"Truancy is a nationwide epidemic and the old tools don't work."--Travis Knox, President of AIM Truancy Solutions

Desperate to improve student attendance, schools are now using GPS devices to track truant students. According to a recent report schools in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Kentucky, Kansas and California "have resorted to fitting students with hand-held GPS devices the size of a cellphone." Parents must voluntarily agree to have their child receive a phone call each morning reminding them to go to school on time. In addition, the student is required to enter a code to track their location five times each day.

Early reactions indicate that the program is having a positive effect. With a few exceptions parents agreed to allow their child to participate.

Miss school and you miss out. That was the message that we continually conveyed to our students. Turning around a low-performing school or improving the performance of under-resourced students often means improving student attendance and reducing truancy.

When we began our effort years ago, our average student missed over nineteen days of school each year. We knew that, unless we could improve attendance, we would have little chance of raising student performance.

There is no simple solution to improving attendance. It takes a lot of hard work. Improving attendance can only be done one student at a time and it means doing everything possible to encourage students to attend regularly.

Wake-up calls mean we care

Years ago our school began using a hand-me-down roto-dialer to make daily wake-up calls to our most frequently absent students. Like those in the aforementioned pilot programs, we found little parent resistance. In fact, we had parents of students with good attendance request that their child be put on the call list, because they left early for work and they wanted to make certain that their child arrived at school on time.

Shortly after the program began, a student walked up to me and said, "At first, I didn't like getting the calls, but I am a senior and this is the first time that I felt like the school actually wanted me to be here every day.

Surveys of school dropouts cite the most frequently given reason for dropping out was that no one at the school cared if they attended.

Persistence Pays Off

Wake-up calls were only one part of our efforts to improve student attendance. We learned that our students would regularly attend a safe, orderly, clean, and inviting school, particularly if the students felt that the teachers sincerely wanted them to succeed.

We also learned that the best way to change student behavior was to change our own behavior. Doing the same things the same way would not make the school more inviting. We had to do a lot of soul-searching. We had to change our expectations, and make some painful changes in our grading and homework policies.

Everyone in the school played a key part. Through the tireless efforts of the staff we were able to reduce the annual absence rate from nineteen days per student to less than eight days per student.

Schools Need Support

The challenges faced by schools in their attempt to encourage regular student attendance clearly points out the flaws in our accountability system. Schools, teachers, and principals are held personally accountable for student performance when they have no influence or control over attendance laws or their enforcement. In far too many instances, enforcement of attendance laws is non-existent. Students literally show up when they feel like it.

In the same way, schools in many states rely totally on the good will of their students to put forth their best effort on state assessments because their is absolutely no consequence for students who do poorly. Students can literally "Christmas-tree" a state assessment and nothing happens.

The careers of teachers and administrators as well as the reputation of the school and the school district depended on the good will of the students. If they don't feel like taking the test, there is no consequence.

From experience I have learned that unless everyone—students, teachers, administrators, schools, and school districts-- is held accountable for student performance, there is not true accountability. Unless everyone is working together toward a common goal, we have no accountability system. Instead, we have a system that scapegoats those who work in schools.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 07:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

Education has clearly become a white-hot topic.  Recently, NBC dedicated much of an entire week’s programming to the subject.  And one of the most popular items for discussion was the issue of tenure for teachers.  Heated words both pro and con were thrown back and forth. One of the participants, Tom Whitby, stated his adamant belief that if tenure were removed from our schools it would be potentially disastrous.  Although I disagree with many of the arguments he used to support tenure – a topic I will deal with at a later date – my more immediate sense of discomfort was with the overall tone of his piece.

A Chilling Moment

What I found troubling was Mr. Whitby’s displeasure with teachers who express their unhappiness with the current state of education.  He described one comment from the audience in the following manner:

“There was one striking comment however, from one young educator that sent chills down my spine, only to have them go up my spine by the applause that followed her statement. As an educator of 40 years, I was truly in awed (sic) and upset. Her statement was that she did not need Tenure. She only wanted to be evaluated on her teaching and she was confident she would have a Job the next year. She saw no need for Tenure (down the spine). TEACHERS then applauded (back up the spine).”

