Rubio *did* sincerely want some water during that SotU response of his. (Seriously, I can't wrap my head around how his political career survived that fiasco.)
I was thinking more of his cowardice around comprehensive immigration reform and the way Chris Christie exposed his shallowness during the 2016 primary. I'd forgotten about the water thing.
yeah who among us hasn't looked weird drinking water
but not having the courage of your convictions to say "yeah I had that position on immigration because I believed I was right, I still believe I was right, and I'm right" would have been much better for him than looking like such a spineless wimp
the market inefficiency in electoral politics is not sounding like everything you said was fed to you by a consultant (which is why Trump and Yang did better than what people would have expected)
Between that and not being to able to answer the universal healthcare question and getting absolutely bodied on stage by fucking Tulsi Gabbard of all people, it's incredible to me that she has any fans left at all. She's absolutely the worst candidate I've ever seen.
At the time she seemed to see it as a moment of triumph (she got attention, in a ridiculously large field), but it was probably the beginning of the end for her campaign. Amazing how quickly she went from top fundraiser to broke.
My problem with Kamala is that she was the mistress of the Speaker of the California Assembly when he was 30 years older than her. Every inch of her body has bent in service of her political ambition, and I distrust ambition on that scale.
That relationship is pretty low on my list of problems with Kamala, but I had expected to hear about it it all the time during the campaign and it was basically crickets from all sides.
Don't underestimate the charm of Willie Brown. His "rizz" was truly legendary. Playgirl voted him in top 10 sexiest men. Whether she benefited or not from the relationship, the attraction would have been mutual.
I don't think there's evidence she's specifically attracted to older men. Her husband is only 1 week older than her. She had a specific attraction to one particularly charming older man with whom she shared similar interests.
Standard. You think all these very smart people in politics are doing it for the public good or a little bit of money? Or do you just object that she wasn't able to become prominent through above board work to get her foot in the door?
Allan has nailed it! My thoughts precisely. I hate to come across as mean-spirited, but VP Harris does NOT instill confidence in anyone...as far as I can tell. Simply, a struggling, ineffective politician. 🙄
Bail is pretty easily weaponized by the state. It's easy to set bail beyond the means of a defendant irrespective of his propensity to show up. This leaves him with the unfair choice of languish in jail at great cost until the system gets around to him, or take whatever deal the state offers because the penalty on offer is less than the penalty he will have already paid even if he were to win at trial.
It's annoying but neither that hard nor at all unfair for the state to have to work a little harder to get someone to court if they don't show up on time. It's incredibly wrong to coerce a confession. I'll always pick burden on the state over burden on the citizen.
Sounds like a violation of the first amendment to me. Would your law make it illegal to provide funds to bail a friend or relative out of jail? If not maybe you could call it the "People With Rich Friends Can Get Out of Jail but Poor People With Rich Liberal Friends Have to Stay in Jail Act of 2023"
Bail funds are a lot like bounty hunters in the sense that they outsource the role of ensuring that the defendant shows up to court. I assume when the bail fund posts bail, they send the defendant a letter or something that says "we're helping you out by posting bail, please return the favor by showing up to court", and they're incentivized to make sure that they actually do.
On truancy here's a banal observation based on personal reflection: The covid school closings made schools seem much less serious about attendance even after they reopened.
My kid is about to start public school this month, and as I'm reading the rules about excused absences I keep thinking "how seriously do I need to take this? If I pull her out to visit relatives for a few weeks are they really going to do something?" I don't know that I would have had that thought if they hadn't been keeping kids out of classrooms for so long just recently. Maybe that same idea in other parents' heads is part of why truancy has risen.
Then do it during the two months off in summer or two weeks off around new years. Pulling you kid out of school for a month during the school year is a terrible idea.
Also surprisingly, there are some cultures whose most important dates don't align with the American-Christian holiday schedule.
It's not inconceivable that a Thai-American family might want to spend at least one, single Songkran with the grandparents before they die.
An Indian-American family might want to spend at least a single Holi with the grandparents before they die.
And so on. Chinese New Year, Tết, Passover, Eid, ...
Not to mention all the other things that crop up like weddings, funerals, death anniversaries, and so on that have significant cultural importance outside of America.
I'm not arguing it should be an annual occurrence. But your initial post suggested there was literally no reason to ever do it, which is what I'm pushing back against. You didn't write "egregious unless there's a good reason".
If these events are so important, they should be accommodated without taking several weeks off school. Or you should just homeschool.
These issues are not unique to SE Asians, and large multicultural school districts simply cannot be expected to accommodate all the different sets of demands different cultural groups might have on their students’ time. A week off here or there probably is fine. Stacking an extra week on a spring break or winter vacation is fine. Pulling a kid out of classes for a month and then expecting the teacher to deal with the consequences their return (catching them up, figuring out what to do about group projects, etc.) a month later is unreasonable except under extreme circumstances out of the student’s family’s control.
