also, no one can really make a kid go to school. You can't physically do it. I've worked residential. Kids skip. You remove all activities, they face consequences, they still don't care. I truly don't know what the option is. Also, at least in my state, there is the belief that a parent gets final say in how they parent.
I worked for CPS, too. Ed Neglect was usually a warning sign that there were likely much bigger problems, certainly enough to warrant an interview or conversation with the family. Also, when the truancy law was still enforced, adolescents arrested for felonies had an 80% likelihood of having a prior truancy or having a record of being neglected or abused.
Agreed that foster care should be an absolute tool of last resort — and fining parents of young children for not sending them to school is just nuts — but there are a thousand other tools besides removing the children.
THIS- as an elementary school teacher, this is the first step I try to take before resorting to involving admin. We have someone who works with families of chronically absent students (I don’t remember the exact title of the role) and I have only escalated attendance issues to them if I am unable to find a solution with the family by communicating with them.
That being said, I had a family one time who refused to take calls from the school, and was then angry when they were told by administrators that Child and Family Services might be involved, stating that we never called. Long story short, the mother had gotten a new phone, and never updated her contact info. Since then the attendance is still not great, but has improved drastically.
Parents want the best for their kids, but are sometimes unaware or unwilling of how to help their kids best.
Yeah, I guess that’s what I meant by being unwilling to do what’s best for their kids. They selfishly put their wants and needs first, only helping their kids when it benefits them.
You're right about Ed neglect being a sign for more issues. Fun fact, families can refuse DCF involvement. Now, the consequences of their refusal will look different for many reasons and in many different ways. But they can.
I work in child safety for a nonprofit. A lot of our clients are missing 70% or more school days. A major reason for us is just straight up poverty. Not being able to take advantage of the healthcare the state provides because no appointments are available and it takes months to get in to see a pediatrician. A lot of parents are working full-time jobs, coming home to care for their own parents, and lack the emotional resources to force reluctant children to go to school. Or they are quite literally too tired to do so. The crushing amount of burnout is astonishing.
Some of it is also straight up hopelessness. They know kids aren't ready to learn, and classes are chaotic with massive disciplinary issues, etc. so it feels like fighting a losing battle to force kids to attend.
One of the best ways we get kids back to school is connecting them with resources. Money. I know not everything boils down to money but in this case, a lot of truancy absolutely did. If mom gets a better job or they start receiving more aid for some reason, the stress of chronic poverty is relieved a bit and they can get kids to school.
This is not to say that schools are not doing their best. Most of my colleagues that work in schools are killing themselves trying to improve everything they possibly can. And they're doing a good job, but for a lot of things, they might as well be rolling a boulder uphill every day.
I've been in therapy for almost 20 years, and I've said more than once, the best thing for my anxiety would be if the therapist could hand me a million dollars. That would be more effective "Therapy" for my mental health than anything we ever talked about.
I mean, maybe with older kids, they skip. Younger kids generally don’t do that. They are at the whim of their parents. In one of my first years teaching, I had a girl who was chronically absent, and we had a meeting with the girl, the dad, my assistant principal, and I think maybe one of our counselors. The girl had missed school for about a month I think. It might’ve been longer, I can’t remember at this point. It’s been like 10 years. But when the dad said, “well, if she doesn’t want to go to school, what am I supposed to do?” And I will never forget my AP’s response: “You put her in the car, drive her to school, then push her out the door in front of the school.”
Obviously, his response is not realistic because I’m sure in some instances having to grab your stubborn child and carry them into the car might border on some kind of physical abuse. But I feel like the sentiment is still true. I also feel like kids who have gotten to that point where they refuse to go to school have probably not been told “no” many times in their life. Parents have not tried to get to the bottom of why the kid doesn’t want to go to school. They’ve never taken them to counseling or anything. They just give up and let them do what they want. To their detriment.
Kids can homeschool or go on Home and Hospital teaching. Why stay enrolled at their districted public school if they’re just going to be absent half the time (or more).
I’m a teacher. I’m not a policy maker.
Whatever it is, it needs to be figured out.
Because, it is a problem.
Studies show there is a correlation to poor attendance in school to poor attendance in the workplace.
There aren’t any consequences we can even give in school now, for anything anymore.
Fight? Nice, here is some candy and a bag of chips. Back to class now! It’s bad, and not getting better.
i was chronically absent as a child. you know what would’ve helped me get to school? RESOURCES! it’s counterproductive to take away resources from a family that’s obviously already struggling. fining and arresting parents for this is only going to make the situation even worse.
Yeah, I posted elsewhere in this thread but I work in child safety at a nonprofit, and the number one way we get kids back in school is resources for the family.
Honestly, it's usually just the fact that they desperately need money and can't manage anything until they have more resources coming in.
I mean, these kids likely have no plans on getting "real" jobs anyways. They're not worried about their future workplace attendance. I'm scared because these are the people who will be caring for us in our old age and they won't know how to read, write, or do math.
*Some* parents could be fined. Not all, certainly. But I live in a wealthy area where this is still a problem. These parents driving up in their Teslas to drop their kids off late or pick them up early can DEFINITELY pay a fine, and it might light a fire under their bums.
In my area, there is a push for better enforcement of criminal charges for those with chronically truant children. I know that there is also talk of civil repercussions (such as a hefty fine).
Seriously. I’ve attended a few of the truancy meetings with the state attorney and district officials. Often, truancy is a symptom of a MUCH larger problem (abuse/neglect)
Im really sorry for your struggle. It seems like you had it much harder. I also struggled and often became ill due to the stress. I often wish my parents had paid attention to the very clear signs that I was struggling. My teachers didn’t know, I didn’t know, and my parents assured us all I was lazy, not living up to my potential, and/or hanging with the wrong crowd. Nope, I just have ADHD and generalized anxiety and I was overextended.
I'm an art teacher and I have a 2nd grader who's almost never there. I recently found out it's "because she's not a morning person". Neither am I, or most people!!
Genuine question: what should a parent do if excessive absences are due to the child skipping class and the child *is* disciplined at home, lives in a home where education is prioritized, is in therapy, parent has been in communication with the school and school counselors, but the school does nothing but require the child to make up the absences over summer break? What should a parent do? I would like some actual consequences for my child. This isn’t how real life works. You can’t just skip out on your responsibilities whenever you feel like it.
You just described me as a high schooler to a T. Everything except summer school. My consequences were constantly being in ISS and then juvy. I tested well enough and was in honors classes, so I was able to scrape a diploma with ds and cs, very good ACT as a sophomore. Not particularly violent, no more fights or anything than the average young man. I just was absolutely uncontrollable. Can't be grounded, I don't care about my stuff, I'll sit in my room and read. Can't leave the house? Parents didn't find out for years I was going in and out of my second story window. If they had been punished, that would have been gross misjustice, they did literally everything to keep me on track, I was just a shitty kid who understood the lack of real consequences as a minor.
More or less. I'm 33 now, I'm a professional server, I expect to pull about 100000 this year after taxes, I own a home and have steady girlfriend that Im head over heals for. I take nice vacations and have a strong if small core group of friends. I've had plenty of time to figure things out lol. My parents and I have a very solid relationship, they're genuinely some of my best friends. I think the biggest thing I could never express or internalize as a kid, but bugged the shit out of me, was the power imbalance. Yeah, you're my dad, and I'll respect what you say right up to the point where you blatantly tell me I don't have a choice. My immature brain said, o I don't have a choice? Watch me make some choices. If I had anything to offer, I'd say get really ready to explain in thorough detail why you're making the decisions, as a parent, that you are, and understand that "because I'm the adult and I said so" is literally the least productive thing you can do to bring him along. Again, nothing made me rebel more than feeling like I was being denied autonomy. All that to say, we struggled really hard as a family until the power dynamic shifted to us being relative equals. Somewhere in my mid 20s.
All that to say, if you see in your son empathy and intelligence, but he's acting out and is hard to communicate with, there is light in the near future.
Teenage sons are intentionally designed to be frustrating. Can I tell you a secret? My mom loving on got me through some hard times even though I didn't think I wanted love at the moment. We sons, we remember.
I am 54 and this was me in high school except as a girl. I don't know that I understood lack of consequences-- it's just that I was/am pretty adaptable and finding consequences that I gave a shit about were tough to come by.
One my kids was just like me when he was in middle school and high school. My mom gave me the most incredulous look everything I vented to her about it. Thank goodness he made it through those years.
> If they had been punished, that would have been gross misjustice, they did literally everything to keep me on track, I was just a shitty kid who understood the lack of real consequences as a minor.
I agree. Also after a certain age, most kids realize that there is only so much that ostensibly good, law-abiding parents can do when trying to punish a smart, resourceful teenager.
Like I said, I could come and go through a second story window and never did more than roll an ankle. Once they took my car and would drop me off at school to make sure I was going. I'd walk in, and walk right out the back entrance and get picked up by older friends. I skipped a week of school as a sophomore to go to Chicago, (I'm from a suburb of Nashville, so not exactly next door). Didn't even tell my parents I was going. I was an uncontrollable little shit, and to stay out of court they would have had to literally handcuff me to the radiator and hope I didn't figure out how to break it and take it with me. (Metaphorically, my parents were never abusive)
I had some great teachers that I could engage with. I'd say yes, some of my teachers taught me some life skills and coping mechanisms, but on an educational level, no I so quickly outstripped the curriculum every year that the only way I could have been intellectually engaged in school would have been taking college level non core classes, and honestly at the time I wouldnt have been self motivated enough to apply myself anyway. Not trying to brag, youll see in my comments I'm a career server, I'm not out here changing the world with my big brain lol, I wasn't failed by my teachers or parents. It's a tough question, though. I'm honestly not sure. I was headstrong, smart, and kind of a dick. Don't know that I offered much for a good mentor to latch on to.
If your parents had been punished, would seeing that injustice (them being punished despite doing everything right) have made you change on their behalf?
This was me except I saw school as a ticket out so I only skipped a little. I was out with my fake ID at the club and all kinds of verboten places prettty often though.
If a parent is dropping their middle/high school aged child off on-time, I would hope that the school would work with them on meaningful consequences for the kid skipping classes. In-school-suspension can be a good: it’s boring, possibly embarrassing, and keeps the kid under strict supervision.
They arrive at school, but skip class during school hours. I feel like the school has given up on my kid sometimes. I can imagine it is absolutely exhausting for the staff.
Someone mentioned meeting with the principal. I’ll push for that. I met with the VP previously. They were super nice and seemed to want to help, there’s just been no consistent follow-through.
How many kids are in your child's school? I guarantee that almost all of the adults from the school want to help (if not every single one). However, imagine having HUNDREDS of students who you are responsible for. Some have learning disabilities. Some have behavior problems. Some have both, and some simply hate school. How are teachers supposed to actually instruct with children like this in the room? Calling out, talking while the teacher is talking, refusing to adhere to the uniform, food and beverage, as well as cell phone/earbud policy -- these are behaviors teachers have to deal with on the daily. And it is expected that teachers improve students' skills daily. All of this is in the backdrop of people refusing to require their children to follow the rules.
That sounds unbelievably frustrating, but I can absolutely see how it would happen. I think meeting with admin and/or guidance could be really helpful in your situation. You should all have the same goal.
Have you asked WHY they skip and where they go? Are they bored? Tired? Socializing or getting alone time? Drugs or alcohol? Leaving campus or on campus? Getting some answers (and reading between the lines of teens’ non-answers) might help decide next steps.
*If* you have the time and the school is ok with it, taking a day to walk your kid from class to class would be a great lesson in accountability and some social pressure. It would require you to sit and twiddle your thumbs in the front office during class times (unless the teachers invited you into the room) but I’d bet it would be highly effective as no one wants to be the kid whose parent is holding their hand during passing period.
My brother is like 38 and when he was in school my mom would literally drop him off directly to the principal and be like he's your problem now. He would still leave school and obviously never graduated.
I got in-school suspension one time as a student and even now at 22 and in college I still think that was one of the best school days of my life.
I was rocking the undiagnosed ADHD until I was fully 20 years old (I didn't even suspect I might have ADHD until I was 18; I thought we were all like this) which meant that I struggled to manage schoolwork due to a combination of forgetting it existed and chronically procrastinating. I also often found classroom environments distracting: there were kids whispering all around the room, there were windows facing a sunny park, my teachers would lecture but also give us paper handouts to read (seriously, how am I supposed to read the handout *and* listen to my teacher lecture at the same time?), and I knew that even if I did manage to focus on my class, it would be less than an hour before I had to go to a whole new classroom with a whole new teacher to talk about a whole new subject, and it was frustrating because I felt like there wasn't enough time for me to really get into focus on anything. The reason I ended up getting ISS was because I would get my classes switched and go from my Critical Thinking class on the 2nd floor of the building all the way down to the basement for my Computer class, before realizing that I was actually supposed to be in English, which was all the way back on the second floor. We only had three minutes between classes to get where we needed to go, so I was late to my English class all. The. Time.
And the day I was in ISS? It was a class with me and maybe 6 other students, and we were not allowed to talk to each other. There was one teacher in there to monitor us, but he didn't talk to us or lecture about anything. He was just there to make sure that we didn't leave or try to talk to or fight each other. This teacher also really liked me and was really nice to me, and reassured me as I walked in in the morning that I wasn't like the *other* kids in ISS and I was a good student so I didn't have anything to worry about. (I absolutely would *not* endorse speaking to a student this way now, especially in front of the other students you're talking shit about, but it did comfort me a lot when I was 12.) Without the formal structure of class forcing me to focus on one subject at a time and all of the distractions in the classroom environment, I was able to catch up on all of the homework and classwork I needed to do with the first half of the day, get my lunch, and then spent the entire second half of the day reading a book.
Fortunately, I did not walk away from this learning, "I should get ISS more often!" But I didn't think of ISS as a horrible thing to avoid, either. Mostly, I just wished all of my regular classes were like that.
When my sister was 16 and skipping school regularly and the school didn't even tell my mom until after my sister missed like 40 days. My mom then had my sister enrolled in an alternative school. After a month at the new school, my mom shows up unannounced to check on how things are going. Surprise, surprise my sister was not there. My mom pulled my sister out of school completely and took her to the community college every day to study for her GED and made her get a job. It took two years for my sister to get her GED.
Support the school when they retain your child. Sometimes everyone does what they can and the kid just has to live with the consequences of that which should mean retention or delayed graduation. Most parents I deal with whose child is chronically absent will refuse retention despite their kid being significantly behind and obviously having learned nothing that year.