These remarks would indicate that no teacher should question the value of tenure nor should other educators demonstrate their support.  However, it was Mr. Whitby’s subsequent statements that I found most unsettling.

“The ugliness of this reform movement is in the name calling of teachers by teachers: Public school teachers against Charter school teachers; Young teachers against experienced teachers; Non-Tenured Teachers against Tenured teachers.”

Such statements are both misguided and unfair.  Teachers are not some monolithic group that agrees on every aspect of their profession and are somehow injured if they dare express any difference of opinion.  On the contrary, who better to discuss the proper approach to educational reform (including the role of tenure) than the people most directly impacted by such changes?  More importantly, the concept of teacher versus teacher is not nearly as destructive as Mr. Whitby believes.  The reality is that this confrontation, in a slightly altered form, plays out on a regular basis in schools all over the country.  Indeed, teachers have a highly vested interest in the professional abilities of their colleagues.  This concern is firmly grounded in the fact that, other than the students, no individuals in a school are as adversely affected by ineffectual teachers than the remainder of the staff.

An infection that spreads throughout a building

A poor teacher will disrupt not only their own classes, but all subsequent classes in courses that are taught sequentially.  The worst case scenario for students is to pass a course with poor understanding of the required material.  These students are then doomed to struggle with all successive classes in that sequence.  When this happens due to poor teaching, it is truly tragic. As these students move through the curriculum, they are destined to struggle just to keep up with the other students in the class. The progress of the class as a whole will suffer and competent teachers will face a difficult decision. Should they teach the topics again, resulting in a significant loss of valuable class time or allow some students to be deficient through no fault of their own?  Regardless of the choice, the progress of the class will suffer.

A poor teacher creates classroom management problems for everyone. One of the most common characteristics of an unproductive classroom is weak discipline. Unfortunately this problem can be contagious.  Adolescents do not automatically differentiate between one teacher’s standards and another.  It becomes a far more difficult task for teachers to enforce their own behavioral expectations when similar expectations are being ignored in other locations.  How many times has a teacher heard some form of “But Mr. X allows us to do that”?  Again, more critical class time is spent on problems that should not occur. 

A poor teacher results in students losing time in other classes.  Most administrators will tell you that suspensions are more frequently the result of misbehavior in a weak teacher’s room than in a strong one.  But a suspension results in students missing all classes not just the one where the infraction occurred.  In addition numerous conferences are often the product of such conduct which will also cause more time out of classes.

A poor teacher can affect other class activities. One year a young science teacher had a room adjacent to one of the weakest math teachers in the building.  He once told me that not a day went by without at least one administrator coming to that teacher’s classroom.  He added it was never surprising to find that teacher’s students in the hallways. Whether they were wandering because they had opted to skip the class or had been excused from the room without proper justification, they spent the majority of the time that they should have been learning math, disrupting other classes.

A poor teacher can wreak havoc with the grading system. Consistent grading throughout a building is critical.  Grades influence student class placements as well as the expectations of both the teachers and students.  Any disruption to this process is counterproductive.  The typical ineffectual teacher will assign erratic grades.  Sometimes in an attempt to gain cooperation undeserved high marks are given; conversely, poor grades are often the result of weak instruction or worse, punitive.  Regardless of the direction, other teachers will suffer. 

A needed dialogue

Teachers depend upon the good work of other teachers. They not only have the right but the responsibility to question educational policies, plans for reform and each other.  Teachers need to have a united front on one crucial issue—formulating ways to ensure student success.  Being appalled that teachers do not always reflect a united front on how to reach that goal is foolish and wrongheaded.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 08:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A safe, secure, and orderly school environment is essential to learning. When students are bullied, threatened, or harassed, achievement suffers. WestEd has released a national study entitled “What Characteristics of Bullying, Bullying Victims, and Schools Are Associated With Increased Reporting of Bullying to School Officials?”