This reads as someone who doesn't understand that while school is important, its not the only important or even the most important thing. School is there to serve kids and the community, not for the kids or the community to serve school.
Our local public university is becoming increasingly diverse. Traditionally, they gave many Christian and Jewish holidays off. About a decade ago, they added Muslim holidays. A couple of years ago they threw in the towel and removed all religious holidays off the calendar and instead provided a list of dates that students or staff had to be allowed an excused absence for if they request it at the beginning of the semester.
"If these events are so important, they should be accommodated without taking several weeks off school. Or you should just homeschool."
Or you could just homeschool for the two weeks around the holiday. And that plan sounds pretty similar to taking the kid out of school for two weeks, because they'll still need to keep up on the work they're missing while on vacation (e.g., "here's the 14 worksheets we plan to give the kids while you're gone. Make sure yours does one each day.").
We’re talking about school policy, not the criminal code. If a student works out a prolonged absence with the teachers in advance, of course that can be accommodated now and again. But a school shouldn’t have a blanket policy that a kid can take weeks off without notice and then clear it with a parent note.
Just to play DA... a lot of the families that might make this particular kind of trip are from countries in South and Southeast Asia. Which isn't exactly known to have a "fun" climate during the summer. The vibes I've gotten from most of my Indian and Indian-American friends have been, "Why the fuck would I go back there in July? I came here because I LIKED not sweating my balls off all day long."
I get that, but schools usually have two weeks off in the winter. And when you’re prioritizing the comfortable climate during your trip over a month of school, it isn’t about the ability to see family but an indication that school isn’t important that we’re talking about.
And here in Texas, this really shows. It’s very common for a huge percentage of students not to show up for the first few weeks of school as they make their way back from visiting family in South and Central America or from jobs. It throws the schools that serve these students into disarray as they have to rebalance classes for at least the first month. One result is that parents who prioritize school pull their kids out in favor of private schools, charters, or move to public schools with demographics that don’t have these issues.
My family came from the Middle East, which can be just as hot. We either went in the summer anyway (there's stuff to do there in the summer even though it's hot) or went over winter break.
First, I’m sorry your family is experiencing this. The loss of a loved one is an extremely significant event.
Second, I don’t believe most children need to miss several weeks of school, even for such an event, as hard as it might be, though certainly there are exceptions. Under those circumstances, I believe most families would figure out a way for the children to visit over a week long absence, using the two weekends as bookends to travel, giving you a week to be with family. Or would borrow a day from a random holiday on the calendar. I understand that for some, that might not feel like enough. And I’m certain that for some, some mix of different travel dates might require borrowing a day or two on one side of the trip or the other, making a student miss 6-7 days in total. But I don’t think it would generally justify a month-long absence. And obviously we’d be talking mostly about the privileged few whose parents could also travel internationally for a month away from work.
Really, I was just trying to float the idea that truancies were up b/c school closures made absences seem like less of a sincere or important concern. I was only bringing up my personal situation b/c it was a sincere feeling for a moment as I was trying to understand the rules of the school my kid is entering. Fwiw, we have no definitive trip even planned at this point and I was just a little surprised to find that 5 is the limit. I'm sure we'll figure it out talking with other parents / teachers.
I will say 5 excused seems low. I’d be very surprised if there are real consequences for going over that until you get to something around or over 10. But I’d try to make a trip work on only using 5-7, which with weekends gives to 9-11 days. Surely not as much time as you’d like under the circumstances, but enough time to at least settle in and spend time with people.
I remember when I was in still there was a procedure for if a student was going to say for an extended period (week or couple weeks), say to visit relatives abroad or something else. We got each teacher to sign and they would list the assignments to complete while gone. Don’t know if they still do this or if it is universal
That's good to know. It's probably not that big of a deal in my personal situation since my kid's only going to be in K. I was really just bringing it up to reflect on how the covid closings made me more cynical about excused / unexcused absences, but I guess I did it in a way that launched into a dozen other directions, lol.
Lots of schools haven’t helped by, frankly, enabling truancy. My school system used to have a rule that 9 (more than 9?) unexcused - as in no doctor’s note - absences was an automatic failure for the year and meant repeating the grade. Now schools will do almost anything to pass a student.
That's likely because whatever damage missing two weeks out of 30-some may do, repeating a whole year has even worse long term consequences, substantially increasing the chances of the student dropping out before graduating.
True. In our case, the district says 5 is the max excused absences, though, and as I wrote a couple of other places, we may travel to Asia to visit a relative that is unlikely to live until summer. A week is doable, but seems a little strict in light of the district keeping itself shutdown longer than any other in our area. But I see a lot of good arguments each way here
I’d ask. And the question probably is more “what are the consequences if we go over,” not “what do you allow.” You might find that the first few unexcused absences are free, such that no one will say you can use them, but that effectively you can use them.
And obviously trying to borrow a random day off or two, winter break, whatever you can is going to be the best solution if you can swing it.