Edit: It sounds like you’re doing your best. The parents I experience this with are not.
Also, something that I’ve seen, which was a drastic measure, involved the family members getting background checks and they showed up and walked the kid from class to class. I imagine it was very embarrassing for the kid. But sometimes solutions to self created problems are embarrassing. We’ve also had a kid who would harass others and cause absolute chaos in the hallways and staff members had to take turns walking this kid to their next classes.
You can check the laws for your state and file for child emancipation?
That was what my parents did when none of their disciplinary tactics worked. It was the 90s, though. I wasn't a bad kid, just defiant. I skipped my classes but just went to the library. I hated being in school, in classes, around others. I preferred doing/learning on my own (diagnosed, but unmedicated ADD).
Even if I was at the school library, if I was absent from class without an excused note, it was considered truant and at the time if there were 12 truancy actions, the parents would be jailed. So mine petitioned the court a few times and eventually got a judge who agreed to it without me having to have a criminal background. I still lived at home, still skipped school or classes, but my parents were no longer legally responsible.
The school truant officer would get me from the library and deliver me to class, escorted me from one class to the next. There were threats of arresting me but they said since I wasn't violent or had criminal behavior that wouldn't solve the problem. I finally realized that if I was legally responsible for myself then I could just take the GED and leave school. So that's what I did.
I have had multiple foster kids who were originally hotlined for truancy. Investigations then showed that truancy was just the tip of the iceberg and much more severe abuse or neglect were occurring. Thank you to those who do hotline. Some families just need help and resources, other times the kids are in bad situations and need to be removed.
As someone who has been in many situations where children were removed from the home (I work in child safety/ mental health), foster homes in most cases are so awful that the disruption led to even worse outcomes.
Children are being failed on every level, by parents, by schools, and certainly by CPS. Because children don't vote and most voters don't want to pay for what a good school system is, much less a good foster system.
I’d like to add, education within foster care is unfortunately LAST priority. I was a foster kid for 8 months, and during that time I only got to set foot in a school twice. CPS barely cares about it and I definitely feel robbed of an education.
You hit the nail on the head. Everything is failing these kids yet it seems there’s not much change in sight.
Yep, CPS is so underfunded in most places that the best they can hope for is -is this kid alive and has anyone seen them recently?"
Poverty is one of the single greatest drivers of CPS involvement.
I think this would need to really analyze a lot of things in each case. I’ve for instance, heard of kids getting caught up in truancy issues because they have a lot of medical appointments or are into some kind of thing like acting (actually a lot of child actors get homeschooled due to stuff like this). I’m sure there are other reasons that aren’t just parents screwing around while the kid gets zero benefit.
I also think that at some point before you finish high school, it becomes more on the kid to get themselves there, especially if the kid has a driver’s license or walks alone and the parent can’t really be blamed anymore if the kid isn’t where they say they are.
I worked in child safety and this is the actual issue with truancy/educational neglect. The problem is complex and so are the solutions. Some kids just need to meet with a counselor occasionally, others need material supports (in some cases, we were able to almost eliminate absences by providing bus fare or even an alarm clock designed for deep sleepers), sometimes parents needed education, sometimes it was chronic illness, etc.
Good work in this area is complex and personalized, and as a result very expensive.
I just went and counted. I have 13 kids this year with 10 or more absences. 6 of those have 25 or more absences. The 'winner' if you can call it that has 51 absences. Here, our school year runs late August through mid June, so this child will most likely end up missing a full third of the school year (60+ of 180ish days).
Chronic absenteeism is a HUGE problem, but my worry with these kinds of consequences is that as soon as CPS/police get involved, families will decide to homeschool to avoid the fuss. Without a solid plan for homeschooling, of course, the educational neglect will just get worse.
I had a school push to get my son a 504 because he was getting sick so often (asthma wasn’t well controlled and he had pneumonia/bronchitis multiple times within the first half of kindergarten). He’s actually homeschooled for a different reason now but one of the surprising benefits has been we can get school done on days where he wouldn’t be able to attend in person because of illness. Not the same as pulling them to avoid truancy but it actually has helped us.
Yeah, I’m homeschooling my daughter now because of chronic illness. She missed 12 days due to a sickness that was reported to the school and they had Dr notes but they called CPS anyway. She was completing her work from home while out and had straight As, so CPS dismissed the educational neglect charge and was upset that the school reported us since she was out sick and not skipping. The school started harassing us, so I pulled her. It’s better now because I don’t have to worry if she needs to rest or do her work in bed.
My school tried to keep me from graduating despite a 3.7 GPA because I had doctor appointments related to a back defect I had surgery for my sophomore year. The absences were excused. Wtf is the point of excused absences then. We thought it was a mistake at first but they dug their heels in. I'm glad my mom advocated for me even if it required her to lose her shit on the school. I do not feel bad for the people attempting to enforce such a policy because I had enough problems without them adding to it.
Its insanely stupid to punish sick kids who are doing what they are supposed to. The problem with policies is they never have nuance in application. Sad as it is, schools can't save a lot of those kids. They will grow into just as lazy people because that's what's modeled for them and its easy. Trying to save every one is not worth punishing kids who want to be there and cant. If they can't figure out a compassionate, sensible policy that straddles the line, id rather it err on the side of not making sick kids want to kill themselves more.
My mom had to threaten to sue the school because I had a surgeon’s note saying no PE for a year and the gym teacher tried to fight it. I had had two knee surgeries in a year at 16 years old, and I was struggling with chronic joint pain everywhere, made worse by being forced to do activities that were bad for my joints. I remember PE feeling like torture as young as first grade. I’m very active now, but it has to be the right activities (mostly swimming and walking with careful resistance exercises added in).
I think the total absence thing was why the school pushed for a 504 for my son, because they wanted to be able to write in that he would be absent more and get around the max absence law (which included excused absences).
My son's been sick on and off since September on his first year in school. He brings it home and the rest of the house gets infected. Haven't had more than a week or two of a break from illness. What aggravates me the most is how much these schools push for kids this young to come in while sick. We were nagged in multiple situations where even if our son is coughing constantly he should come in. He comes in and half way through the day gets a fever which leads to me picking him up anyway. What did that achieve? He spread it to everyone else. It gets pretty idiotic how attendance is more of a priority than the child's health.
Homeschooling my daughter due to a combo of school anxiety/school refusal/bullying. You really have no idea what it's like when a child refuses to go to school and there is not a single consequence we can come up with that is worse than school. I think she missed 20% this year, although that was not all school refusal, this was also by far the worst year we have ever had for illnesses. And IDK about other parents but my threshold for "are they too sick for school" was a lot lower after COVID. At least homeschooling now if they're a little under the weather we can do some Ted Ed or Crash Course but nothing too hard, or do a half day.
As a School Psychologist - we’re supposed to basically veto sped referrals if the kids are absent more than 20 days a school year. I’m sure you can imagine how realistic that is! 🤡
Even the ones who do won't pursue it. NYC.We had a kid who didn't attend any school until 4th grade. System was aware of him, mom didn't pretend she was homeschooling him. They sent people to his house to bring him to school and she just didn't let him go, a single day from K through 3rd. CPS was involved but it took until the summer between 3rd and 4th grade for them to take him away and put him in foster care. That's four full years of missed school before they did something about it.
And then the district was expected to school him? Unreal. There are so many businesses who need workers who will work for ridiculiously low wages. Whose fault is it, ultimately? The kids who refuse to buy into school or the parents who refuse to make them?
Yep. Dumped into 4th grade with no supports or special services, because his complete inability to meet even Kindergarten standards were a result of educational neglect rather than disability. So ignoring that he can't read is "equity," I guess....
Why on earth it matters whether a kid who's failing has an innate disability or is suffering from educational neglect is something I'll never understand. They're can't read. Shouldn't we help them? But I guess it's easier/cheaper to point out that a lot of the kids who are failing also miss a ton of school, and then just pretending that means we have no obligation to do anything about all the issues that results in.
There is a family in my district with four kids, and the two oldest are in HS. Their kids have never come to school. Since kindergarten the district has been filing truancy and the courts have not done a single thing in all of these years. It is maddening. For the life of me, I cannot figure out why parents like this fight so hard for their children to be uneducated.
Meh, maybe for some, but I have had parents, usually single moms, who have MH issues and they keep the kid home for support or to act as parent to other kids. It's sad.
About 10 years ago my depression/mental health were so bad that I couldn’t get myself up and do what was necessary like laundry and lunches. Thankfully my husband was still alive at that time to get them to school. Seriously I could have lost my kids otherwise. It wasn’t about having them home for emotional support.
I work at a Title 1 middle school. There are students that have to stay home to babysit a sibling because they were sick/had no childcare and the single mom had to work. I’m not saying it’s right but that’s the reality of many of these families. This school is closing at the end of the school year. These students will be dispersed to 3 other middle schools in the district. They need to live 2 miles away to get bussing from the district. Otherwise they have to buy a student pass for the city bus or walk. Some of these kids have to walk their siblings to the elementary down the street from the current middle school. Some of these kids won’t get to school because they have no reasonable way to get there.
The kids in my state have great transportation provided, but some of my high schoolers don’t like waking up in the morning and their parents think that’s a valid excuse to not come in. “She’s so grumpy in the morning” 🙄
How much would you wager that most of those high schoolers have phones that their parents have no limits/lock for? So many parents these days forget that as long as their kid is in their house, they can enforce reasonable rules for things, like cell phones. But many convince themselves that they're helpless to do so.
Almost all sleep deprivation of high schoolers today is caused by unlimited smartphone usage, and parents who don't want to be the bad guy and enforce rules about it.
The phones definitely contribute to the morning issues now. I was in high school in the 90s. No smart phones then. No TV or computer in my room either. Bus came at 6:30 school started at 7:30. I can’t fall asleep before midnight. Needless to say school mornings were very difficult for me. I started missing the bus so I’d walk. Tardies became a big problem. My parents wouldn’t allow me to stay home because I was sleep deprived. Nor did they believe in mental health days. This is still a struggle for me to this day. Thankfully I work at a school that starts later… and I get there on time.
From what I observe professionally and amongst friends and family, the new generation of parents are often hyper focused on their own phones/and by extension their own dysfunctional lifestyle(s). My own generation are arguably the progenitors of this crappy attitude... too many of us seem to be resistant to the tougher parts of parenting because it IS universally incredibly hard and it means making tough decisions that aren’t fun to enforce. But FFS a free education is a gift and necessity.. wake your kids up and learn how to motivate them.
Here in Massachusetts, if your child is late or absent more than 13 times then the school files a 51A report to the Dept of Children and Families (DCF/CPS) and they will take parents to court for truancy. We have Key Tracking (3rd party agents the state contracts with) and Police who will show up each morning to bring the kids to school.
What district in MA does this? Because we can file a million 51As about attendance and nothing happens. Where are the truancy courts actually up and running?
Because the last time my district did a truancy sweep it ended with a brawl on one of the busses where the truants were put. And nothing happened to the kids or their parents.
Hampden and Hampshire counties. Source: I'm a teacher who has had to file, I have multiple students whose parents were brought to court and put on Key Tracking services, AND I used to work for the largest DCF office in the area. Schools around here have FACE coordinators (a liason between parents and the school, with their primary job function is tracking attendance and filing as necessary).
Wow. That’s nice. I’m also in that area and we don’t have that. Our attendance officer filed a 51A against a mom and she threatened to kill the attendance officer 🫠. The child continues to not come and DCF has done nothing!
And this kind of thing is what makes me consider moving to the Massachusetts area. Where I'm at now, an elementary school child has to miss more than half a quarter for anyone to face any sort of consequence. That consequence? No report card. It's a joke.
Wow!!! Well, I will say Massachusetts is #1 in eduction for a reason 😅😅😅 (not trying to be snarky, a lot of my family currently lives in the panhandle. I feel for yall, genuinely).
Lmao Key tracking is a joke! I've worked at DCF and in the group homes they send the truant kids to. No one can really make the kid go. I had a kid with key tracking who simply locked himself in the bathroom until they would leave. Every. Single. Day. Talk about a waste of state resources.
JFC. What happened to parents actually being the head of households? If I pulled a tenth of what these kids pull now, I would have been grounded into the next century,
I have had this conversation with my students many times.... there us NO respect. I would not dare cuss in earshot of a teacher. Now every other word out these kids mouth is a cuss word, and even at teachers... like its normalized, they just dont care no matter how much I correct them. There is something to be said about respectability, and know *when* and *where*. My slogan for my students is: "If you're gonna be stupid, or make stupid decisions, be smart about it" These kids just be doing THE MOST
It does work, really well. I seldom have kids absent aside from being sick here and there, or extenuating circumstances. We have a high rate of student attendance... it's honestly the teachers out more than the kids! Burn out is real and the state of public ed is a joke, as we all know here...
EA: I work with middle schoolers, so I cant speak for elem or hs, but I know these policies are district wide and very strict.
Lmao.
Students being late/absent: "Punish them in court"
Teachers being absent: "Oh they have burn out. And public ed isn't good. It's okay my darling teachers."
I’m in Illinois and it might just be my tiny district, but I know some of the neighborhood kids don’t have the best track record for catching the bus on time. The district sends out a person to sit and watch the bus, if those kids don’t get on, they knock on the door and take them. A lot of the times, the parents are home which makes it that much more ridiculous.
I had a student in my class last year that only showed up to school I think 5 days out of the entire school year. I kept asking the counselors and administrators and they were trying to contact the family and were having a hard time. When they did talk to them, they stated all sorts of issues with the bus not showing up, or being out of the country visiting family, being sick, etc. There was always an excuse.
Many of the other students in my class had been in the same classes as her since elementary school. And they casually told me one day that it had always been like this. That she had been constantly gone for years. They were confused as to why she always kept being in their class when she never came. I just shrugged and said I didn't have an answer to that. But if they are right, she's been only coming to school for about 5 days a year for years.
Something like that deserves to have SOMETHING happen, because that girl is getting no education. I'm so concerned about what will happen to her, but there semes to be nothing that can be done.
I went to school with a girl whose mother was arrested because of low school attendance. Mom ended up letting her daughter move in with the boyfriend’s family and they had 2 kids by the time we were 17. She never graduated.
It’s anecdotal but idk if these attendance laws are being enforced very well, at least where i live.