The key findings of the report include:

• Frequency and severity impact reporting. “Students who were bullied were more likely to indicate that their victimization was reported to a school official if the bullying involved injury, physical threats, destruction of property, actual physical contact (pushing, shoving, and the like), greater frequency, multiple types, more than one location, and at least one occurrence on a school bus.”
• Those involved in fights and those who feared for their safety were more likely to report bullying. “Two types of bullying victims were more likely to indicate that their victimization was reported to school officials — those involved in a fight during the school year and those who reported being afraid of attack and avoiding certain school areas or activities.”
• Older students are less likely to report. “Higher grade levels are associated with less reporting: reporting ranged from 53 percent in grade 6 to 27 percent in grade 12.”
• No relationship between school characteristics and frequency of bullying. “No characteristic of bullying victims' schools — including general characteristics, school culture, and school security and safety — was associated with either increased or decreased reporting.”

Posted by Mel Riddile at 01:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mention accountability and most principals think about state assessments and “adequate yearly progress.” However, when I think of accountability, I think of a lot more than state tests, I think about real world assessments. Today, September 11, is the anniversary of 911, and I couldn’t help but think how our school was put to a severe, real world test that day. It was one of those events in life when the unexpected occurs for which we could not prepare and which tested us to our core.

Looking back over the years, it seems that our school faced an inordinate number of external events that ultimately tested our mindset, values, beliefs, and the strength of our relationships. If we had done our job and walked the talk, we would come through each with shining colors. If we hadn’t, our weaknesses would be exposed.

We had so many things happen that, one year, one side of our annual faculty t-shirt told the story of how “WE SURVIVED” twelve events which included Columbine, 911, the Beltway Sniper, two wars, one hurricane, and a “snowmageddon.” Although these events were all much different, they all tested our culture, our commitment, our focus, and most importantly, our relationships with our students and our relationships with our colleagues.

September 11, 2001 holds a special place in my memory. We can all remember where we were and what we were doing on that fateful day. I can remember it as though it were yesterday.

We were in our weekly staff meeting and our SRO rushed in and told us to turn on the television, which we did just in time to see the second plane fly into the Twin Towers live. This was particularly disconcerting to me because I had stayed in the Vista Hotel on a number of occasions, and that summer, our family had visited New York, bought theater tickets on the ground floor of the Towers, and rode to the top of the Towers.

The worst part of the day for me was the rumors and what we didn’t know. There were so many conflicting reports on the television that we decided to turn it off and have our librarian compile a report consisting only of what we did know. Our police department gave us a report that a nearby apartment building had been bombed and that cars were exploding on Route 7, which was only a block from our school. All these reports later turned out to be false. Our school was so close to the Pentagon that the smoke from the crash floated over the school until late in the day.

I am not going to go into all the details of the day, except to say that our students and our staff passed the test with flying colors. Our students trusted us and we respected them. They always felt safe and secure in our building and we all felt like we were part of the same team.

Personalization was always a priority for our staff and a long-standing strength of our school. We had a number of former Peace Corps volunteers teaching in our school, which helped us establish caring relationships with our diverse student body, which had students from eighty-eight countries speaking sixty-six different languages. In fact, we were so diverse that, in an article that was published that month, National Geographic Magazine had called our school “the most diverse high school in America.”

Many parents came to our school that day with the intent of taking their child home. However, when they saw how calm everything was at our school they decided to allow them to remain. I remember one of our School Board members, who was sobbing almost uncontrollably in the cafeteria, being told by her daughter “Go home, mom. Everything is okay here.”

The Ultimate Test

We had no way of knowing it that day, but the real test of our relationships and our school culture would come in the weeks and months that followed 911. Our diverse student body included a large Muslim population, which made up approximately one-sixth of the school. Reporters and journalists flocked to our school all wanting to know how the kids were getting along. Were there any incidents?