I changed schools around 6th grade. IIRC, my family had already booked a trip that winter break, but the school winter breaks didn't align, so now the trip collided with a week of school. The school officially didn't allow a week of absences, but they were perfectly happy to let it go as long as (1) it wouldn't be repeated (as is your case) and (2) my parents agreed to take textbooks along and make me do some work each day, so that I could turn in all the missed homework problems when I returned.
Sounds reasonable. I feel pretty confident we'll work this out some reasonable, if the trip even happens (mom might just go solo, it's her side of the family). We haven't even gotten past the brainstorming / what are the options phase.
But yeah, I like the way you're thinking about this and I imagine if the school is halfway reasonable they'll be somewhat accommodating. And it's only K, so probably a nuthingburger.
I now feel bad about bringing up the topic. I really just wanted to make the point that my visceral reaction to "5 excused absences allowed" was "Really? You closed down for a whole year !?" lol. Apparently I did it in a way that triggered a lot of opinions. But thanks for the advice in all seriousness.
All I want to say is that this is a fascinating subthread, and while I have some takes formulating, they're far from set in stone, and it's been good to listen to different perspectives on this to see if they better shape what I might think.
Yeah lots of things to think about. All I wanted to do was an offer an explanation for the rise of truancy based on a thought that crossed my mind earlier this week as we're trying to decide when / if to visit my wife's dying grandma in Asia.
There have been times when I’ve pulled my kids out for important family events, but usually just a week. It wasn’t a big deal as I coordinated with the school, got assignments they could work on during the absence, etc.
It depends on the district. If you are in a "failing" school district or one on the edge of failing, it is usually taken very seriously because attendance is watched closely. Also, money from the feds and state is affected by attendance numbers. In my own district, parents have often been griping about the "scare tactics" used by administrators once their kids have missed a certain number of days. These kids with involved parents are usually missing days for legitimate reasons, like extended illness, and I don't think those parents understand how widespread chronic absence has become since the pandemic. The 17% number cited in this article will be helpful to me when I try to get parents to chill a little before going after the school district full force.
If you are in a highly-ranked district, taking a few days off for vacation probably isn't a big deal, even if it is technically an illegal absence. A few weeks is a very different story. If it is PreK or K, they probably won't do anything besides a reprimand because students are not required by law to attend those, but first grade and beyond can have consequences, including calling CPS.
The absences on top of the disruption caused by the pandemic are going to have repercussions for a long time. I was working with a couple of librarians who work at an elite college. They are trying to rework their library instruction because new students are coming in with so little knowledge since the pandemic. They have trouble discerning an article from a book/monograph when doing searches, and they don't know how to get a call number from the catalog and find the corresponding item on the shelf. We are figuring that librarians at colleges with higher acceptance rates are having even bigger issues, and we are trying to figure out how to address them.
Is there nothing in there about parents notifying the school that kids would be absent for particular length of time, and maybe getting some extra materials to take with you?
After all, kids with medical conditions may have to be out of school for weeks, does that mean they are permanently deprived of education?
The real problem with truancy is generally that kids aren’t in school and the parents don’t know (or in some instances, care) where they are.
Students with medical conditions with long absences get a remote educator assigned to them who makes sure they get what they need and often sets up tutoring at home.
I don't know, my kids entering K and I'm just starting to learn about.
Really though, I was just trying to comment on a reason truancy might have risen. Their excused absence policy seemed a little strict in relation to how long they shutdown in-person learning. that's all :)
Let me add another point to the conversation: we’re still quite strict about attendance in college. Automatic F on the x number of unexcused absences (eg 4 a semester) is very common practice. The definition of “excused absence” is quite strict too and would appear on the syllabus.
P.S.
And it’s also common to enforce automatic and significant reduction in letter grade for eg unexcused absences 2-3 (ie if you have two unexcused absences and merit an A for the class you get a B 3 unexcused it’s a C).
By contrast to grade inflation generally these rules are actually enforced and very acceptable. Covid didn’t affect this because a doctor-approved absence falls under “excused” so in practice people could be absent more but there is a measure of control over it
When I was an undergrad, early eighties, I don't remember very many attendance polices like that. I did have one professor who was annoyed that I was getting "A"s while not showing up often (I needed money, and if work would give me extra shifts I'd take them). It's not something I did regularly, but the course was in my major and I was just really good at the material.
MBA program worked about the same. Law school, some classes had some deductions for low attendance, but nothing that punitive, and the exams represented so high a percentage of a grade that the attendance/participation component was really marginal.
If my paper and exam grades are good, doesn't that demonstrate I know the material?
I understand the attendance requirements as being an incentive to come to class, and that class time is helpful, usually critical even for understanding. So it's almost certainly better for a student to show up than to not show up. But you either know calculus or you don't, why should someone who has mastered it get a C because they didn't come to class?
After a year of teaching in NY, my husband made an attendance rule, but his aim was really trying to address the students that would come and go in the middle of class, disrupting everyone else. He had previously taught in Wisconsin, where he said the students were just as much of slackers, but they were a lot more polite about it.