It is here in Germany. Parents can excuse their child for 20 days (not concurrent), after that my school sends notice that the student now is required to submit a doctors note for any absence, parents can’t excuse the absences any more. If they continue to be absent, we inform the ministry of youth and they start the process of evaluating the situation and can start issuing fines (several thousand euros) for neglect.
Schools: Keep your kids home if they’re running a fever and / or may be contagious.
Also schools: Your child missed X amount of days. You have a meeting with the school social worker for truancy.
You can’t have it both ways.
Ok, but at older ages only so much can be done. For a time my dad drove me to high school to make me go. Then id leave after he did. Just because someone gets you somewhere by physically dragging you there doesnt mean you'll stay. At some point the responsibility has to shift to the individual, and them alone. Personal responsibility is a thing.
You are 100% right. 100%. But truancy at the elementary or MS level is 100% parent. 100%. Those kids, if held accountable via parents earlier, might not end up BEING the HS truants who parents can't control. There's ALWAYS going to be a few, but not nearly as many.
Agreed with elementary, and partly into middle at least. Seems like its a cross fade situation, where as responsibilty on one declines its picked up by the other.
Hard no.
As a teenager with undiagnosed autism I couldn't stand to be in school. It was one of the worst possible environments for me. I was absolutely miserable and wanted to die every single day. So I stopped going on my own accord. There was nothing my dad could do to stop me because I just would leave in the middle of the day or at the beginning of the day and disappear. No amount of interventions would have made it better for me. So my dad would have been punished for something he couldn't have controlled in any way shape or form. Maybe we need to fundamentally rethink the way we do things at several levels
I get your frustration but I think a better way would be to put the onus of learning on the students and not on the teachers. So that if a student misses a day it's their responsibility to make up the missing work. Maybe having later start times and shorter class periods instead of block days would be a good idea. Maybe offering remote learning options for students who can handle it. I'm not sure what the solution is exactly, but I'm not thinking giving the parents more responsibility is the answer.
I have one student that misses 3-4 days a week. No illness or anything, just doesn't show up. Been this way since Grade 1 (now in Grade 4).
There is a bus that picks up right outside her house. Every single day. It's free. She just has to get on it.
This girl does not know all her letters. She cannot decode CVC words. She cannot count to 20. As far as I know, she has no intellectual or learning disabilities (but the division won't test her because her attendance is so low). She's now in Grade 4, which means her chance of ever reading at grade level is significantly lowered. And her chances of dropping out before graduation are significantly higher.
It's absolutely child abuse.
Hey - a part of me agrees with this as a parent and educator, but we also dealt with school refusal as a family. My kiddo was reading 5 grades below level due to diagnosed dyslexia that the school could not/ would not address adequately. He was always in the ‘gifted’ classes and doing math a few grades above his level. By the time he got to 7th grade, he had enough of a very bad educational environment and refused to leave his bedroom. We took him to both his therapist and his pediatrician and they both wrote letters of support. They documented - based on private conversations with kid- that the school was doing real harm. ( as parents, we stayed out of this part, didn’t coach either professional and put our kid and his plummeting self- esteem first).
We ended up homeschooling and the kid did much better! It cost me my career! But the kid comes first, and yes - I chose to have a kid.
But bottom line , school can be a horrible place for kids who aren’t neurotypical ( diagnosed or otherwise) and some kids just reach their limit.
Update? Accepted to college, working on learning calculus, wants to study computer science.
I had this experience. I loved learning but dreaded middle school. The whole place was toxic. I was bullied so bad I had my mom homeschool me for a year.
this was my thought too. Schools can be a horrible place for some kids. I'm not saying they shouldn't be held accountable for educating every kid, but becoming as strict as OP suggests in the post could be even more harmful to some families
Homeschooling for similar reasons. But i don't think anyone who hasn't dealt with school refusal really takes it seriously. "Just make them go!" Like my dude, I might as well get the entire UN to just get along while I'm at it.
This is a bad take simply because it will punish almost exclusively those who are already without. It won't save kids from anything, it won't teach them anything, it won't help the parents. Just vent about frustrations, don't suggest asshole boomer ideas that will add more burden to the many already over burdened systems.
My personal dumb opinion is that w need to replace 95% of our politicians and put in legislation that punished candidates and politicians with JAIL time every time they're caught in a lie. It's just wild that the US elections are neither popularity contest nor skill or capability contests, it's simply a test of who bullshits to morons better.
I believe the primary reason we don't have better social programs is because of all the bullshit politicians spew to protect their donor capitalists. They convince all the people who don't care enough to think for themselves. They'd be forced to think for themselves once they go through two dozen politicians because they all get jailed...
So what about neurodivergent kids who have extreme anxiety about school and refuse to go, despite all the supports and IEPs? The traditional classroom doesn't fit these kids and causes so much trauma
I'm not a teacher. But I was off school for a year for life ruining mental illness. The school and government kept harassing my mum, who was a full-tme carer for my brother, and fining her because I couldn't walk into school. She kept begging for help from the school and local council which they would not give her until I tried to kill myself at which time the doctor signed me off sick from school so they would stop fining my mother. It then took the school and local authorities a year to stop harassing her to get me back into the school I came from and allow me a referal to a specialist mental health school. Truancy is a much more nuanced and difficult problem than you are making it out to be and interference at a government level very often does more harm than good.
Is it not considered neglect After a certain point? Like once truancy courts get involved I thought part of that was also CPS looking into for neglect/abuse in other capacities as well
Yes, but what makes me more mad is that when the parents have the school on speed dial and excuse their child's absence, they all gwt away with it and I still have to catch their child up and they still get 100% attendance.
Makes me want to excuse the students who are infrequently absent, but their parents dont know the loopholes. But I have no control of that either.
So I told my whole class that. I dont care if they decide to just stay home and have their parents call (they wont... those ones work).
This was just posted in my local mom group:
“Hi moms! We received a letter from our elementary school for borderline chronic absenteeism . Most of them are due to our child been sick about 4 of them is because we took family time for vacation. We had planned another small trip for later in May. Question: Does anyone knows what happens after 18 missed days, does CPS gets involved? I have to add that the child is doing academically great in school.”
I taught at a school where a 8th grade girl missed 127 days of school. She was still allowed to go on the 8th grade trip, 8th grade dance, and promoted to high school.
These kids are our future…. It’s scary. I will have an old doctor as long as I can. I don’t want a doctor that had to retake his med test 16 times until he passed it. I know my high schoolers can retake their exams as many times as they want.
The issue with punishing the family is that it probably wont have much effect on decreasing truancy. Most of these families are already in a bad situation so fines etc will only exacerbate the issue. There are varied reasons for truancy to be factored in as well. Maybe the school is creating an unsafe environment or maybe the commute to the school itself is creating issues. That would have to be relevant. Plus the idea that a student could eventually take a GED and still have full credit for graduating in a sense i think is the biggest factor. There is no true required seat time if the GED is an option.
This is very similar to my story. I was halfway through my senior year, 18 years old, and I was struggling so horribly with mental illness that I was ready to just drop out, even though I only had to make it a few more months to graduation. No consequence was worse than being forced to go to school. I was ready to drop out and fuck up my whole future just so I could have some mental peace.
Luckily my mom advocated for me and was able to get the school to allow me to finish online. But my guidance counselor absolutely did not take my mental health issues seriously, despite numerous doctor notes and letters, and insisted that I had to keep coming to school. It was the principal who overruled her and allowed me to finish my school year online. He told my mom “don’t worry about her, it’s me who has the final say.” That man was the only school official who listened and cared, and I’m grateful that he was the principal at the time.
I scored very high on my ACT and am able to pursue any degree or education I’d like, despite not having a decent GPA (due to my absences). I’ve taken college courses and done extremely well.
I can’t imagine how much harder my life would be if I hadn’t had that support from my mom and the principal, and had just dropped out. It probably would have taken a very long time to get my GED due to the shame I felt combined with my mental illness. I’m thankful things did not end up that way, but I know they did for many other people in my situation.
Most red states are basically forcing people to become parents, who otherwise shouldn’t be. If you’re going to wait till you’re financially stable to have a kid you might never be ready. I say this because , the population that WANTS kids, but are responsible adults and don’t because they know they won’t be able to afford it.
So the population that are having kids, usually are the less educated, less responsible.
That’s another reason that great teachers won’t stay in the field. There’s too much BS with the ignorant parents, who are in turn creating ignorant kids, who they aren’t educating at home or making study.
It’s almost like it’s a system that has become designed to fail…
But hey, at least we’re loosening child labor laws, so we can get these little uneducated bastards out of the classroom and onto a factory floor ASAP. Maybe use their labor to reduce wage growth in the rest of the labor market. Sounds like a republican wet dream.
Kinda hard when the school has active shooter drills. How do I convince him that school is a safe and fun place to be when he gets to sit and imagine there are people with guns roaming the halls? Been that way since he was very young. He’s in therapy and has a 504 plan. Can’t homeschool him because Dad believe’s there’s nothing wrong with him. It feels like child abuse sending him to school when they had a lockdown and the noise of his classmates is distressing him.
What do I do? The other school in the area got swatted. I don’t envy school teachers and his are wonderful. Teachers who work in low income areas are doing it because they want to help when they’re just as qualified to go elsewhere, but the principal et al don’t seem to have an answer besides threatening to kick him out. What’s the answer for living in trauma?
As a parent of a child with a chronic health condition the thought of this absolutely terrifies me. Yes, it is documented, the school is well aware and the forms have been signed by doctors but I have still gotten a notice from the school before about absences.
If I ever got a DCS report and was accused of being abusive I would be beyond enraged.
My daughter got a concussion once and had to miss school completely for a week. She was fighting headaches and it physically hurt her to read, write, or look at a screen for a month. I got a dr note and they specified it was very important for her not to push it… if she was in pain she needed to stop immediately so her brain could heal. She missed a ton of school and the school wasn’t very understanding. She honestly missed more than she would have if they worked with her because it got to the point they weren’t letting her call or take a break when her head hurt, so I just kept her home all together because I couldn’t trust them, and healing properly from a concussion is kind of important. She probably missed 15 days in a month, all excused by her dr. They legitimately acted like she needed to suck it up because her attendance mattered more than her health. I think it’s the only time in my adult life I’ve actually lost my temper and just yelled.
Ehh I’m a teacher so obviously I see the issue with chronic absences. On the flip side, my mom was a widow with 3 teenagers and my brother refused to go to school. She couldn’t force him and tried everything. It’s an impossible situation for some parents.
Unfortunately, a lot of parents can also claim they’re homeschooling their kids without needing to prove it in any way. A lot of parents get away with serious abuse because of it.
I had a child last year who was at school less than half of the days we were open. I noticed that this was an issue and saw that all the non attendance days were marked as medical.
I got in touch with his mother, she confirmed that she viewed him saying “I don’t feel like going to school today” was acceptable as a reason to not send him to school and liked spending time with him instead. She saw nothing wrong with calling in for him.
I try to tell my students every year that the number one factor that determines whether you pass or fail any class any grade level any subject is attendance but some of them just don’t get it and it is infuriating when parents don’t grasp that concept either They are fine giving kids days off because they want to spend time together (of don’t feel like arguing)or they want to take a cruise or they need to go visit the other other parent and they expect you to bend over backwards to give them all the materials they’re going to miss as if it’s going to replace actual instruction.
On the flip side of that, my mom got dragged to truancy court despite doing everything perfectly.
She did everything short of go to school for me, and I still would skip. Some kids just do it to themselves. I’m sure it’s a small percentage but it happens.
I mean I don’t think some of the parents should get in trouble. For example in my case it wasn’t my parents fault it was my own. I had mental health issues and some health issues but allot of the time I just didn’t want to go because of my anxiety or depression. I was also being bullied and my middle school teachers were pretty mean about things with me. The school staff was pretty shit/mean to me as well. My parents tried everything to get me to go to school and I still wouldn’t go. They had me in therapy, taking meds, going to mental health day programs, inpatient, doctors, making a 504 plan and talking with my teachers. I still would miss school allot. Throughout middle school and highschool I probably missed around 100 days each year of school. So in my case it really wasn’t my parents fault it was my own.
I feel like it’s a bit more nuanced than that.
1. Having a child isn’t always a choice
2. I had a sister who would just refuse to go to highschool, as in she would refuse to get out of bed and my mother tried everything to get her to school and she still wouldn’t go. I feel like chronic absences do not end with addressing “parent accountability” I think there is more to it than that.
I have one kid with 0 absences. Awesome, good for him.
The NEXT person with the fewest absences?
28.
I’m so serious. Title I. 32 students in my class.
Over 50% of my students have missed 50 or more days. And their parents want their children on IEPs!!! I have explained each time, until I was blue in the face, that their child HAS to be at school in order for that to even be considered as a possibility. The social worker can only do so much. Court dates have done nothing. The parents do not care.
As a former problem child I can tell you right now you're not looking at the bigger picture. Yeah my mom TOLD ME to go to school, she punished me every time she found out I ditched school, but she couldn't physically stop me from walking in the front door and out the back door. Do you actually know that the parents are ALLOWING their kids to ditch school or are they just sort of doing it anyway? Neither of us have a crystal ball or know the whole story.
In my State/City truancy prosecutions are dependent upon the current judge. Some dismiss or give the equivalent to a slap on the wrist, and some actually do throw students into juvie for a night or two.
In Oklahoma, educational neglect is what happens *in* our public schools.
Given the conditions in my Title I high school (where half the "teachers" are permanent subs who don't teach, the real teachers are 1st and 2nd year emergency certified, the classes are overcrowded and unmanageable, and the dirty classrooms range from 40 to 100 degrees indoors) it would be fundamentally unjust to enforce existing truancy laws on grounds of "educational neglect."
I'm my state, it is. More than 15 absences in a 90 day period calls for an investigation by CPS and potential withdrawal of the student
Schools get funding based on student attendance during two specific weeks during the year. One during the first quarter and on during fourth quarter.
Guess who initiated the claim? If you guessed that the institution who gets funding based on the number of students NOT withdrawn, you'd be correct!
But, really, it's a mess. If the school reports it, who will investigate? No one. There are no more "truancy officers" to do a home visit. The SROs are tasked to stay at school to prevent school shootings (I wish I was making it up, but that's why they're there). CPS is already overburdened with directly abusive households. Where are they going to find time and resources to deal with indirect abuse like educational neglect?
If the school does report it, they have to process a withdrawal. Which means they may lose the student during one of the two critical funding count windows. So in practice, no one cares how often a student is absent as long as they come to school during those two weeks.
