The Limited Efficacy of "School Reform:" Absenteeism

As a veteran classroom teacher, I often find myself thinking that “school reform” fails for the most basic of reasons. 

That is: school isn’t the place where many problems in school begin. Consider the question of student attendance.

(And remember: teachers lack telepathic powers; they cannot educate a child who is not present for class.)

Over the years, as a teacher dealing with struggling seventh or eighth grade students, I often found it was my first task to convince them to stop making excuses. All too often, that also meant dealing with parents who were purveyors of the same kinds of excuses. As a teacher, then, I came to believe in many cases my job was to force people, young and old, to give up on all their alibis. No student (or parent) was going to make progress if they kept evading responsibility.

On my end, I tried to make sure no student willing to work would ever fail my class. If a young man failed a test, I told him to study again, come in after school and take the test again. If he got an “A” the second time around, I gave him the “A” and wiped out the “F.” I always wanted kids to succeed. As for missing homework, if a girl needed a second, third, fourth or fifth chance, I gave it. If a child fell behind, I offered ten chances if ten were required. I gave out my home phone number if students or parents needed to call and ask for help. I called home, too, when kids fell behind—my record for one student, fourteen calls during a year. And what I found was this: a student might have a good excuse for one missed assignment—or two—or even five—but eventually the stack of excuses grew too tall and tipped over with a crash.

Then most teens would look in the mirror.

Unfortunately, parents were often the problem—and in many cases “school reform” had a very hollow ring.

I was a team leader for more than a decade, and I remember one occasion when our team of teachers proved incapable of knocking over a mother’s giant pile of excuse. Nicole, a seventh grade girl, was missing entirely too much school. Repeated absences were killing her grades.

I called mom—more than once—and finally convinced her in April to come in for a morning meeting to talk. 

Of course, as teachers, you have to guard against your own tendency to make excuse. So I began with this: Maybe the problem was our team. Maybe Nicole was unhappy with how we were treating her. Maybe attendance had never been an issue before. Maybe the problem was us.

In fact, it might be me! Perhaps I had offended Nicole and now she shut down. So I checked her records for clues. 

It turned out Nicole missed 45 days in fifth grade, when her family lived in a different district. 

Records for sixth grade records were incomplete; but in three quarters of the year, after moving to Loveland, she missed another 42 days. 

Okay.

It wasn’t just me or my team. 

In our meeting with mom, a few days later, it was readily apparent Nicole’s mother had an excuse for every situation. Nicole was unlucky, she claimed. That’s why the girl missed so much school. Nicole was a “carrier for strep.” Members of our team put on a polite façade. Behind that façade, however, I was wondering: What about the previous week, when Nicole missed an entire day for a dental appointment?

Michelle Miranda, a dynamic young teacher on our team, tried to pin mom down. It was like mud-wrestling with eels and mom wriggled away. Steve Ball, a veteran and a great educator, tried next. Nicole, he explained, was on target to miss forty or fifty days of class during the current year. Absenteeism was killing her academically, making it hard to keep up in math, where concepts built one upon another. Nicole’s mother squirmed out of danger again, making another excuse, this time in her own defense. Mom wasn’t failing in her duties. Nope. “Nicole doesn’t like all the snobby kids in Loveland,” she explained. “That’s why she stays home.”

In other words: mom was innocent. She wasn’t failing as a mom. It was all those other snobby kids!

I explained to mom that Nicole could always come in and complete makeup work for my class. Honestly, my door was always open.

I had already explained this in calls home several times before.

Mr. Ball and others on our team made the same kind of offers—but Nicole had to come to school to get help.

By now, time was running short and first bell classes were about to begin. Always obsessive about missing time for instruction, I motioned my team to get going to first period. Steve hung back a moment and the three of us, mom included, walked out in the hall, where I tried one last shot. I told mom we liked Nicole and said Nicole had plenty of talent. But mom had to get her to school. 

Mom replied, “I just didn’t realize she had missed so many days.”

I saw a shadow of resignation cross Mr. Ball’s face. He thanked her politely for coming, pivoted, and headed for class.

I had first period conference. So I talked to mom a few more minutes, gave her my home phone number once more, and assured her I’d be happy to stay in at lunch or stay after school anytime Nicole wanted help.

To be honest, however, the only excuse I could think of for a mother like this, who allowed her daughter to miss more than 120 days of instruction in just three years, was that perhaps no one had taught her how to count. 

That meeting was on a Monday.

I stayed after school three afternoons that week and let students who had fallen behind come in and catch up on work. I offered the same option every day during lunch and even offered to come in early every morning before school.

Nicole missed two more days of class that same week and never bothered to try to stay and catch up.

Yeah: not a question of school reform.

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I saved my best stories for my book.

I cover this topic at greater length in my book, Two Legs Suffice (Chapter 15: The Poison Ivy Dilemma) now available at Amazon.com.

For sample reviews of my book, check out this post.

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For a recent look at this problem, nationwide, read: More Than Six Million Students Nationwide Are “Chronically Absent.”

A chart I once prepared for our school board,
showing students with serious attendance issues.
Mary, an eighth grader, was pregnant. Karen had a drug addiction.