This is interesting to hear. At my law school (class 2010) if you missed 5 days for any reason it was an auto fail. My crim professor actually told a guy to leave the exam who had missed too many days. He was pretty public about it too, the whole class witnessed it.
Class of 2000. First year was pretty strict, but I don't think you could lose more than a letter grade. I'm hard pressed to remember it as being as strict 2L and 3L.
It certainly wasn't a good strategy, and the people who followed it were not at or near the top of the class. They were also the people who followed it for BAR/BRI review and were over represented in the people who didn't pass the bar on the first try.
This happened 1st semester, 1L so 'weed out' was absolutely in full force. No idea if more leniency would have been given later in the program but after seeing the rule enforced once I was never tempted to find out.
I should specify that this goes for those classes that have mandaotry attendance. Many classes have de jure no obliigatory attendance policies. Those tend to be big lecture type classes. I'm talking about attendance-mandatory classes. In my experience (working in a Humanities dept. )those are discussoin based classes where particiaption is a part of the grade, or language classes. Attendance policies work the same for both, and make sense due to the nature of the class.
It's the "make sense" that I'm not quite grasping, and I don't mean that as criticism. But if by whatever objective measures you have: exams, papers, even number of times you constructively contribute to a class, a person demonstrates knowledge of the material, why should your grade not reflect that? I think really the heart of my question is what I started with: what should a grade reflect?
Ok. I’d note this is a digression from my original point (which was descriptive not prescriptive), but it’s a fair and worthwhile question so I’m happy to engage as best I can!
I have experience in discussion classes and language classes. They are different imo so I’ll address them in order.
For discussion classes the rationale is easier to articulate. The point is to have discussion. Preferably with debate and different view points. You need people there for that so that’s an exogenous reason. But more directly in order to grade people fairly you need to compare apples to apples so to speak. When I grade people on participation it can’t be based on something anecdotal such “oh she made a really smart comment this one time so that’s an A for her”. Rather I try to minimize arbitrariness by grading each student for their participation *in each class* then I average it accoridng to some formula. To do this fairly you need all studnets to have participated in a similar number of classes. Finally the point of the class is in part for the student to benefit from the discussion, and this can’t happen if they’re not there.
Language classes are a difffent beast. For living languages a crucial component is immersion via class discussion and listening to the instructor so that alone suffices for attendance policy. For dead languages (which are the ones I teach) we don’t typically do that (unfortunately). However you’re often graded on daily or weekly quizzes, so you need to attend to sit those. The need for the quizzes is practical : 90% or more of student will fail without them and I need them to monitor their progress.
In the more advanced language classes there will be fewer quizzes but more discussion (as we will primarily be reading and discussing a text in the original language) so the rationale goes back to the points i made about those classes.
My wife, a physician, did Classical Greek as her undergrad, I'll have to check and see what her experience was.
She started teaching herself Latin a couple years ago with some success (she has some weird ideas about "things that are fun"). She got distracted, and was also starting to look for online classes to continue with. Maybe I'll remind her and see if she picks it up again.
When my husband was a professor, he did give an excused absence to a student who had tickets to a Yankees World Series game (we are in NY) and one whose ferret died and came in with a note from the vet. He was generally pretty lenient if you told him ahead of time, but come in at the end of the semester with your excuses of why you missed previously, and he had no mercy. Also, having email addresses like "barhopper" didn't help your case.
The problem with Kamala is I don't know if she believes what she wrote in 2010 or what she said in 2020 (and I'm not sure she knows either).
Sincerity is underrated in politics.
Marco Rubio nods.
Let's dispel this fiction that Marco Rubio doesn't know what he's doing.
Ron DeSantis wriggles his head around with an exasperated expression of confusion.
Rubio *did* sincerely want some water during that SotU response of his. (Seriously, I can't wrap my head around how his political career survived that fiasco.)
I was thinking more of his cowardice around comprehensive immigration reform and the way Chris Christie exposed his shallowness during the 2016 primary. I'd forgotten about the water thing.
yeah who among us hasn't looked weird drinking water
but not having the courage of your convictions to say "yeah I had that position on immigration because I believed I was right, I still believe I was right, and I'm right" would have been much better for him than looking like such a spineless wimp
I think you are not correctly remembering the water incident if you believe it's about "look[ing] weird": https://youtu.be/19ZxJVnM5Gs?t=19
the market inefficiency in electoral politics is not sounding like everything you said was fed to you by a consultant (which is why Trump and Yang did better than what people would have expected)
Does she believe that Joe Biden is an unreformed segregationist? Or not? Hard to tell.
Jow Biden sounds like a bounty hunter Star Wars character.
Oups. Fixed that.
Between that and not being to able to answer the universal healthcare question and getting absolutely bodied on stage by fucking Tulsi Gabbard of all people, it's incredible to me that she has any fans left at all. She's absolutely the worst candidate I've ever seen.