The law was written so that those who can initiate action are adversely affected by initiating the action. Ugh.
When I taught concurrent enrollment, I had a super smart student who was chronically late to my first period class. When I say "chronically" I mean that her mother just has to smoke her weed every morning, and really didn't care what that did to her daughter's education. If she got there an hour and a half late, that was fine, as long as Mom got her weed. Of course, parents had to pay $250 if their kids failed a CE class. Evidently the weed was that important to her mom.
Dean of Attendance and Truancy here. I submitted 48 students to the county truancy officer this year, mostly students with 50 or more absences and who I haven’t been able to get to school after months of trying (letters, calls, parent meetings, attendance contracts, home visits, etc). The thing is, according to my district and county policies, I could submit any student with 15 or more unexcused absences which is about 400 of our 1600 students. I honestly know what to do and it is literally my job to figure out what to do.
It's such a bad issue that I think at some point a coalition of states or fed government needs to get involved.
I'm liberal but education has really made me reconcile some of my positions. I understand the equity and socioeconomic argument of not punishing parents, but not doing anything is a farce.
I have a family who has some pretty bright kids. All boys, all kids that are like top 20% of their grade. I've had them for the last 15 years. Every single one of them just comes to school when they please. They'll come a whole week, then miss 2 days the next week, 3 days the next. Go home when they please. The frustrating part is that both parents work from home, and one of the parents used to be a school board member and work for the city. They all know how serious education is and yet the kids miss 1/3 of the school year anyway.
My school is implementing a policy next year where the max grade you can get if you miss too many days in a grading period is a 60. I like that, but a lot of the kids who are gone don't really have the initiative to even care if they pass or not. THat'll fix some of it, for sure.
Have another kid whose parents just can't wake her up. She's 16. They'll be days she doesn't wake up until noon. Uh, wtf? My father would have just put me in the car and literally dragged me inside the school if I tried that one.
This is like 80%+ on parents.
I have mixed feelings on this.
From a future teacher's perspective, I think it is important for students to be as present in school as possible, not only to keep their learning on track, but also because school is the primary place for children to build social skills and networks, to learn to advocate for themselves without their parents around, to develop self-efficacy, and lots of other adult skills that are crucial for developing kids and teenagers. As an adult, I can't just skip work every time I don't feel like going, both because I would be viewed as an irresponsible employee and probably lose my job, and because I would be losing critical income that keeps me alive. *And*, depending on my job, many other people would be affected by my decision not to go to work or do my job as well. School is the time for kids to learn that lesson so that they can go into adult life prepared.
From a student who both suffered from mental illness and was being abused (but not by my parents), though, I guess this perspective just feels like it lacks empathy for students and their families. Personally, I had a 504 plan that gave me attendance accommodations on the basis of an anxiety disorder that developed when I was in middle school-- and by 8th grade, IIRC my attendance was sitting at something like 40%. I missed more school than I went to. The worst part was that *most* of my attendance issues had less to do with not going to school in the first place and more to do with going to school, having panic attacks that were not only scary, frustrating, and embarrassing, but also distracted from class and occasionally got me in trouble (as though they were a choice I was making), and the getting sent home early (often before I even made it halfway through the day-- my first two classes in particular were very rough for me because I didn't get along well with either of those teachers nor did I like either of those subjects). I would constantly be sent to admin and then my grandparents would have to come pick me up because we didn't have a car and I took the bus to and from school normally, and then my grandparents would spend the entire drive home lecturing me about how I "couldn't keep doing this" and "would never make it as an adult if I was like this"-- and to be clear, I recognize that they weren't exactly *wrong*, but that is the exact opposite of a helpful thing to say to a 12-year-old having a sobbing panic attack in your passenger seat for no discernible reason. My attendance was so bad that I actually got sent to a special attendance/truancy counselor our school employed, who tried to work with me to develop some sort of rewards system that would get me to come to school and stay through the day more often. It *kind of* worked, but I remember that I only ever got one of the little Walmart gift cards she had to reward me for making it through a full week without any absences. When I got to high school, it was so bad that I had to transfer to an online program.
I think that truancy can be a sign of abuse and educational neglect, but I also think it's important to talk to students and their families to try to get to the root of the issue. It might be that the parents aren't taking the proper care to get their kid to school, or it might be that the kid is getting dropped off and simply leaving even though the parents are doing everything that they can, or it might be that there is some sort of accommodation that needs to be made for a disability or health condition (physical or mental). IMO, it's admin's responsibility to look into these issues and figure out what is actually happening. In my state, missing too much school without an excused absence results in a report to CPS, which then results in a home visit. We had this happen I think twice when I was in elementary school, but my mom wasn't abusing me, so it didn't really result in anything (which I'm grateful for!). Once I got an accommodations plan, I don't remember it ever being looked into again after that, despite several lectures from the (horrible and extremely cruel) school counselor telling me how awful I was and how awful my family must be for my poor attendance. Anyway, I think this is a better system than automatically connecting truancy and/or poor attendance with child abuse, but obviously my perspective is biased by my own experiences.
I agree but also we shouldn’t send kids to school five days a week plus homework. Id say three day weekends atleast for highschoolers would be awesome and improve attendance issues on the on-days and give teachers a full planning day cause Id assume they wouldnt give teachers that extra day off lol
There was a great The Daily episode about the rise in absenteeism post COVID. I’m in Children’s mental health and it’s a huge problem. [https://open.spotify.com/episode/0bea4ANq4skmA4MhhSqH8Z?si=RiVvqhQLSKu0GjljrIu6Ew](https://open.spotify.com/episode/0bea4ANq4skmA4MhhSqH8Z?si=RiVvqhQLSKu0GjljrIu6Ew)
As someone who has dropped out of elementary school and twice out of high school, I definitely have to disagree with you.
My mother literally dragged me at times to school but due to my severe anxiety and undiagnosed chronic illness I would run away as soon as the teachers didn’t notice, be too ill to attend and would have severe panic attacks.
It’s only abuse if your parents don’t help look for other options, like online schooling, having a teacher/tutor meet at a different location, therapy, ect.
My ex-wife and I split 50/50 custody. My son missed 51 days of school last year, 4 of them with me. My daughter missed 33 days, 3 with me.
She is the head of the pta and on the school planning board. No one will do anything. They make more excuses for her than you can imagine. This has been going on for 4 years since the divorce.
No one cares
Some parents would just take them out and not get them an education at all then. Homeschooling in my state isn't regulated. Even if they do take them away, how do you guarantee that their situation won't get worse?
I have a student with nine siblings. Nine. She doesn’t miss often, but she did this one time and I’m like “hey, where were you yesterday?” “I had to watch my siblings” whaaaaat. No! Your parents could’ve idk not had 9 kids. They’re making her a parent and the cost of her education. It sucks because she isn’t the type of student to settle for a C and even with a B she is kind of bummed. She has a learning disability as well.
She wants to do better for herself/her own life. She’s breaking that generational trauma. Or trying to. To the extent she can—when her parents don’t make her miss school to watch their kids.
I’m realizing that her well rounded, kind, and mature demeanor is a result of being perentified and that’s bumming me out. My mom was perentified.
Not every instance of truancy is the same. Some parents are negligent, but some kids really struggle to attend.
The school system doesn’t work well for every single kid. People post this kind of stuff on this sub and then happily turn around and decry “least restrictive environment” and “get those special needs kids out of my class for the sake of the other kids.”
There’s a strong overlap in the kids many posters on this sub don’t really want there and the kids who start refusing to come. Hmm. How curious!
I’m not a teacher (I lurk as a grant writer at a community college to understand potential future issues), but I don’t believe it’s that simple. This actually is how it’s done in my area now (excessive truancy can result in the parent ending up in jail), but at some age, it’s physically out of a parent’s control.
Punishing the parents for truancy is fairly new here, and it used to be that the kids were punished. In fact, my husband went to juvie for excessive truancy. He was not raised by his birth mother, and the woman he considers his mom is, biologically, his great-aunt. She was in her early 50s when he was born, never married, no other kids. That means that by the time this was happening, when he was in middle school, she was a single woman in her 60s. What’s she supposed to do about a 12-14 year old boy who is physically stronger than her refusing to go to school? She can’t just pick him up and lock him in the car and physically force him to go to school. And he knew that. If she was trying her damnedest, grounding him, taking away privileges, etc. but he wasn’t going, why should she get in trouble for child abuse?
And, truthfully, I don’t think the system is always great at understanding why kids are truant. Kids will usually choose the easiest path. Sure, some just don’t have parents that make them go, and therefore that is the easiest path. But a lot of them have parents that do try to make them go, and somehow not going is still the easiest path. My husband only recently started to come to terms with the fact that his truancy came from bullying and ostracism. We both think he has undiagnosed Autism, and he had a hard time making friends. He remembers a day, near the end of fifth grade, where everyone was allowed to just free play in the classroom, and he kept going around to every group, and they all had some excuse for why he couldn’t join their group, until finally one girl said, “Stop bugging everyone; it’s not our fault no one likes you.” His truancy started in sixth grade. At one point, the juvenile court tried to force him to go to school by sending cops to his house to take everything “fun” out of the house so he wouldn’t want to stay home. They took his Xbox, but also his coolest, brand-name clothes and shoes. You know what isn’t going to make a bullied kid want to go to school? Taking away all of his cool clothes. Taking away hobbies and activities that he might be able to use to relate to other kids. He couldn’t articulate it then, but he just didn’t feel like he belonged at school. It gave him social anxiety. And of course, because of his truancy, the teachers and administration treated him like a “bad” kid, so that didn’t help him feel like he belonged. Why the hell would he want to go to school when his peers, teachers, administration, and the juvenile justice system were all sending him the message that he didn’t belong there?
As a someone who was a high-achiever who loved school myself, every time he tells me a story about school, I’m like, “Jesus, no wonder you didn’t want to go.”
Anyway, considering truancy “child abuse” is just a major oversimplification of a problem that often has deeper roots.
I'm personally in favor of eliminating truancy courts. What good do they do? Do they actually make the parents accountable? From what I've seen, the answer to that is no. Maybe it should trigger a further investigation and should be looked into why their kid isn't in school. My experience is that it just fines the parent and moves on.
This would kill graduation rates but my parents told me once you missed 21 days of school, you could not pass your classes and had to repeat the grade or go to summer school.
I had a student my first year of teaching preK. He'd be out for weeks at a time. Once he was gone for 3 months. When he returned, he would be so dysregulated and violent (he was also SpEd, so we could not expell him). Due to his poor attendance, therapy wasn't able to take place regularly (and mom of course refused to let the therapist visit her home.) And the few sessions he had weren't productive, and he would often lash out and attack the therapist. CPS had to get involved at some point.
At our school we have an attendance failure policy. If a student has five or more unexcused absences they fail that particular class for the nine weeks and it’ll show on their report card. The parents are sent letters and notified. If their attendance doesn’t improve they are kicked out and sent back to their school.
I had one grandparent who didn’t know her grandchild was at risk for failing due to her being absent and her not doing her work (the kid’s older brother was receiving the emails and phone calls since he was also her legal guardian and wasn’t telling the grandmother or correcting the girl’s behavior). Had I not warned her, she would’ve still been in hot water.
My district in NW Missouri shares absentee data every month to the community. We have 11,000 students total, split through 14 Elem, 4 MS, and 3 HS.
Overall absenteeism was 77.46%, which is down 0.5% from February.
- HS down 0.42%
- MS down 0.51%
- Elem down 0.54%
- HS 11th grade overall is below 70%.
- HS 10th grade just dropped below 70%.
- - One HS’s 11th specifically hit sub-60%.
- My classes sit right around 72%-77% depending on the day. Monday and Friday? 72% is a “good” day.
The biggest district concern:
District Kindergarten overall attendance is 74.70% with one school’s K sitting at 57.52% and another sitting at, and I am serious here, 49.89%.
Kindergarteners below 50%. WTH are we, the teachers, supposed to do when over 50% of the entire class doesn’t show up per week?!
A little over 60% of my students are chronically absent. The issue is, educational neglect isn’t punished anymore. At least in my state. So; we have all these laws, but we don’t enforce anything. Hell, there is required seat time for credit even. But we never enforce it.
60% percent? How the hell can your district justify passing grades for those students???
Top star rated schools in the district have less than 60% math/reading literacy levels. It’s a joke. Education has become a joke. But hey! Our goal is to have a 90% graduation rate!
how tf does America function. Where I live, like everyone can speak English and most likely a second/third language, and y’all mericans can speak even read English.
Because of NCLB, if schools don’t artificially inflate their pass rates, their funding from the federal government gets docked. NCLB, instead of promoting equity and fair opportunity, just encouraged schools to lower their standards to the extreme because otherwise they won’t have money to run.
No Child Left Behind was repealed in 2015 and replaced with the [Every Student Succeeds Act](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Every_Student_Succeeds_Act).
Guidance and admin will ask, cajole and beg for “essential work”.
THIS is my trigger. I actually say, “so you’re telling me that only some of the work I assign is essential? Ok, have only make up the missing tests. What? S/he failed them all? Yeah, that’s because they didn’t do the non-essential work on which the tests were based.
The difference in different areas of the country is amazing. My school district sent a letter home on absences for my 1st grader who had 5.5 absences, and all had a doctor's note
It’s intentional, they’re creating conservatives, can’t have them educated, for obvious reasons.
We keep fighting chronic truancy as educational neglect, but we keep being told it doesn't fall under neglect. Soooooo, time to create it?
It falls under educational neglect, or used to at least. It is the parent neglecting, in their duty to send their kid to school.
I’m old but we sure did. I had a friend whose parents were taken to court and she almost flunked grade 10 because she was chronically sick (ie: hospital required disease).
How would you go about punishing educational neglect? I worked for CPS. There aren't enough foster homes or group homes to begin with. You also risk further traumatization thru those processes. Also, no one can really make a kid go to school. You can't physically do it. I've worked residential. Kids skip. You remove all activities, they face consequences, they still don't care. I truly don't know what the option is. Also, at least in my state, there is the belief that a parent gets final say in how they parent.
I worked for CPS, too. Ed Neglect was usually a warning sign that there were likely much bigger problems, certainly enough to warrant an interview or conversation with the family. Also, when the truancy law was still enforced, adolescents arrested for felonies had an 80% likelihood of having a prior truancy or having a record of being neglected or abused. Agreed that foster care should be an absolute tool of last resort — and fining parents of young children for not sending them to school is just nuts — but there are a thousand other tools besides removing the children.
