More progress - Kentucky bill proposed to allow students to attend scholastic functions
Measure expands school absences
Last fall a furor was raised when principal James Sexton refused to allow Alex Harris two weeks excused absence. Alex was one of 25 American students who were invited to perform at a piano concert in Japan.
Alex and his family feared that if he went, he could wind up with a semester of poor grades under a school rule that lowers a student’s grade one level each time he or she accrues more than five unexcused absences. After more than 15, the best a student can do is a D.
He did go to Japan but transferred to a different school to avoid the loss of two grade levels.
Sen. Julie Denton, R-Middletown, has introduced a bill that would require principals to excuse students for up to 10 days for education-related absences such as foreign exchanges or music performances.
“I think it’s an arrogant attitude we take if we don’t let children learn outside the school,” Denton said yesterday in an interview. “We’ve got to give people some flexibility.”
What’s the big problem with allowing students to attend educational and scholastic events outside of the school system? Money. Schools lose money if a student doesn’t attend class so even when the extra-curricular events would be worlds better for the student the system encourages schools to disallow them.
But Scott Horan, a member of Eastern’s school council, supports his school’s policy of rarely excusing absences except for reasons such as illness, a death in the family or a school-sponsored activity.
He said Denton’s measure, Senate Bill 80, could create a “giant attendance loophole” that could reduce Eastern’s share of state attendance-based funding. “Every kid could make up an excuse like, `I’m going to the Grand Tetons to study geology,’” Horan said.
People like Horan have forgotten that school is there to educate children. Children are not there to support the school system. Fortunately there are people like Senator Denton who remember what education is supposed to be about.
The problem with your Zero Intelligence column is that it reflects zero intelligence in its failure to take reality into account. As written, Ms Denton’s “No Child Left in School Bill” allows a student to take one ten-day trip after another with little personal accountability.
Like most articles of this genre, the author is more interested in diatribe than the children he purports to support.
We want students in school so that they can succeed not so that we can “get” money. As a classroom teacher, I don’t deal with daily finances of a 96,000 student district. I deal with the daily successes (and failures) of my kids. Those who miss huge blocks of time don’t succeed. That student who went on his music trip to Japan (which had little or nothing to do with his daily academic program) has not succeeded…. at our school or any other for that matter.
Your insistance to see this as anything else is typical of folks on the outside who think they know better than teachers how to teach. History has shown Ms. Denton’s law to be a poor one and our insistance on good local school attendance to be a good one.
I disagree, based on my personal experience as a student and my professional experience as a teacher. When I was a student, I missed school for a number of reasons — I had severe allergies and asthma and I wore braces, requiring frequent visits to the orthodontist for readjustments. My school had one of those “miss so many days and your grade drops” policies. I EARNED an A in geometry, despite my absences. I recieved a B in the class because I had too many EXCUSED absences under the policy. (My other course teachers refused to follow the policy and I kept the As I earned in their classes.)
Now I am a teacher. Some of my best students miss class frequently. I had one student who travelled with his father on a hunting trip. We met before he went to work out his classwork and assignments. I developed a special lesson plan including several short stories involving hunting and he also kept a journal which he later used to develop into written pieces for the class. It was a little more record-keeping and preparation on my part, but the student did an excellent job. He completed all of the work while he was on the trip, wrote a related research paper, and ended up with an A in the class. It also offered me a little variety in grading. The student is now a senior taking honors classes and has a 4.0.
Our schools are ran by pimps and hustlers how did it come this far where we have schools tell us if we don’t let them pimp our children for the money they have huslt out of federal money petending to educate out children, now they are telling us when our children can go and when they cam come welcome to america school system. I have never seen it so bad like I have seen it here in the state of Kentucky. This state has a big problem with pushing their weight around on the very ones who pays they pay check. Parents need to beging written and push some of these pimps and hustlers out of office