>She's absolutely the worst candidate I've ever seen<
Has she lost a single race other than the Democratic primary in 2020? Not really a bad record.
This is Rick Perry erasure.
His debate performance was genuinely one of the biggest unforced errors in the last 50 years of American politics.
Arguably, it was forced by his existential status of being Rick Perry.
At the time she seemed to see it as a moment of triumph (she got attention, in a ridiculously large field), but it was probably the beginning of the end for her campaign. Amazing how quickly she went from top fundraiser to broke.
Bring back smoke-filled rooms! Smoke optional.
Would they be vape-filled rooms now?
>> and I'm not sure she knows either
Yes, precisely the problem with her !
Many people don’t believe lots of things they believed ten years ago.
My problem with Kamala is that she was the mistress of the Speaker of the California Assembly when he was 30 years older than her. Every inch of her body has bent in service of her political ambition, and I distrust ambition on that scale.
That relationship is pretty low on my list of problems with Kamala, but I had expected to hear about it it all the time during the campaign and it was basically crickets from all sides.
trump would have been bold to weaponize that
How would you know there wasn't genuine romantic interest on her part?
the age difference is suggestive. furthermore, if her natural preference is powerful men 30 years older than her, doesn’t that make my point?
Don't underestimate the charm of Willie Brown. His "rizz" was truly legendary. Playgirl voted him in top 10 sexiest men. Whether she benefited or not from the relationship, the attraction would have been mutual.
I don't think there's evidence she's specifically attracted to older men. Her husband is only 1 week older than her. She had a specific attraction to one particularly charming older man with whom she shared similar interests.
Standard. You think all these very smart people in politics are doing it for the public good or a little bit of money? Or do you just object that she wasn't able to become prominent through above board work to get her foot in the door?
i think bernie was pretty pure and obama was pure enough but slutty enough to stay in afghanistan to hedge political risk
Allan has nailed it! My thoughts precisely. I hate to come across as mean-spirited, but VP Harris does NOT instill confidence in anyone...as far as I can tell. Simply, a struggling, ineffective politician. 🙄
Bail is pretty easily weaponized by the state. It's easy to set bail beyond the means of a defendant irrespective of his propensity to show up. This leaves him with the unfair choice of languish in jail at great cost until the system gets around to him, or take whatever deal the state offers because the penalty on offer is less than the penalty he will have already paid even if he were to win at trial.
It's annoying but neither that hard nor at all unfair for the state to have to work a little harder to get someone to court if they don't show up on time. It's incredibly wrong to coerce a confession. I'll always pick burden on the state over burden on the citizen.
Sounds like a violation of the first amendment to me. Would your law make it illegal to provide funds to bail a friend or relative out of jail? If not maybe you could call it the "People With Rich Friends Can Get Out of Jail but Poor People With Rich Liberal Friends Have to Stay in Jail Act of 2023"
Bail funds are a lot like bounty hunters in the sense that they outsource the role of ensuring that the defendant shows up to court. I assume when the bail fund posts bail, they send the defendant a letter or something that says "we're helping you out by posting bail, please return the favor by showing up to court", and they're incentivized to make sure that they actually do.
How is it different from a zero interest bail bond?
On truancy here's a banal observation based on personal reflection: The covid school closings made schools seem much less serious about attendance even after they reopened.
My kid is about to start public school this month, and as I'm reading the rules about excused absences I keep thinking "how seriously do I need to take this? If I pull her out to visit relatives for a few weeks are they really going to do something?" I don't know that I would have had that thought if they hadn't been keeping kids out of classrooms for so long just recently. Maybe that same idea in other parents' heads is part of why truancy has risen.
A few weeks absence to visit family seems wildly excessive.
Hard to believe but some people have family in other countries.
How long would you make a trip to Vietnam to visit family there? It's a 24-36 hour flight. Most people stay 2-4 weeks pretty easily.
I think most people take those kind of long trips in the summer for exactly that reason; I know my family did.
Then do it during the two months off in summer or two weeks off around new years. Pulling you kid out of school for a month during the school year is a terrible idea.
Also surprisingly, there are some cultures whose most important dates don't align with the American-Christian holiday schedule.
It's not inconceivable that a Thai-American family might want to spend at least one, single Songkran with the grandparents before they die.
An Indian-American family might want to spend at least a single Holi with the grandparents before they die.
And so on. Chinese New Year, Tết, Passover, Eid, ...
Not to mention all the other things that crop up like weddings, funerals, death anniversaries, and so on that have significant cultural importance outside of America.
I'm not arguing it should be an annual occurrence. But your initial post suggested there was literally no reason to ever do it, which is what I'm pushing back against. You didn't write "egregious unless there's a good reason".
If these events are so important, they should be accommodated without taking several weeks off school. Or you should just homeschool.