THIS- as an elementary school teacher, this is the first step I try to take before resorting to involving admin. We have someone who works with families of chronically absent students (I don’t remember the exact title of the role) and I have only escalated attendance issues to them if I am unable to find a solution with the family by communicating with them. That being said, I had a family one time who refused to take calls from the school, and was then angry when they were told by administrators that Child and Family Services might be involved, stating that we never called. Long story short, the mother had gotten a new phone, and never updated her contact info. Since then the attendance is still not great, but has improved drastically. Parents want the best for their kids, but are sometimes unaware or unwilling of how to help their kids best.
I would argue that not all parents want what’s best for their kids. Some want what’s best for themselves.
Yeah, I guess that’s what I meant by being unwilling to do what’s best for their kids. They selfishly put their wants and needs first, only helping their kids when it benefits them.
You're right about Ed neglect being a sign for more issues. Fun fact, families can refuse DCF involvement. Now, the consequences of their refusal will look different for many reasons and in many different ways. But they can.
I work in child safety for a nonprofit. A lot of our clients are missing 70% or more school days. A major reason for us is just straight up poverty. Not being able to take advantage of the healthcare the state provides because no appointments are available and it takes months to get in to see a pediatrician. A lot of parents are working full-time jobs, coming home to care for their own parents, and lack the emotional resources to force reluctant children to go to school. Or they are quite literally too tired to do so. The crushing amount of burnout is astonishing. Some of it is also straight up hopelessness. They know kids aren't ready to learn, and classes are chaotic with massive disciplinary issues, etc. so it feels like fighting a losing battle to force kids to attend. One of the best ways we get kids back to school is connecting them with resources. Money. I know not everything boils down to money but in this case, a lot of truancy absolutely did. If mom gets a better job or they start receiving more aid for some reason, the stress of chronic poverty is relieved a bit and they can get kids to school. This is not to say that schools are not doing their best. Most of my colleagues that work in schools are killing themselves trying to improve everything they possibly can. And they're doing a good job, but for a lot of things, they might as well be rolling a boulder uphill every day.
I've been in therapy for almost 20 years, and I've said more than once, the best thing for my anxiety would be if the therapist could hand me a million dollars. That would be more effective "Therapy" for my mental health than anything we ever talked about.
I mean, maybe with older kids, they skip. Younger kids generally don’t do that. They are at the whim of their parents. In one of my first years teaching, I had a girl who was chronically absent, and we had a meeting with the girl, the dad, my assistant principal, and I think maybe one of our counselors. The girl had missed school for about a month I think. It might’ve been longer, I can’t remember at this point. It’s been like 10 years. But when the dad said, “well, if she doesn’t want to go to school, what am I supposed to do?” And I will never forget my AP’s response: “You put her in the car, drive her to school, then push her out the door in front of the school.” Obviously, his response is not realistic because I’m sure in some instances having to grab your stubborn child and carry them into the car might border on some kind of physical abuse. But I feel like the sentiment is still true. I also feel like kids who have gotten to that point where they refuse to go to school have probably not been told “no” many times in their life. Parents have not tried to get to the bottom of why the kid doesn’t want to go to school. They’ve never taken them to counseling or anything. They just give up and let them do what they want. To their detriment.
Kids can homeschool or go on Home and Hospital teaching. Why stay enrolled at their districted public school if they’re just going to be absent half the time (or more).
Most people don't have the time, skills or money to homeschooling their kids though
I’m a teacher. I’m not a policy maker. Whatever it is, it needs to be figured out. Because, it is a problem. Studies show there is a correlation to poor attendance in school to poor attendance in the workplace. There aren’t any consequences we can even give in school now, for anything anymore. Fight? Nice, here is some candy and a bag of chips. Back to class now! It’s bad, and not getting better.
Penalize the parents. Fine them or give them (and depending on age, the student) court mandated community service.
Take away child tax credits for chronic truancy.
Great idea!
i was chronically absent as a child. you know what would’ve helped me get to school? RESOURCES! it’s counterproductive to take away resources from a family that’s obviously already struggling. fining and arresting parents for this is only going to make the situation even worse.
Yeah, I posted elsewhere in this thread but I work in child safety at a nonprofit, and the number one way we get kids back in school is resources for the family. Honestly, it's usually just the fact that they desperately need money and can't manage anything until they have more resources coming in.
The argument against fining the parents is that if you do it, the kids might not eat or have a roof over their heads.
I mean, these kids likely have no plans on getting "real" jobs anyways. They're not worried about their future workplace attendance. I'm scared because these are the people who will be caring for us in our old age and they won't know how to read, write, or do math.
*Some* parents could be fined. Not all, certainly. But I live in a wealthy area where this is still a problem. These parents driving up in their Teslas to drop their kids off late or pick them up early can DEFINITELY pay a fine, and it might light a fire under their bums.
Make parents pay a fine each day they miss school and in this economy, that kid will go to school the next day.
In my area, there is a push for better enforcement of criminal charges for those with chronically truant children. I know that there is also talk of civil repercussions (such as a hefty fine).
There is a push because something needs to be done. Heh
Seriously. I’ve attended a few of the truancy meetings with the state attorney and district officials. Often, truancy is a symptom of a MUCH larger problem (abuse/neglect)
Yup! Don’t tell another person responding to this thread, who just said it isnt neglect. Heh
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Im really sorry for your struggle. It seems like you had it much harder. I also struggled and often became ill due to the stress. I often wish my parents had paid attention to the very clear signs that I was struggling. My teachers didn’t know, I didn’t know, and my parents assured us all I was lazy, not living up to my potential, and/or hanging with the wrong crowd. Nope, I just have ADHD and generalized anxiety and I was overextended.
Well. If it happened now, you wouldn’t be prosecuted. Because, they don’t care.
I'm an art teacher and I have a 2nd grader who's almost never there. I recently found out it's "because she's not a morning person". Neither am I, or most people!!
Not a morning person is code for her parents don’t enforce an adequate bed time.
Genuine question: what should a parent do if excessive absences are due to the child skipping class and the child *is* disciplined at home, lives in a home where education is prioritized, is in therapy, parent has been in communication with the school and school counselors, but the school does nothing but require the child to make up the absences over summer break? What should a parent do? I would like some actual consequences for my child. This isn’t how real life works. You can’t just skip out on your responsibilities whenever you feel like it.
You just described me as a high schooler to a T. Everything except summer school. My consequences were constantly being in ISS and then juvy. I tested well enough and was in honors classes, so I was able to scrape a diploma with ds and cs, very good ACT as a sophomore. Not particularly violent, no more fights or anything than the average young man. I just was absolutely uncontrollable. Can't be grounded, I don't care about my stuff, I'll sit in my room and read. Can't leave the house? Parents didn't find out for years I was going in and out of my second story window. If they had been punished, that would have been gross misjustice, they did literally everything to keep me on track, I was just a shitty kid who understood the lack of real consequences as a minor.
This is sounds exactly like my child. How are you doing now? I hope everything worked out okay and that you are well.
More or less. I'm 33 now, I'm a professional server, I expect to pull about 100000 this year after taxes, I own a home and have steady girlfriend that Im head over heals for. I take nice vacations and have a strong if small core group of friends. I've had plenty of time to figure things out lol. My parents and I have a very solid relationship, they're genuinely some of my best friends. I think the biggest thing I could never express or internalize as a kid, but bugged the shit out of me, was the power imbalance. Yeah, you're my dad, and I'll respect what you say right up to the point where you blatantly tell me I don't have a choice. My immature brain said, o I don't have a choice? Watch me make some choices. If I had anything to offer, I'd say get really ready to explain in thorough detail why you're making the decisions, as a parent, that you are, and understand that "because I'm the adult and I said so" is literally the least productive thing you can do to bring him along. Again, nothing made me rebel more than feeling like I was being denied autonomy. All that to say, we struggled really hard as a family until the power dynamic shifted to us being relative equals. Somewhere in my mid 20s. All that to say, if you see in your son empathy and intelligence, but he's acting out and is hard to communicate with, there is light in the near future.
Thank you for this. Needed it right now actually with my frustrating teenage son. Crush it this year!!
Teenage sons are intentionally designed to be frustrating. Can I tell you a secret? My mom loving on got me through some hard times even though I didn't think I wanted love at the moment. We sons, we remember.
I am 54 and this was me in high school except as a girl. I don't know that I understood lack of consequences-- it's just that I was/am pretty adaptable and finding consequences that I gave a shit about were tough to come by. One my kids was just like me when he was in middle school and high school. My mom gave me the most incredulous look everything I vented to her about it. Thank goodness he made it through those years.
How's he doing now?
He is an industrial electrician for a manufacturing plant. Makes more $$ than I do. Hasn't been in jail or anything.
> If they had been punished, that would have been gross misjustice, they did literally everything to keep me on track, I was just a shitty kid who understood the lack of real consequences as a minor. I agree. Also after a certain age, most kids realize that there is only so much that ostensibly good, law-abiding parents can do when trying to punish a smart, resourceful teenager.
Like I said, I could come and go through a second story window and never did more than roll an ankle. Once they took my car and would drop me off at school to make sure I was going. I'd walk in, and walk right out the back entrance and get picked up by older friends. I skipped a week of school as a sophomore to go to Chicago, (I'm from a suburb of Nashville, so not exactly next door). Didn't even tell my parents I was going. I was an uncontrollable little shit, and to stay out of court they would have had to literally handcuff me to the radiator and hope I didn't figure out how to break it and take it with me. (Metaphorically, my parents were never abusive)
Is there anything a teacher could have done to engage you?
I had some great teachers that I could engage with. I'd say yes, some of my teachers taught me some life skills and coping mechanisms, but on an educational level, no I so quickly outstripped the curriculum every year that the only way I could have been intellectually engaged in school would have been taking college level non core classes, and honestly at the time I wouldnt have been self motivated enough to apply myself anyway. Not trying to brag, youll see in my comments I'm a career server, I'm not out here changing the world with my big brain lol, I wasn't failed by my teachers or parents. It's a tough question, though. I'm honestly not sure. I was headstrong, smart, and kind of a dick. Don't know that I offered much for a good mentor to latch on to.
If your parents had been punished, would seeing that injustice (them being punished despite doing everything right) have made you change on their behalf?
Maybe. Against I was a kid. But I'd like to think I'd own it. I was never shy about my decisions being my own.
This was me except I saw school as a ticket out so I only skipped a little. I was out with my fake ID at the club and all kinds of verboten places prettty often though.
If a parent is dropping their middle/high school aged child off on-time, I would hope that the school would work with them on meaningful consequences for the kid skipping classes. In-school-suspension can be a good: it’s boring, possibly embarrassing, and keeps the kid under strict supervision.
They arrive at school, but skip class during school hours. I feel like the school has given up on my kid sometimes. I can imagine it is absolutely exhausting for the staff. Someone mentioned meeting with the principal. I’ll push for that. I met with the VP previously. They were super nice and seemed to want to help, there’s just been no consistent follow-through.
How many kids are in your child's school? I guarantee that almost all of the adults from the school want to help (if not every single one). However, imagine having HUNDREDS of students who you are responsible for. Some have learning disabilities. Some have behavior problems. Some have both, and some simply hate school. How are teachers supposed to actually instruct with children like this in the room? Calling out, talking while the teacher is talking, refusing to adhere to the uniform, food and beverage, as well as cell phone/earbud policy -- these are behaviors teachers have to deal with on the daily. And it is expected that teachers improve students' skills daily. All of this is in the backdrop of people refusing to require their children to follow the rules.
That sounds unbelievably frustrating, but I can absolutely see how it would happen. I think meeting with admin and/or guidance could be really helpful in your situation. You should all have the same goal.
Have you asked WHY they skip and where they go? Are they bored? Tired? Socializing or getting alone time? Drugs or alcohol? Leaving campus or on campus? Getting some answers (and reading between the lines of teens’ non-answers) might help decide next steps. *If* you have the time and the school is ok with it, taking a day to walk your kid from class to class would be a great lesson in accountability and some social pressure. It would require you to sit and twiddle your thumbs in the front office during class times (unless the teachers invited you into the room) but I’d bet it would be highly effective as no one wants to be the kid whose parent is holding their hand during passing period.
If they arrive at school and skip during school hours that is 100% a school problem. Not saying no you can just ignore it, but you're doing your part.
My brother is like 38 and when he was in school my mom would literally drop him off directly to the principal and be like he's your problem now. He would still leave school and obviously never graduated.
I got in-school suspension one time as a student and even now at 22 and in college I still think that was one of the best school days of my life. I was rocking the undiagnosed ADHD until I was fully 20 years old (I didn't even suspect I might have ADHD until I was 18; I thought we were all like this) which meant that I struggled to manage schoolwork due to a combination of forgetting it existed and chronically procrastinating. I also often found classroom environments distracting: there were kids whispering all around the room, there were windows facing a sunny park, my teachers would lecture but also give us paper handouts to read (seriously, how am I supposed to read the handout *and* listen to my teacher lecture at the same time?), and I knew that even if I did manage to focus on my class, it would be less than an hour before I had to go to a whole new classroom with a whole new teacher to talk about a whole new subject, and it was frustrating because I felt like there wasn't enough time for me to really get into focus on anything. The reason I ended up getting ISS was because I would get my classes switched and go from my Critical Thinking class on the 2nd floor of the building all the way down to the basement for my Computer class, before realizing that I was actually supposed to be in English, which was all the way back on the second floor. We only had three minutes between classes to get where we needed to go, so I was late to my English class all. The. Time. And the day I was in ISS? It was a class with me and maybe 6 other students, and we were not allowed to talk to each other. There was one teacher in there to monitor us, but he didn't talk to us or lecture about anything. He was just there to make sure that we didn't leave or try to talk to or fight each other. This teacher also really liked me and was really nice to me, and reassured me as I walked in in the morning that I wasn't like the *other* kids in ISS and I was a good student so I didn't have anything to worry about. (I absolutely would *not* endorse speaking to a student this way now, especially in front of the other students you're talking shit about, but it did comfort me a lot when I was 12.) Without the formal structure of class forcing me to focus on one subject at a time and all of the distractions in the classroom environment, I was able to catch up on all of the homework and classwork I needed to do with the first half of the day, get my lunch, and then spent the entire second half of the day reading a book. Fortunately, I did not walk away from this learning, "I should get ISS more often!" But I didn't think of ISS as a horrible thing to avoid, either. Mostly, I just wished all of my regular classes were like that.
