In schools across the country, the daily attendance rate is supposed to reflect how well a school can get students interested in learning. An attendance rate in the 90s is supposed to be good, but one factor is often overlooked. Chronic absence is the cause of the majority of students gone. Chronic absence is when the same students miss more than 10% of school. Missing that much school leads to getting behind in schoolwork and failing or dropping out. While a 95% daily attendance rate may get the school praise, the reality is that many students are still falling behind.
In the US, required education popped up in individual states and towns in the mid 1800's, but most of the US began making school attendance mandatory in the late 1800's and early 1900's to discourage child labor. The Freedmen's Bureau also took a huge step in educating the public, with its education of thousands of emancipated slaves and their children. Literacy rates have skyrocketed since then, but we are still far from the ideal attendance rate of 100%.
http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/12/07/456208805/how-a-schools-attendance-number-hides-big-problems
I feel like our education system is only going downhill. It's always kinda scary to look at the numbers of test scores across the country, and then compare them to scores around the globe. America is falling behind on education and we need to step up our game. And that doesn't mean with more standardized testing, it means with major education reform.
ReplyDeleteI think in order to improve attendance, there should be a major change in the curriculum because a lot of kids don't want to go to school if they're always unhealthily stressed out all the time.(Bella Di Fazio pd:8)
ReplyDeleteAttendance the way the country views it ("how well a school can get students interested in learning") is a lie. I may be absent form a class, but that doesn't mean that I am not interested in the subject.
ReplyDeleteBut I do know that the thought of having to do make-up work has brought me to school while sick more times than I am proud of.