These issues are not unique to SE Asians, and large multicultural school districts simply cannot be expected to accommodate all the different sets of demands different cultural groups might have on their students’ time. A week off here or there probably is fine. Stacking an extra week on a spring break or winter vacation is fine. Pulling a kid out of classes for a month and then expecting the teacher to deal with the consequences their return (catching them up, figuring out what to do about group projects, etc.) a month later is unreasonable except under extreme circumstances out of the student’s family’s control.
This reads as someone who doesn't understand that while school is important, its not the only important or even the most important thing. School is there to serve kids and the community, not for the kids or the community to serve school.
Our local public university is becoming increasingly diverse. Traditionally, they gave many Christian and Jewish holidays off. About a decade ago, they added Muslim holidays. A couple of years ago they threw in the towel and removed all religious holidays off the calendar and instead provided a list of dates that students or staff had to be allowed an excused absence for if they request it at the beginning of the semester.
“If Christmas is so important, it should be accommodated without canceling classes for everyone.”
That is exactly what your first paragraph said.
"If these events are so important, they should be accommodated without taking several weeks off school. Or you should just homeschool."
Or you could just homeschool for the two weeks around the holiday. And that plan sounds pretty similar to taking the kid out of school for two weeks, because they'll still need to keep up on the work they're missing while on vacation (e.g., "here's the 14 worksheets we plan to give the kids while you're gone. Make sure yours does one each day.").
We’re talking about school policy, not the criminal code. If a student works out a prolonged absence with the teachers in advance, of course that can be accommodated now and again. But a school shouldn’t have a blanket policy that a kid can take weeks off without notice and then clear it with a parent note.
"But a school shouldn’t have a blanket policy that a kid can take weeks off without notice and then clear it with a parent note."
I...don't think this was implied by the original (or even any subsequent) post?
Just to play DA... a lot of the families that might make this particular kind of trip are from countries in South and Southeast Asia. Which isn't exactly known to have a "fun" climate during the summer. The vibes I've gotten from most of my Indian and Indian-American friends have been, "Why the fuck would I go back there in July? I came here because I LIKED not sweating my balls off all day long."
I get that, but schools usually have two weeks off in the winter. And when you’re prioritizing the comfortable climate during your trip over a month of school, it isn’t about the ability to see family but an indication that school isn’t important that we’re talking about.
And here in Texas, this really shows. It’s very common for a huge percentage of students not to show up for the first few weeks of school as they make their way back from visiting family in South and Central America or from jobs. It throws the schools that serve these students into disarray as they have to rebalance classes for at least the first month. One result is that parents who prioritize school pull their kids out in favor of private schools, charters, or move to public schools with demographics that don’t have these issues.
I spent K-12 in Texas, and I really feel the schools there should just chop a couple weeks off summer vacation and add it to the Winter break.
My family came from the Middle East, which can be just as hot. We either went in the summer anyway (there's stuff to do there in the summer even though it's hot) or went over winter break.
Well, the relative we are trying to visit might not be alive in summer, so that particularly idea wouldn't work
First, I’m sorry your family is experiencing this. The loss of a loved one is an extremely significant event.
Second, I don’t believe most children need to miss several weeks of school, even for such an event, as hard as it might be, though certainly there are exceptions. Under those circumstances, I believe most families would figure out a way for the children to visit over a week long absence, using the two weekends as bookends to travel, giving you a week to be with family. Or would borrow a day from a random holiday on the calendar. I understand that for some, that might not feel like enough. And I’m certain that for some, some mix of different travel dates might require borrowing a day or two on one side of the trip or the other, making a student miss 6-7 days in total. But I don’t think it would generally justify a month-long absence. And obviously we’d be talking mostly about the privileged few whose parents could also travel internationally for a month away from work.
Really, I was just trying to float the idea that truancies were up b/c school closures made absences seem like less of a sincere or important concern. I was only bringing up my personal situation b/c it was a sincere feeling for a moment as I was trying to understand the rules of the school my kid is entering. Fwiw, we have no definitive trip even planned at this point and I was just a little surprised to find that 5 is the limit. I'm sure we'll figure it out talking with other parents / teachers.
This is very common. About 10% of my class at my previous school would be in Jalisco for most of December/January
Asia is pretty far. Max of 5 excused absences in the school year. Lots of things to think about here, but not wildly excessive
I will say 5 excused seems low. I’d be very surprised if there are real consequences for going over that until you get to something around or over 10. But I’d try to make a trip work on only using 5-7, which with weekends gives to 9-11 days. Surely not as much time as you’d like under the circumstances, but enough time to at least settle in and spend time with people.
I remember when I was in still there was a procedure for if a student was going to say for an extended period (week or couple weeks), say to visit relatives abroad or something else. We got each teacher to sign and they would list the assignments to complete while gone. Don’t know if they still do this or if it is universal
That's good to know. It's probably not that big of a deal in my personal situation since my kid's only going to be in K. I was really just bringing it up to reflect on how the covid closings made me more cynical about excused / unexcused absences, but I guess I did it in a way that launched into a dozen other directions, lol.