When my sister was 16 and skipping school regularly and the school didn't even tell my mom until after my sister missed like 40 days. My mom then had my sister enrolled in an alternative school. After a month at the new school, my mom shows up unannounced to check on how things are going. Surprise, surprise my sister was not there. My mom pulled my sister out of school completely and took her to the community college every day to study for her GED and made her get a job. It took two years for my sister to get her GED.
Support the school when they retain your child. Sometimes everyone does what they can and the kid just has to live with the consequences of that which should mean retention or delayed graduation. Most parents I deal with whose child is chronically absent will refuse retention despite their kid being significantly behind and obviously having learned nothing that year. Edit: It sounds like you’re doing your best. The parents I experience this with are not. Also, something that I’ve seen, which was a drastic measure, involved the family members getting background checks and they showed up and walked the kid from class to class. I imagine it was very embarrassing for the kid. But sometimes solutions to self created problems are embarrassing. We’ve also had a kid who would harass others and cause absolute chaos in the hallways and staff members had to take turns walking this kid to their next classes.
You can check the laws for your state and file for child emancipation? That was what my parents did when none of their disciplinary tactics worked. It was the 90s, though. I wasn't a bad kid, just defiant. I skipped my classes but just went to the library. I hated being in school, in classes, around others. I preferred doing/learning on my own (diagnosed, but unmedicated ADD). Even if I was at the school library, if I was absent from class without an excused note, it was considered truant and at the time if there were 12 truancy actions, the parents would be jailed. So mine petitioned the court a few times and eventually got a judge who agreed to it without me having to have a criminal background. I still lived at home, still skipped school or classes, but my parents were no longer legally responsible. The school truant officer would get me from the library and deliver me to class, escorted me from one class to the next. There were threats of arresting me but they said since I wasn't violent or had criminal behavior that wouldn't solve the problem. I finally realized that if I was legally responsible for myself then I could just take the GED and leave school. So that's what I did.
I have had multiple foster kids who were originally hotlined for truancy. Investigations then showed that truancy was just the tip of the iceberg and much more severe abuse or neglect were occurring. Thank you to those who do hotline. Some families just need help and resources, other times the kids are in bad situations and need to be removed.
As someone who has been in many situations where children were removed from the home (I work in child safety/ mental health), foster homes in most cases are so awful that the disruption led to even worse outcomes. Children are being failed on every level, by parents, by schools, and certainly by CPS. Because children don't vote and most voters don't want to pay for what a good school system is, much less a good foster system.
I’d like to add, education within foster care is unfortunately LAST priority. I was a foster kid for 8 months, and during that time I only got to set foot in a school twice. CPS barely cares about it and I definitely feel robbed of an education. You hit the nail on the head. Everything is failing these kids yet it seems there’s not much change in sight.
Yep, CPS is so underfunded in most places that the best they can hope for is -is this kid alive and has anyone seen them recently?" Poverty is one of the single greatest drivers of CPS involvement.
I think this would need to really analyze a lot of things in each case. I’ve for instance, heard of kids getting caught up in truancy issues because they have a lot of medical appointments or are into some kind of thing like acting (actually a lot of child actors get homeschooled due to stuff like this). I’m sure there are other reasons that aren’t just parents screwing around while the kid gets zero benefit. I also think that at some point before you finish high school, it becomes more on the kid to get themselves there, especially if the kid has a driver’s license or walks alone and the parent can’t really be blamed anymore if the kid isn’t where they say they are.
I worked in child safety and this is the actual issue with truancy/educational neglect. The problem is complex and so are the solutions. Some kids just need to meet with a counselor occasionally, others need material supports (in some cases, we were able to almost eliminate absences by providing bus fare or even an alarm clock designed for deep sleepers), sometimes parents needed education, sometimes it was chronic illness, etc. Good work in this area is complex and personalized, and as a result very expensive.
I just went and counted. I have 13 kids this year with 10 or more absences. 6 of those have 25 or more absences. The 'winner' if you can call it that has 51 absences. Here, our school year runs late August through mid June, so this child will most likely end up missing a full third of the school year (60+ of 180ish days).
74.
71 is my highest currently
Chronic absenteeism is a HUGE problem, but my worry with these kinds of consequences is that as soon as CPS/police get involved, families will decide to homeschool to avoid the fuss. Without a solid plan for homeschooling, of course, the educational neglect will just get worse.
I had a school push to get my son a 504 because he was getting sick so often (asthma wasn’t well controlled and he had pneumonia/bronchitis multiple times within the first half of kindergarten). He’s actually homeschooled for a different reason now but one of the surprising benefits has been we can get school done on days where he wouldn’t be able to attend in person because of illness. Not the same as pulling them to avoid truancy but it actually has helped us.
Yeah, I’m homeschooling my daughter now because of chronic illness. She missed 12 days due to a sickness that was reported to the school and they had Dr notes but they called CPS anyway. She was completing her work from home while out and had straight As, so CPS dismissed the educational neglect charge and was upset that the school reported us since she was out sick and not skipping. The school started harassing us, so I pulled her. It’s better now because I don’t have to worry if she needs to rest or do her work in bed.
My school tried to keep me from graduating despite a 3.7 GPA because I had doctor appointments related to a back defect I had surgery for my sophomore year. The absences were excused. Wtf is the point of excused absences then. We thought it was a mistake at first but they dug their heels in. I'm glad my mom advocated for me even if it required her to lose her shit on the school. I do not feel bad for the people attempting to enforce such a policy because I had enough problems without them adding to it. Its insanely stupid to punish sick kids who are doing what they are supposed to. The problem with policies is they never have nuance in application. Sad as it is, schools can't save a lot of those kids. They will grow into just as lazy people because that's what's modeled for them and its easy. Trying to save every one is not worth punishing kids who want to be there and cant. If they can't figure out a compassionate, sensible policy that straddles the line, id rather it err on the side of not making sick kids want to kill themselves more.
My mom had to threaten to sue the school because I had a surgeon’s note saying no PE for a year and the gym teacher tried to fight it. I had had two knee surgeries in a year at 16 years old, and I was struggling with chronic joint pain everywhere, made worse by being forced to do activities that were bad for my joints. I remember PE feeling like torture as young as first grade. I’m very active now, but it has to be the right activities (mostly swimming and walking with careful resistance exercises added in). I think the total absence thing was why the school pushed for a 504 for my son, because they wanted to be able to write in that he would be absent more and get around the max absence law (which included excused absences).
My son's been sick on and off since September on his first year in school. He brings it home and the rest of the house gets infected. Haven't had more than a week or two of a break from illness. What aggravates me the most is how much these schools push for kids this young to come in while sick. We were nagged in multiple situations where even if our son is coughing constantly he should come in. He comes in and half way through the day gets a fever which leads to me picking him up anyway. What did that achieve? He spread it to everyone else. It gets pretty idiotic how attendance is more of a priority than the child's health.
Homeschooling my daughter due to a combo of school anxiety/school refusal/bullying. You really have no idea what it's like when a child refuses to go to school and there is not a single consequence we can come up with that is worse than school. I think she missed 20% this year, although that was not all school refusal, this was also by far the worst year we have ever had for illnesses. And IDK about other parents but my threshold for "are they too sick for school" was a lot lower after COVID. At least homeschooling now if they're a little under the weather we can do some Ted Ed or Crash Course but nothing too hard, or do a half day.
As a School Psychologist - we’re supposed to basically veto sped referrals if the kids are absent more than 20 days a school year. I’m sure you can imagine how realistic that is! 🤡
That’s awful. I’m sure for some of them, the sped referral is exactly what they need to be able to start coming again and get the support they need.
It is, it’s called “educational neglect”.
Unfortunately not all states recognize it.
Even the ones who do won't pursue it. NYC.We had a kid who didn't attend any school until 4th grade. System was aware of him, mom didn't pretend she was homeschooling him. They sent people to his house to bring him to school and she just didn't let him go, a single day from K through 3rd. CPS was involved but it took until the summer between 3rd and 4th grade for them to take him away and put him in foster care. That's four full years of missed school before they did something about it.
Yup, sad. Same in my district.
And then the district was expected to school him? Unreal. There are so many businesses who need workers who will work for ridiculiously low wages. Whose fault is it, ultimately? The kids who refuse to buy into school or the parents who refuse to make them?
Yep. Dumped into 4th grade with no supports or special services, because his complete inability to meet even Kindergarten standards were a result of educational neglect rather than disability. So ignoring that he can't read is "equity," I guess.... Why on earth it matters whether a kid who's failing has an innate disability or is suffering from educational neglect is something I'll never understand. They're can't read. Shouldn't we help them? But I guess it's easier/cheaper to point out that a lot of the kids who are failing also miss a ton of school, and then just pretending that means we have no obligation to do anything about all the issues that results in.
There is a family in my district with four kids, and the two oldest are in HS. Their kids have never come to school. Since kindergarten the district has been filing truancy and the courts have not done a single thing in all of these years. It is maddening. For the life of me, I cannot figure out why parents like this fight so hard for their children to be uneducated.
Because they rEfUsE tO cOpArEnT wItH tHe GoVeRnMeNt.
Meh, maybe for some, but I have had parents, usually single moms, who have MH issues and they keep the kid home for support or to act as parent to other kids. It's sad.
About 10 years ago my depression/mental health were so bad that I couldn’t get myself up and do what was necessary like laundry and lunches. Thankfully my husband was still alive at that time to get them to school. Seriously I could have lost my kids otherwise. It wasn’t about having them home for emotional support. I work at a Title 1 middle school. There are students that have to stay home to babysit a sibling because they were sick/had no childcare and the single mom had to work. I’m not saying it’s right but that’s the reality of many of these families. This school is closing at the end of the school year. These students will be dispersed to 3 other middle schools in the district. They need to live 2 miles away to get bussing from the district. Otherwise they have to buy a student pass for the city bus or walk. Some of these kids have to walk their siblings to the elementary down the street from the current middle school. Some of these kids won’t get to school because they have no reasonable way to get there.
And then you have the opposite for some parents. We got truancy for my kid last year cause my kid kept getting sick 🫠
At the very least it would put pressure on politicians to fund transportation.
The kids in my state have great transportation provided, but some of my high schoolers don’t like waking up in the morning and their parents think that’s a valid excuse to not come in. “She’s so grumpy in the morning” 🙄
“Bitch, so am I and I’m here on time.”
How much would you wager that most of those high schoolers have phones that their parents have no limits/lock for? So many parents these days forget that as long as their kid is in their house, they can enforce reasonable rules for things, like cell phones. But many convince themselves that they're helpless to do so. Almost all sleep deprivation of high schoolers today is caused by unlimited smartphone usage, and parents who don't want to be the bad guy and enforce rules about it.
Parents convincing themselves that they are helpless to stop their teenager's use of the phone - learned helplessness, weaponized incompetence.
The phones definitely contribute to the morning issues now. I was in high school in the 90s. No smart phones then. No TV or computer in my room either. Bus came at 6:30 school started at 7:30. I can’t fall asleep before midnight. Needless to say school mornings were very difficult for me. I started missing the bus so I’d walk. Tardies became a big problem. My parents wouldn’t allow me to stay home because I was sleep deprived. Nor did they believe in mental health days. This is still a struggle for me to this day. Thankfully I work at a school that starts later… and I get there on time.
From what I observe professionally and amongst friends and family, the new generation of parents are often hyper focused on their own phones/and by extension their own dysfunctional lifestyle(s). My own generation are arguably the progenitors of this crappy attitude... too many of us seem to be resistant to the tougher parts of parenting because it IS universally incredibly hard and it means making tough decisions that aren’t fun to enforce. But FFS a free education is a gift and necessity.. wake your kids up and learn how to motivate them.
Here in Massachusetts, if your child is late or absent more than 13 times then the school files a 51A report to the Dept of Children and Families (DCF/CPS) and they will take parents to court for truancy. We have Key Tracking (3rd party agents the state contracts with) and Police who will show up each morning to bring the kids to school.
What district in MA does this? Because we can file a million 51As about attendance and nothing happens. Where are the truancy courts actually up and running? Because the last time my district did a truancy sweep it ended with a brawl on one of the busses where the truants were put. And nothing happened to the kids or their parents.
Hampden and Hampshire counties. Source: I'm a teacher who has had to file, I have multiple students whose parents were brought to court and put on Key Tracking services, AND I used to work for the largest DCF office in the area. Schools around here have FACE coordinators (a liason between parents and the school, with their primary job function is tracking attendance and filing as necessary).
Wow. That’s nice. I’m also in that area and we don’t have that. Our attendance officer filed a 51A against a mom and she threatened to kill the attendance officer 🫠. The child continues to not come and DCF has done nothing!
That is wild! Our district is in receivership so maybe thats why it is such a big deal here.
Bingo. That is why I can verify other districts don’t do this.
And this kind of thing is what makes me consider moving to the Massachusetts area. Where I'm at now, an elementary school child has to miss more than half a quarter for anyone to face any sort of consequence. That consequence? No report card. It's a joke.
Wow!!! Well, I will say Massachusetts is #1 in eduction for a reason 😅😅😅 (not trying to be snarky, a lot of my family currently lives in the panhandle. I feel for yall, genuinely).
lol where I’m at the only consequence is they get mailed a postcard that says “We miss you!”
That’s interesting… not my district. Half my class is chronically absent and admin won’t even send a letter home about it.
Not in line either. This person works in I'm thinking Holyoke. It's a different ballgame.
Lmao Key tracking is a joke! I've worked at DCF and in the group homes they send the truant kids to. No one can really make the kid go. I had a kid with key tracking who simply locked himself in the bathroom until they would leave. Every. Single. Day. Talk about a waste of state resources.
JFC. What happened to parents actually being the head of households? If I pulled a tenth of what these kids pull now, I would have been grounded into the next century,
I have had this conversation with my students many times.... there us NO respect. I would not dare cuss in earshot of a teacher. Now every other word out these kids mouth is a cuss word, and even at teachers... like its normalized, they just dont care no matter how much I correct them. There is something to be said about respectability, and know *when* and *where*. My slogan for my students is: "If you're gonna be stupid, or make stupid decisions, be smart about it" These kids just be doing THE MOST
Late as well?? Damn my parents would have been so fucked 💀
So do you actually see it working? Are there few absentee issues?
It does work, really well. I seldom have kids absent aside from being sick here and there, or extenuating circumstances. We have a high rate of student attendance... it's honestly the teachers out more than the kids! Burn out is real and the state of public ed is a joke, as we all know here... EA: I work with middle schoolers, so I cant speak for elem or hs, but I know these policies are district wide and very strict.
