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Writer's pictureJoanne Jacobs

Teacher: Students are learning they don't need to show up or do the work

No-consequences attendance policies have encouraged students to skip class, teacher Loren Green told the Albany, New York school board. They're learning there's no need to show up and do the work, said the high school English teacher, reports Kathleen Moore in the Times-Union

Albany High School teachers are “encouraged” to pass students even if they fail the class, said Green, who's taught in the district for 27 years. "Administrators passed 15 students who he failed last year, he said, including students who had not turned in any assignments and one student who had never attended his class, didn’t do any assignments and did not take the English Regents." He teaches 11th grade and Advanced Placement English to 150 students: Only 51 have turned in all six assignments set so far. Outgoing Superintendent Kaweeda Adams counseled against a strict attendance policy after the teacher spoke. “There’s a punitive nature we really have to resist,” she said. “While there may be consequences for our students, if we cross that line, the very students we are trying to bring back into the fold are the very students we will lose. To do it in a punitive way alienates our students and alienates our families.”


Brian Huskie, a colleague of Green's, sees both sides. "He works very hard to provide engaging learning experiences for students who are largely refusing to participate, or to even show up."


On the other hand, some students may not have the ability to pass college-prep requirements, Huskie writes. "We need to radically diversify pathways to graduation," so more students can succeed.


Of course, "there will be students who are never going to be successful in school, even if they had all the choice of programming in the world," he concludes. "And if we do set up safety nets for those students, there will always be otherwise capable students who manage to take advantage. It’s a difficult, maybe impossible, balance."


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7 Comments


Guest
Feb 02, 2023

https://educatedandfree.substack.com/p/your-kids-arent-learning-at-all


"By claiming to educate your child, public school is defrauding your family. The main metric school leadership employs to determine whether or not the school is successful is whether or not kids keep showing up. The Average Daily Attendance (ADA) number is everything to your typical public school principal because attendance [ I interpolate, not actual transmission of culture, knowledge, or academic skill ] determines school funding."

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Guest
Feb 01, 2023

"Kaweeda"


Doesn't that tell you all you need to know?

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Bruce Smith
Bruce Smith
Jan 31, 2023

High schools like those in Albany should be avoided: instead of wasting their time, such youth should have begun vocational career education, through which they should be spending most of their time in apprenticeships -- if they can find a company that will have them -- while the minority who are college-ready should be beginning collegial education early, on the way to the three-year bachelor's degrees established as in Europe.

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Guest
Jan 31, 2023

So a school district finally found a way to make high school voluntary. Of course, they keep passing the students who do not show up for financial and employment reasons. SD

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Steve Sherman
Steve Sherman
Jan 30, 2023

These people are out of their collective minds - they’ll learn soon enough that the work world’s much less tolerant of absenteeism and much more interested in meeting deadlines on time and of quality.

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Guest
Jan 30, 2023
Replying to

This is exactly what was said 10 years ago, when the focus on "social justice" was almost exclusively found in (radical) university student organisations...

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