Lots of schools haven’t helped by, frankly, enabling truancy. My school system used to have a rule that 9 (more than 9?) unexcused - as in no doctor’s note - absences was an automatic failure for the year and meant repeating the grade. Now schools will do almost anything to pass a student.
That's likely because whatever damage missing two weeks out of 30-some may do, repeating a whole year has even worse long term consequences, substantially increasing the chances of the student dropping out before graduating.
Going to visit relatives ought to be a perfectly good reason for absence from school. Truancy is unexcused absence.
True. In our case, the district says 5 is the max excused absences, though, and as I wrote a couple of other places, we may travel to Asia to visit a relative that is unlikely to live until summer. A week is doable, but seems a little strict in light of the district keeping itself shutdown longer than any other in our area. But I see a lot of good arguments each way here
I’d ask. And the question probably is more “what are the consequences if we go over,” not “what do you allow.” You might find that the first few unexcused absences are free, such that no one will say you can use them, but that effectively you can use them.
And obviously trying to borrow a random day off or two, winter break, whatever you can is going to be the best solution if you can swing it.
Call your school administrators and ask.
I changed schools around 6th grade. IIRC, my family had already booked a trip that winter break, but the school winter breaks didn't align, so now the trip collided with a week of school. The school officially didn't allow a week of absences, but they were perfectly happy to let it go as long as (1) it wouldn't be repeated (as is your case) and (2) my parents agreed to take textbooks along and make me do some work each day, so that I could turn in all the missed homework problems when I returned.
Edit: Andy and ML scooped me on this one.
Sounds reasonable. I feel pretty confident we'll work this out some reasonable, if the trip even happens (mom might just go solo, it's her side of the family). We haven't even gotten past the brainstorming / what are the options phase.
But yeah, I like the way you're thinking about this and I imagine if the school is halfway reasonable they'll be somewhat accommodating. And it's only K, so probably a nuthingburger.
I now feel bad about bringing up the topic. I really just wanted to make the point that my visceral reaction to "5 excused absences allowed" was "Really? You closed down for a whole year !?" lol. Apparently I did it in a way that triggered a lot of opinions. But thanks for the advice in all seriousness.
All I want to say is that this is a fascinating subthread, and while I have some takes formulating, they're far from set in stone, and it's been good to listen to different perspectives on this to see if they better shape what I might think.
Yeah lots of things to think about. All I wanted to do was an offer an explanation for the rise of truancy based on a thought that crossed my mind earlier this week as we're trying to decide when / if to visit my wife's dying grandma in Asia.
There have been times when I’ve pulled my kids out for important family events, but usually just a week. It wasn’t a big deal as I coordinated with the school, got assignments they could work on during the absence, etc.
It depends on the district. If you are in a "failing" school district or one on the edge of failing, it is usually taken very seriously because attendance is watched closely. Also, money from the feds and state is affected by attendance numbers. In my own district, parents have often been griping about the "scare tactics" used by administrators once their kids have missed a certain number of days. These kids with involved parents are usually missing days for legitimate reasons, like extended illness, and I don't think those parents understand how widespread chronic absence has become since the pandemic. The 17% number cited in this article will be helpful to me when I try to get parents to chill a little before going after the school district full force.
If you are in a highly-ranked district, taking a few days off for vacation probably isn't a big deal, even if it is technically an illegal absence. A few weeks is a very different story. If it is PreK or K, they probably won't do anything besides a reprimand because students are not required by law to attend those, but first grade and beyond can have consequences, including calling CPS.
The absences on top of the disruption caused by the pandemic are going to have repercussions for a long time. I was working with a couple of librarians who work at an elite college. They are trying to rework their library instruction because new students are coming in with so little knowledge since the pandemic. They have trouble discerning an article from a book/monograph when doing searches, and they don't know how to get a call number from the catalog and find the corresponding item on the shelf. We are figuring that librarians at colleges with higher acceptance rates are having even bigger issues, and we are trying to figure out how to address them.
Is there nothing in there about parents notifying the school that kids would be absent for particular length of time, and maybe getting some extra materials to take with you?
After all, kids with medical conditions may have to be out of school for weeks, does that mean they are permanently deprived of education?
The real problem with truancy is generally that kids aren’t in school and the parents don’t know (or in some instances, care) where they are.
Students with medical conditions with long absences get a remote educator assigned to them who makes sure they get what they need and often sets up tutoring at home.
I don't know, my kids entering K and I'm just starting to learn about.
Really though, I was just trying to comment on a reason truancy might have risen. Their excused absence policy seemed a little strict in relation to how long they shutdown in-person learning. that's all :)
Let me add another point to the conversation: we’re still quite strict about attendance in college. Automatic F on the x number of unexcused absences (eg 4 a semester) is very common practice. The definition of “excused absence” is quite strict too and would appear on the syllabus.
P.S.
And it’s also common to enforce automatic and significant reduction in letter grade for eg unexcused absences 2-3 (ie if you have two unexcused absences and merit an A for the class you get a B 3 unexcused it’s a C).