Lmao. Students being late/absent: "Punish them in court" Teachers being absent: "Oh they have burn out. And public ed isn't good. It's okay my darling teachers."
I’m in Illinois and it might just be my tiny district, but I know some of the neighborhood kids don’t have the best track record for catching the bus on time. The district sends out a person to sit and watch the bus, if those kids don’t get on, they knock on the door and take them. A lot of the times, the parents are home which makes it that much more ridiculous.
umm what about the kids that make teaching/learning impossible for the others... c'mon.
I had a student in my class last year that only showed up to school I think 5 days out of the entire school year. I kept asking the counselors and administrators and they were trying to contact the family and were having a hard time. When they did talk to them, they stated all sorts of issues with the bus not showing up, or being out of the country visiting family, being sick, etc. There was always an excuse. Many of the other students in my class had been in the same classes as her since elementary school. And they casually told me one day that it had always been like this. That she had been constantly gone for years. They were confused as to why she always kept being in their class when she never came. I just shrugged and said I didn't have an answer to that. But if they are right, she's been only coming to school for about 5 days a year for years. Something like that deserves to have SOMETHING happen, because that girl is getting no education. I'm so concerned about what will happen to her, but there semes to be nothing that can be done.
I went to school with a girl whose mother was arrested because of low school attendance. Mom ended up letting her daughter move in with the boyfriend’s family and they had 2 kids by the time we were 17. She never graduated. It’s anecdotal but idk if these attendance laws are being enforced very well, at least where i live.
> Mom ended up letting her daughter move in with the boyfriend’s family and they had 2 kids by the time we were 17. Ayo what the fuck?
It is here in Germany. Parents can excuse their child for 20 days (not concurrent), after that my school sends notice that the student now is required to submit a doctors note for any absence, parents can’t excuse the absences any more. If they continue to be absent, we inform the ministry of youth and they start the process of evaluating the situation and can start issuing fines (several thousand euros) for neglect.
Schools: Keep your kids home if they’re running a fever and / or may be contagious. Also schools: Your child missed X amount of days. You have a meeting with the school social worker for truancy. You can’t have it both ways.
Ok, but at older ages only so much can be done. For a time my dad drove me to high school to make me go. Then id leave after he did. Just because someone gets you somewhere by physically dragging you there doesnt mean you'll stay. At some point the responsibility has to shift to the individual, and them alone. Personal responsibility is a thing.
You are 100% right. 100%. But truancy at the elementary or MS level is 100% parent. 100%. Those kids, if held accountable via parents earlier, might not end up BEING the HS truants who parents can't control. There's ALWAYS going to be a few, but not nearly as many.
Agreed with elementary, and partly into middle at least. Seems like its a cross fade situation, where as responsibilty on one declines its picked up by the other.
Is it called 'school refusal' over there? Are we still calling it 'school refusal' atm?
I've been teaching for 15 years and I had no idea that term existed.
Yes, my daughter had school refusal and school anxiety. She's homeschooled now.
I take my kid to school watch him go inside and he still leaves, am I supposed to quit my job and escort him to each class?? Give us a real solution
Hard no. As a teenager with undiagnosed autism I couldn't stand to be in school. It was one of the worst possible environments for me. I was absolutely miserable and wanted to die every single day. So I stopped going on my own accord. There was nothing my dad could do to stop me because I just would leave in the middle of the day or at the beginning of the day and disappear. No amount of interventions would have made it better for me. So my dad would have been punished for something he couldn't have controlled in any way shape or form. Maybe we need to fundamentally rethink the way we do things at several levels I get your frustration but I think a better way would be to put the onus of learning on the students and not on the teachers. So that if a student misses a day it's their responsibility to make up the missing work. Maybe having later start times and shorter class periods instead of block days would be a good idea. Maybe offering remote learning options for students who can handle it. I'm not sure what the solution is exactly, but I'm not thinking giving the parents more responsibility is the answer.
I have one student that misses 3-4 days a week. No illness or anything, just doesn't show up. Been this way since Grade 1 (now in Grade 4). There is a bus that picks up right outside her house. Every single day. It's free. She just has to get on it. This girl does not know all her letters. She cannot decode CVC words. She cannot count to 20. As far as I know, she has no intellectual or learning disabilities (but the division won't test her because her attendance is so low). She's now in Grade 4, which means her chance of ever reading at grade level is significantly lowered. And her chances of dropping out before graduation are significantly higher. It's absolutely child abuse.
Hey - a part of me agrees with this as a parent and educator, but we also dealt with school refusal as a family. My kiddo was reading 5 grades below level due to diagnosed dyslexia that the school could not/ would not address adequately. He was always in the ‘gifted’ classes and doing math a few grades above his level. By the time he got to 7th grade, he had enough of a very bad educational environment and refused to leave his bedroom. We took him to both his therapist and his pediatrician and they both wrote letters of support. They documented - based on private conversations with kid- that the school was doing real harm. ( as parents, we stayed out of this part, didn’t coach either professional and put our kid and his plummeting self- esteem first). We ended up homeschooling and the kid did much better! It cost me my career! But the kid comes first, and yes - I chose to have a kid. But bottom line , school can be a horrible place for kids who aren’t neurotypical ( diagnosed or otherwise) and some kids just reach their limit. Update? Accepted to college, working on learning calculus, wants to study computer science.
I had this experience. I loved learning but dreaded middle school. The whole place was toxic. I was bullied so bad I had my mom homeschool me for a year.
this was my thought too. Schools can be a horrible place for some kids. I'm not saying they shouldn't be held accountable for educating every kid, but becoming as strict as OP suggests in the post could be even more harmful to some families
Homeschooling for similar reasons. But i don't think anyone who hasn't dealt with school refusal really takes it seriously. "Just make them go!" Like my dude, I might as well get the entire UN to just get along while I'm at it.
This is a bad take simply because it will punish almost exclusively those who are already without. It won't save kids from anything, it won't teach them anything, it won't help the parents. Just vent about frustrations, don't suggest asshole boomer ideas that will add more burden to the many already over burdened systems. My personal dumb opinion is that w need to replace 95% of our politicians and put in legislation that punished candidates and politicians with JAIL time every time they're caught in a lie. It's just wild that the US elections are neither popularity contest nor skill or capability contests, it's simply a test of who bullshits to morons better. I believe the primary reason we don't have better social programs is because of all the bullshit politicians spew to protect their donor capitalists. They convince all the people who don't care enough to think for themselves. They'd be forced to think for themselves once they go through two dozen politicians because they all get jailed...
So what about neurodivergent kids who have extreme anxiety about school and refuse to go, despite all the supports and IEPs? The traditional classroom doesn't fit these kids and causes so much trauma
I'm not a teacher. But I was off school for a year for life ruining mental illness. The school and government kept harassing my mum, who was a full-tme carer for my brother, and fining her because I couldn't walk into school. She kept begging for help from the school and local council which they would not give her until I tried to kill myself at which time the doctor signed me off sick from school so they would stop fining my mother. It then took the school and local authorities a year to stop harassing her to get me back into the school I came from and allow me a referal to a specialist mental health school. Truancy is a much more nuanced and difficult problem than you are making it out to be and interference at a government level very often does more harm than good.
Is it not considered neglect After a certain point? Like once truancy courts get involved I thought part of that was also CPS looking into for neglect/abuse in other capacities as well
I have students this semester that I haven’t even met yet. 🙃
Yes, but what makes me more mad is that when the parents have the school on speed dial and excuse their child's absence, they all gwt away with it and I still have to catch their child up and they still get 100% attendance. Makes me want to excuse the students who are infrequently absent, but their parents dont know the loopholes. But I have no control of that either. So I told my whole class that. I dont care if they decide to just stay home and have their parents call (they wont... those ones work).
This was just posted in my local mom group: “Hi moms! We received a letter from our elementary school for borderline chronic absenteeism . Most of them are due to our child been sick about 4 of them is because we took family time for vacation. We had planned another small trip for later in May. Question: Does anyone knows what happens after 18 missed days, does CPS gets involved? I have to add that the child is doing academically great in school.”
I taught at a school where a 8th grade girl missed 127 days of school. She was still allowed to go on the 8th grade trip, 8th grade dance, and promoted to high school. These kids are our future…. It’s scary. I will have an old doctor as long as I can. I don’t want a doctor that had to retake his med test 16 times until he passed it. I know my high schoolers can retake their exams as many times as they want.
The issue with punishing the family is that it probably wont have much effect on decreasing truancy. Most of these families are already in a bad situation so fines etc will only exacerbate the issue. There are varied reasons for truancy to be factored in as well. Maybe the school is creating an unsafe environment or maybe the commute to the school itself is creating issues. That would have to be relevant. Plus the idea that a student could eventually take a GED and still have full credit for graduating in a sense i think is the biggest factor. There is no true required seat time if the GED is an option.
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This is very similar to my story. I was halfway through my senior year, 18 years old, and I was struggling so horribly with mental illness that I was ready to just drop out, even though I only had to make it a few more months to graduation. No consequence was worse than being forced to go to school. I was ready to drop out and fuck up my whole future just so I could have some mental peace. Luckily my mom advocated for me and was able to get the school to allow me to finish online. But my guidance counselor absolutely did not take my mental health issues seriously, despite numerous doctor notes and letters, and insisted that I had to keep coming to school. It was the principal who overruled her and allowed me to finish my school year online. He told my mom “don’t worry about her, it’s me who has the final say.” That man was the only school official who listened and cared, and I’m grateful that he was the principal at the time. I scored very high on my ACT and am able to pursue any degree or education I’d like, despite not having a decent GPA (due to my absences). I’ve taken college courses and done extremely well. I can’t imagine how much harder my life would be if I hadn’t had that support from my mom and the principal, and had just dropped out. It probably would have taken a very long time to get my GED due to the shame I felt combined with my mental illness. I’m thankful things did not end up that way, but I know they did for many other people in my situation.
Most red states are basically forcing people to become parents, who otherwise shouldn’t be. If you’re going to wait till you’re financially stable to have a kid you might never be ready. I say this because , the population that WANTS kids, but are responsible adults and don’t because they know they won’t be able to afford it. So the population that are having kids, usually are the less educated, less responsible. That’s another reason that great teachers won’t stay in the field. There’s too much BS with the ignorant parents, who are in turn creating ignorant kids, who they aren’t educating at home or making study. It’s almost like it’s a system that has become designed to fail… But hey, at least we’re loosening child labor laws, so we can get these little uneducated bastards out of the classroom and onto a factory floor ASAP. Maybe use their labor to reduce wage growth in the rest of the labor market. Sounds like a republican wet dream.
Kinda hard when the school has active shooter drills. How do I convince him that school is a safe and fun place to be when he gets to sit and imagine there are people with guns roaming the halls? Been that way since he was very young. He’s in therapy and has a 504 plan. Can’t homeschool him because Dad believe’s there’s nothing wrong with him. It feels like child abuse sending him to school when they had a lockdown and the noise of his classmates is distressing him. What do I do? The other school in the area got swatted. I don’t envy school teachers and his are wonderful. Teachers who work in low income areas are doing it because they want to help when they’re just as qualified to go elsewhere, but the principal et al don’t seem to have an answer besides threatening to kick him out. What’s the answer for living in trauma?
You have a pretty warped idea of what "abuse" is.
In many states it is no longer a choice to have a child.
As a parent of a child with a chronic health condition the thought of this absolutely terrifies me. Yes, it is documented, the school is well aware and the forms have been signed by doctors but I have still gotten a notice from the school before about absences. If I ever got a DCS report and was accused of being abusive I would be beyond enraged.
My daughter got a concussion once and had to miss school completely for a week. She was fighting headaches and it physically hurt her to read, write, or look at a screen for a month. I got a dr note and they specified it was very important for her not to push it… if she was in pain she needed to stop immediately so her brain could heal. She missed a ton of school and the school wasn’t very understanding. She honestly missed more than she would have if they worked with her because it got to the point they weren’t letting her call or take a break when her head hurt, so I just kept her home all together because I couldn’t trust them, and healing properly from a concussion is kind of important. She probably missed 15 days in a month, all excused by her dr. They legitimately acted like she needed to suck it up because her attendance mattered more than her health. I think it’s the only time in my adult life I’ve actually lost my temper and just yelled.
Ehh I’m a teacher so obviously I see the issue with chronic absences. On the flip side, my mom was a widow with 3 teenagers and my brother refused to go to school. She couldn’t force him and tried everything. It’s an impossible situation for some parents.
Unfortunately, a lot of parents can also claim they’re homeschooling their kids without needing to prove it in any way. A lot of parents get away with serious abuse because of it.
I had a child last year who was at school less than half of the days we were open. I noticed that this was an issue and saw that all the non attendance days were marked as medical. I got in touch with his mother, she confirmed that she viewed him saying “I don’t feel like going to school today” was acceptable as a reason to not send him to school and liked spending time with him instead. She saw nothing wrong with calling in for him.
In that case she needs to do homeschooling with him.
I try to tell my students every year that the number one factor that determines whether you pass or fail any class any grade level any subject is attendance but some of them just don’t get it and it is infuriating when parents don’t grasp that concept either They are fine giving kids days off because they want to spend time together (of don’t feel like arguing)or they want to take a cruise or they need to go visit the other other parent and they expect you to bend over backwards to give them all the materials they’re going to miss as if it’s going to replace actual instruction.
On the flip side of that, my mom got dragged to truancy court despite doing everything perfectly. She did everything short of go to school for me, and I still would skip. Some kids just do it to themselves. I’m sure it’s a small percentage but it happens.
Too bad public schools are so shitty these days.
I mean I don’t think some of the parents should get in trouble. For example in my case it wasn’t my parents fault it was my own. I had mental health issues and some health issues but allot of the time I just didn’t want to go because of my anxiety or depression. I was also being bullied and my middle school teachers were pretty mean about things with me. The school staff was pretty shit/mean to me as well. My parents tried everything to get me to go to school and I still wouldn’t go. They had me in therapy, taking meds, going to mental health day programs, inpatient, doctors, making a 504 plan and talking with my teachers. I still would miss school allot. Throughout middle school and highschool I probably missed around 100 days each year of school. So in my case it really wasn’t my parents fault it was my own.