In early November, four of our Muslim students were interviewed on a morning NPR broadcast. It didn’t take long for the interviewer to ask the students if they had been harassed or if there were any incidents at school. Each of the students indicated that school had gone on normally, that they always felt safe at school, and that, to their knowledge, there had been no incidents.

The Bottom Line

Schools are about a lot more than bricks and mortar or tests and test scores. Schools are about people and their relationships. We were tested many times by outside events that we could never have anticipated. Fortunately, our entire staff made daily deposits into our “emotional bank account” so that, when the unexpected occurred, we had a large reserve of goodwill to draw from. In retrospect, these unforeseen events made us a better school and they brought us closer to each other.

By the way, I mentioned one side of our faculty t-shirt told how “WE SURVIVED.” On the other side of the shirt was the following: “WE THRIVED! J.E.B. Stuart High School, A Breakthrough School.”

Posted by Mel Riddile at 05:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday’s USA Today article contended that online harassment of teachers and school officials was protected speech and an opportunity for “payback time”—a golden opportunity to get back at teachers and school administrators. An informal poll of my friends and acquaintances confirmed my shock and dismay that any reasonable adult would believe that it was acceptable and even justifiable for students to engage in such despicable behavior. One said it best, “I’m sure glad that I don’t have that person’s child in my class.”

The author would probably use the “payback time,” free speech argument to defend the same student behavior directed, not at teachers and administrators, but instead to other students. You don’t like someone so you publish your attacks on the Internet for all the world to see.

Fortunately, reasonable minds may yet prevail. Today’s Washington Post properly acknowledges the grave impact that online misbehavior can have on lives of students. The Post points out that the “LACK OF MATURITY, lack of supervision, and technology that can transmit messages instantly to millions of people: This is the volatile cocktail that lies at the root of cyberbullying.”

While students may be “digital natives” who have been using technology as a normal part of their lives since birth, skill doesn’t necessarily translate into wisdom. Simply knowing how to use technology does not mean that students know how to us it wisely. When “extensive technological knowledge combines with the raging hormones, limited impulse control and failure to understand consequences that mark the teenage years, the results can be devastating.”

Cyberbullying “can be a minor annoyance or, drawing in strangers through hate speech or provocative images, it can escalate far beyond the schoolyard.” Furthermore, as the Post points out, “this bullying, following students out of school hallways into the privacy of their homes, can have a debilitating effect on daily life. To combat it, parents and educators must stay vigilant and establish clear expectations for conduct online.”

Instead of viewing cyber attacks as “payback time,” the Post points out that “Schools can help themselves combat the problem by clearly banning cyberbullying in their acceptable-use policies and honor codes, as they do traditional bullying.

Schools can’t fight cyberbullying alone. “Ultimately it is the role of parents to establish the terms of their children's activity online, setting clear limits and responding supportively and definitively if things go awry.

Instead of viewing cyber attacks as protected speech, the Post points out that schools and parents work together can create “clear expectations for student behavior and teaching teens and tweens about the consequences of their online actions can go a long way toward changing the culture in which such bullying thrives.”

Posted by Mel Riddile at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Technology is not only increasing academic rigor by driving up the complexity of reading material, but it is also making it more difficult for school leaders and parents to reign in some destructive behaviors like bullying. The Washington Examiner points out that bullying is on the rise as “Kids find new ways to pick on each other—off the radar of even the most watchful parents and school officials.” One school system reported 1,200 incidents of bullying in one year.

A Maryland bill to curb gang activity in schools may help monitor the bullying problem by increasing information sharing between police and the schools. One parent finally admitted that she is being forced to monitor her child’s Internet use.

Robin Goodman, a clinical psychologist, said, “It used to be, someone would throw a kid’s book on the ground or whisper rumors about them. Now, what you have is you have your phone, you have the Internet.  You don’t escape it. It’s not like there’s a safety zone.”

The Bottom Line: Anyone with an Internet connection has access to an electronic printing press that can do a lot of damage in a short period of time. The problem is that there is no redo button on the Internet. Whatever is posted remains on the Internet forever.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 02:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)