By contrast to grade inflation generally these rules are actually enforced and very acceptable. Covid didn’t affect this because a doctor-approved absence falls under “excused” so in practice people could be absent more but there is a measure of control over it
??? Neither university I attended took attendance in any non-lab section.
did you attend small classes other than labs?
What's "small"? I had easily twenty classes under 40, and at least a handful that were under 20.
were you graded on participation?
Precise grading rubrics on classes I took ten or fifteen years ago is a level of pedantry that eludes my grasp.
Certainly you'll have a bad day if there's an in-class quiz and you decided to skip.
Why is that? What should a grade reflect?
When I was an undergrad, early eighties, I don't remember very many attendance polices like that. I did have one professor who was annoyed that I was getting "A"s while not showing up often (I needed money, and if work would give me extra shifts I'd take them). It's not something I did regularly, but the course was in my major and I was just really good at the material.
MBA program worked about the same. Law school, some classes had some deductions for low attendance, but nothing that punitive, and the exams represented so high a percentage of a grade that the attendance/participation component was really marginal.
If my paper and exam grades are good, doesn't that demonstrate I know the material?
I understand the attendance requirements as being an incentive to come to class, and that class time is helpful, usually critical even for understanding. So it's almost certainly better for a student to show up than to not show up. But you either know calculus or you don't, why should someone who has mastered it get a C because they didn't come to class?
After a year of teaching in NY, my husband made an attendance rule, but his aim was really trying to address the students that would come and go in the middle of class, disrupting everyone else. He had previously taught in Wisconsin, where he said the students were just as much of slackers, but they were a lot more polite about it.
This is interesting to hear. At my law school (class 2010) if you missed 5 days for any reason it was an auto fail. My crim professor actually told a guy to leave the exam who had missed too many days. He was pretty public about it too, the whole class witnessed it.
Class of 2000. First year was pretty strict, but I don't think you could lose more than a letter grade. I'm hard pressed to remember it as being as strict 2L and 3L.
It certainly wasn't a good strategy, and the people who followed it were not at or near the top of the class. They were also the people who followed it for BAR/BRI review and were over represented in the people who didn't pass the bar on the first try.
This happened 1st semester, 1L so 'weed out' was absolutely in full force. No idea if more leniency would have been given later in the program but after seeing the rule enforced once I was never tempted to find out.
I should specify that this goes for those classes that have mandaotry attendance. Many classes have de jure no obliigatory attendance policies. Those tend to be big lecture type classes. I'm talking about attendance-mandatory classes. In my experience (working in a Humanities dept. )those are discussoin based classes where particiaption is a part of the grade, or language classes. Attendance policies work the same for both, and make sense due to the nature of the class.
It's the "make sense" that I'm not quite grasping, and I don't mean that as criticism. But if by whatever objective measures you have: exams, papers, even number of times you constructively contribute to a class, a person demonstrates knowledge of the material, why should your grade not reflect that? I think really the heart of my question is what I started with: what should a grade reflect?
Ok. I’d note this is a digression from my original point (which was descriptive not prescriptive), but it’s a fair and worthwhile question so I’m happy to engage as best I can!
I have experience in discussion classes and language classes. They are different imo so I’ll address them in order.
For discussion classes the rationale is easier to articulate. The point is to have discussion. Preferably with debate and different view points. You need people there for that so that’s an exogenous reason. But more directly in order to grade people fairly you need to compare apples to apples so to speak. When I grade people on participation it can’t be based on something anecdotal such “oh she made a really smart comment this one time so that’s an A for her”. Rather I try to minimize arbitrariness by grading each student for their participation *in each class* then I average it accoridng to some formula. To do this fairly you need all studnets to have participated in a similar number of classes. Finally the point of the class is in part for the student to benefit from the discussion, and this can’t happen if they’re not there.
Language classes are a difffent beast. For living languages a crucial component is immersion via class discussion and listening to the instructor so that alone suffices for attendance policy. For dead languages (which are the ones I teach) we don’t typically do that (unfortunately). However you’re often graded on daily or weekly quizzes, so you need to attend to sit those. The need for the quizzes is practical : 90% or more of student will fail without them and I need them to monitor their progress.
In the more advanced language classes there will be fewer quizzes but more discussion (as we will primarily be reading and discussing a text in the original language) so the rationale goes back to the points i made about those classes.
My wife, a physician, did Classical Greek as her undergrad, I'll have to check and see what her experience was.
She started teaching herself Latin a couple years ago with some success (she has some weird ideas about "things that are fun"). She got distracted, and was also starting to look for online classes to continue with. Maybe I'll remind her and see if she picks it up again.
When my husband was a professor, he did give an excused absence to a student who had tickets to a Yankees World Series game (we are in NY) and one whose ferret died and came in with a note from the vet. He was generally pretty lenient if you told him ahead of time, but come in at the end of the semester with your excuses of why you missed previously, and he had no mercy. Also, having email addresses like "barhopper" didn't help your case.