School Attendance (No Child Left Behind)

[RamblingRose]

All of the newsletters we received from my daughter's elementary school included a message from the principal on the importance of school attendance. It is my understanding that a school is rated on the number of absences, which is further broken down by racial status. All of which plays into the label of a "failing school". My daughter attends a school which is about 40% Hispanic, and attendance is a big problem.

She just finished the school year (1st grade) with perfect attendance - no easy task. She received a computer generated school certificate stating she had P.A. I asked if she got to go up for morning announcements or if they read her name aloud, and she said no.

However, for the school's "Care-A-Thon", students that raised $40+ got a "Kids Night Out" with the teachers at the school for fun and games. To me, this says to the kids that begging for money is more important than attending school! It seems they would do something special for the kids with P.A. to set an example for the other kids for the following year.

On testing days, the high school, middle school, and elementary school kids are rewarded with prizes & parties for showing up to take the test. This has been a controversial topic in the county.

I'm interested in hearing what other schools are doing to deal with the NCLB act, school attendance, etc.

on edit: Next year I won't be so concerned with missing a few days for vacations

[JM]

1. This is a major rub with NCLB

Our school has a Student of the Month program for kids who get no reminders for behavior. They just added an attendance award as well. I think all the kids who have perfect attendance get a prize of some kind and a certificate. I am not sure though.

The problem stems from the way the NCLB program is structured. Even if a school meets the required academic standards (which are stastically BS anyway), they can still fail based on attendance.

It gets even worse. As I understand this, a student's NCLB score is only counted if they were enrolled prior to November 1 of the given school year. Their attendance is counted regardless of whether or not their test score is counted. This means that a student whose score doesn't count for or against can still make the school fail by missing enough days of school.

The whole law is bullshit and should be scrapped. Nevermind it was based on the Texas program which was busted for fraudulent results...

JM

[RamblingRose]

2. Should this post be in General Discussion? If so, how do I get it moved?

[JM]

3. Alert a Mod

and ask them to move it. I may actually belong more in Education than GD

JM

[LynneSin]

4. Basically it's a system setup for schools to fail

and to help finally get school vouchers passed.

By putting in the attendence clause as broken down by race, the folks who designed NCLB know that many schools will be considered failures. And this will allow school vouchers to infiltrate the sytem.

And lets face it, school vouchers will not help minorities and other low-income people get to better schools but instead take more money from those school systems to allow a few children go to the school of their choice. And now with less money in these 'failing' schools, the level of education will be even more degraded.

It's a damn crappy system!

[papau]

5. NCLB is closing gifted children programs across nation as funds are needed

for the new testing that was not totally funded by NCLB.

I swear Bush is trying to push gifted into home schooling - meaning those from poor families never get a good education as their families do not have non-working parent.

Or the kids go to private schools - with same effect of excluding smart but poor from the economic benefits of "education".