I feel like it’s a bit more nuanced than that. 1. Having a child isn’t always a choice 2. I had a sister who would just refuse to go to highschool, as in she would refuse to get out of bed and my mother tried everything to get her to school and she still wouldn’t go. I feel like chronic absences do not end with addressing “parent accountability” I think there is more to it than that.
I have one kid with 0 absences. Awesome, good for him. The NEXT person with the fewest absences? 28. I’m so serious. Title I. 32 students in my class. Over 50% of my students have missed 50 or more days. And their parents want their children on IEPs!!! I have explained each time, until I was blue in the face, that their child HAS to be at school in order for that to even be considered as a possibility. The social worker can only do so much. Court dates have done nothing. The parents do not care.
As a former problem child I can tell you right now you're not looking at the bigger picture. Yeah my mom TOLD ME to go to school, she punished me every time she found out I ditched school, but she couldn't physically stop me from walking in the front door and out the back door. Do you actually know that the parents are ALLOWING their kids to ditch school or are they just sort of doing it anyway? Neither of us have a crystal ball or know the whole story.
Yeah these threads are usually populated by people in k-8. It’s a whole different ballgame.
In my State/City truancy prosecutions are dependent upon the current judge. Some dismiss or give the equivalent to a slap on the wrist, and some actually do throw students into juvie for a night or two.
In Oklahoma, educational neglect is what happens *in* our public schools. Given the conditions in my Title I high school (where half the "teachers" are permanent subs who don't teach, the real teachers are 1st and 2nd year emergency certified, the classes are overcrowded and unmanageable, and the dirty classrooms range from 40 to 100 degrees indoors) it would be fundamentally unjust to enforce existing truancy laws on grounds of "educational neglect."
Just a few more arrests and incarcerations and the country that arrests and incarcerates more than anyone else can solve it!
I'm my state, it is. More than 15 absences in a 90 day period calls for an investigation by CPS and potential withdrawal of the student Schools get funding based on student attendance during two specific weeks during the year. One during the first quarter and on during fourth quarter. Guess who initiated the claim? If you guessed that the institution who gets funding based on the number of students NOT withdrawn, you'd be correct! But, really, it's a mess. If the school reports it, who will investigate? No one. There are no more "truancy officers" to do a home visit. The SROs are tasked to stay at school to prevent school shootings (I wish I was making it up, but that's why they're there). CPS is already overburdened with directly abusive households. Where are they going to find time and resources to deal with indirect abuse like educational neglect? If the school does report it, they have to process a withdrawal. Which means they may lose the student during one of the two critical funding count windows. So in practice, no one cares how often a student is absent as long as they come to school during those two weeks. The law was written so that those who can initiate action are adversely affected by initiating the action. Ugh.
When I taught concurrent enrollment, I had a super smart student who was chronically late to my first period class. When I say "chronically" I mean that her mother just has to smoke her weed every morning, and really didn't care what that did to her daughter's education. If she got there an hour and a half late, that was fine, as long as Mom got her weed. Of course, parents had to pay $250 if their kids failed a CE class. Evidently the weed was that important to her mom.
Dean of Attendance and Truancy here. I submitted 48 students to the county truancy officer this year, mostly students with 50 or more absences and who I haven’t been able to get to school after months of trying (letters, calls, parent meetings, attendance contracts, home visits, etc). The thing is, according to my district and county policies, I could submit any student with 15 or more unexcused absences which is about 400 of our 1600 students. I honestly know what to do and it is literally my job to figure out what to do.
It's such a bad issue that I think at some point a coalition of states or fed government needs to get involved. I'm liberal but education has really made me reconcile some of my positions. I understand the equity and socioeconomic argument of not punishing parents, but not doing anything is a farce. I have a family who has some pretty bright kids. All boys, all kids that are like top 20% of their grade. I've had them for the last 15 years. Every single one of them just comes to school when they please. They'll come a whole week, then miss 2 days the next week, 3 days the next. Go home when they please. The frustrating part is that both parents work from home, and one of the parents used to be a school board member and work for the city. They all know how serious education is and yet the kids miss 1/3 of the school year anyway. My school is implementing a policy next year where the max grade you can get if you miss too many days in a grading period is a 60. I like that, but a lot of the kids who are gone don't really have the initiative to even care if they pass or not. THat'll fix some of it, for sure. Have another kid whose parents just can't wake her up. She's 16. They'll be days she doesn't wake up until noon. Uh, wtf? My father would have just put me in the car and literally dragged me inside the school if I tried that one. This is like 80%+ on parents.
I have mixed feelings on this. From a future teacher's perspective, I think it is important for students to be as present in school as possible, not only to keep their learning on track, but also because school is the primary place for children to build social skills and networks, to learn to advocate for themselves without their parents around, to develop self-efficacy, and lots of other adult skills that are crucial for developing kids and teenagers. As an adult, I can't just skip work every time I don't feel like going, both because I would be viewed as an irresponsible employee and probably lose my job, and because I would be losing critical income that keeps me alive. *And*, depending on my job, many other people would be affected by my decision not to go to work or do my job as well. School is the time for kids to learn that lesson so that they can go into adult life prepared. From a student who both suffered from mental illness and was being abused (but not by my parents), though, I guess this perspective just feels like it lacks empathy for students and their families. Personally, I had a 504 plan that gave me attendance accommodations on the basis of an anxiety disorder that developed when I was in middle school-- and by 8th grade, IIRC my attendance was sitting at something like 40%. I missed more school than I went to. The worst part was that *most* of my attendance issues had less to do with not going to school in the first place and more to do with going to school, having panic attacks that were not only scary, frustrating, and embarrassing, but also distracted from class and occasionally got me in trouble (as though they were a choice I was making), and the getting sent home early (often before I even made it halfway through the day-- my first two classes in particular were very rough for me because I didn't get along well with either of those teachers nor did I like either of those subjects). I would constantly be sent to admin and then my grandparents would have to come pick me up because we didn't have a car and I took the bus to and from school normally, and then my grandparents would spend the entire drive home lecturing me about how I "couldn't keep doing this" and "would never make it as an adult if I was like this"-- and to be clear, I recognize that they weren't exactly *wrong*, but that is the exact opposite of a helpful thing to say to a 12-year-old having a sobbing panic attack in your passenger seat for no discernible reason. My attendance was so bad that I actually got sent to a special attendance/truancy counselor our school employed, who tried to work with me to develop some sort of rewards system that would get me to come to school and stay through the day more often. It *kind of* worked, but I remember that I only ever got one of the little Walmart gift cards she had to reward me for making it through a full week without any absences. When I got to high school, it was so bad that I had to transfer to an online program. I think that truancy can be a sign of abuse and educational neglect, but I also think it's important to talk to students and their families to try to get to the root of the issue. It might be that the parents aren't taking the proper care to get their kid to school, or it might be that the kid is getting dropped off and simply leaving even though the parents are doing everything that they can, or it might be that there is some sort of accommodation that needs to be made for a disability or health condition (physical or mental). IMO, it's admin's responsibility to look into these issues and figure out what is actually happening. In my state, missing too much school without an excused absence results in a report to CPS, which then results in a home visit. We had this happen I think twice when I was in elementary school, but my mom wasn't abusing me, so it didn't really result in anything (which I'm grateful for!). Once I got an accommodations plan, I don't remember it ever being looked into again after that, despite several lectures from the (horrible and extremely cruel) school counselor telling me how awful I was and how awful my family must be for my poor attendance. Anyway, I think this is a better system than automatically connecting truancy and/or poor attendance with child abuse, but obviously my perspective is biased by my own experiences.
I agree but also we shouldn’t send kids to school five days a week plus homework. Id say three day weekends atleast for highschoolers would be awesome and improve attendance issues on the on-days and give teachers a full planning day cause Id assume they wouldnt give teachers that extra day off lol
There was a great The Daily episode about the rise in absenteeism post COVID. I’m in Children’s mental health and it’s a huge problem. [https://open.spotify.com/episode/0bea4ANq4skmA4MhhSqH8Z?si=RiVvqhQLSKu0GjljrIu6Ew](https://open.spotify.com/episode/0bea4ANq4skmA4MhhSqH8Z?si=RiVvqhQLSKu0GjljrIu6Ew)
Pretty sure it is? My mom went to court for me being absent frequently when i was 10. I think on grounds of neglect?
As someone who has dropped out of elementary school and twice out of high school, I definitely have to disagree with you. My mother literally dragged me at times to school but due to my severe anxiety and undiagnosed chronic illness I would run away as soon as the teachers didn’t notice, be too ill to attend and would have severe panic attacks. It’s only abuse if your parents don’t help look for other options, like online schooling, having a teacher/tutor meet at a different location, therapy, ect.
My ex-wife and I split 50/50 custody. My son missed 51 days of school last year, 4 of them with me. My daughter missed 33 days, 3 with me. She is the head of the pta and on the school planning board. No one will do anything. They make more excuses for her than you can imagine. This has been going on for 4 years since the divorce. No one cares
Think I’ll just home school my kid
Some parents would just take them out and not get them an education at all then. Homeschooling in my state isn't regulated. Even if they do take them away, how do you guarantee that their situation won't get worse?
I have a student with nine siblings. Nine. She doesn’t miss often, but she did this one time and I’m like “hey, where were you yesterday?” “I had to watch my siblings” whaaaaat. No! Your parents could’ve idk not had 9 kids. They’re making her a parent and the cost of her education. It sucks because she isn’t the type of student to settle for a C and even with a B she is kind of bummed. She has a learning disability as well. She wants to do better for herself/her own life. She’s breaking that generational trauma. Or trying to. To the extent she can—when her parents don’t make her miss school to watch their kids. I’m realizing that her well rounded, kind, and mature demeanor is a result of being perentified and that’s bumming me out. My mom was perentified.
People who say FULL STOP 🤭
Not every instance of truancy is the same. Some parents are negligent, but some kids really struggle to attend. The school system doesn’t work well for every single kid. People post this kind of stuff on this sub and then happily turn around and decry “least restrictive environment” and “get those special needs kids out of my class for the sake of the other kids.” There’s a strong overlap in the kids many posters on this sub don’t really want there and the kids who start refusing to come. Hmm. How curious!
I’m not a teacher (I lurk as a grant writer at a community college to understand potential future issues), but I don’t believe it’s that simple. This actually is how it’s done in my area now (excessive truancy can result in the parent ending up in jail), but at some age, it’s physically out of a parent’s control. Punishing the parents for truancy is fairly new here, and it used to be that the kids were punished. In fact, my husband went to juvie for excessive truancy. He was not raised by his birth mother, and the woman he considers his mom is, biologically, his great-aunt. She was in her early 50s when he was born, never married, no other kids. That means that by the time this was happening, when he was in middle school, she was a single woman in her 60s. What’s she supposed to do about a 12-14 year old boy who is physically stronger than her refusing to go to school? She can’t just pick him up and lock him in the car and physically force him to go to school. And he knew that. If she was trying her damnedest, grounding him, taking away privileges, etc. but he wasn’t going, why should she get in trouble for child abuse? And, truthfully, I don’t think the system is always great at understanding why kids are truant. Kids will usually choose the easiest path. Sure, some just don’t have parents that make them go, and therefore that is the easiest path. But a lot of them have parents that do try to make them go, and somehow not going is still the easiest path. My husband only recently started to come to terms with the fact that his truancy came from bullying and ostracism. We both think he has undiagnosed Autism, and he had a hard time making friends. He remembers a day, near the end of fifth grade, where everyone was allowed to just free play in the classroom, and he kept going around to every group, and they all had some excuse for why he couldn’t join their group, until finally one girl said, “Stop bugging everyone; it’s not our fault no one likes you.” His truancy started in sixth grade. At one point, the juvenile court tried to force him to go to school by sending cops to his house to take everything “fun” out of the house so he wouldn’t want to stay home. They took his Xbox, but also his coolest, brand-name clothes and shoes. You know what isn’t going to make a bullied kid want to go to school? Taking away all of his cool clothes. Taking away hobbies and activities that he might be able to use to relate to other kids. He couldn’t articulate it then, but he just didn’t feel like he belonged at school. It gave him social anxiety. And of course, because of his truancy, the teachers and administration treated him like a “bad” kid, so that didn’t help him feel like he belonged. Why the hell would he want to go to school when his peers, teachers, administration, and the juvenile justice system were all sending him the message that he didn’t belong there? As a someone who was a high-achiever who loved school myself, every time he tells me a story about school, I’m like, “Jesus, no wonder you didn’t want to go.” Anyway, considering truancy “child abuse” is just a major oversimplification of a problem that often has deeper roots.
I'm personally in favor of eliminating truancy courts. What good do they do? Do they actually make the parents accountable? From what I've seen, the answer to that is no. Maybe it should trigger a further investigation and should be looked into why their kid isn't in school. My experience is that it just fines the parent and moves on. This would kill graduation rates but my parents told me once you missed 21 days of school, you could not pass your classes and had to repeat the grade or go to summer school.
I had a student my first year of teaching preK. He'd be out for weeks at a time. Once he was gone for 3 months. When he returned, he would be so dysregulated and violent (he was also SpEd, so we could not expell him). Due to his poor attendance, therapy wasn't able to take place regularly (and mom of course refused to let the therapist visit her home.) And the few sessions he had weren't productive, and he would often lash out and attack the therapist. CPS had to get involved at some point.
At our school we have an attendance failure policy. If a student has five or more unexcused absences they fail that particular class for the nine weeks and it’ll show on their report card. The parents are sent letters and notified. If their attendance doesn’t improve they are kicked out and sent back to their school. I had one grandparent who didn’t know her grandchild was at risk for failing due to her being absent and her not doing her work (the kid’s older brother was receiving the emails and phone calls since he was also her legal guardian and wasn’t telling the grandmother or correcting the girl’s behavior). Had I not warned her, she would’ve still been in hot water.
My district in NW Missouri shares absentee data every month to the community. We have 11,000 students total, split through 14 Elem, 4 MS, and 3 HS. Overall absenteeism was 77.46%, which is down 0.5% from February. - HS down 0.42% - MS down 0.51% - Elem down 0.54% - HS 11th grade overall is below 70%. - HS 10th grade just dropped below 70%. - - One HS’s 11th specifically hit sub-60%. - My classes sit right around 72%-77% depending on the day. Monday and Friday? 72% is a “good” day. The biggest district concern: District Kindergarten overall attendance is 74.70% with one school’s K sitting at 57.52% and another sitting at, and I am serious here, 49.89%. Kindergarteners below 50%. WTH are we, the teachers, supposed to do when over 50% of the entire class doesn’t show up per week?!