81–90 of 401 posts
> school administrators have tried almost everything, including pajama day, to boost student attendance Because "school but with one funny twist" is still school with the same broken system. It's like the workplace memes about ping-pong tables and free food, you can't fix the problem without fixing it.
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As I understand it, USA is one of the highest funded education systems in the world. Funding for education even outpaces USA's um.. robust defense spending. The trick is to look into total funding - beyond federal funding and into state funding. I strongly agree that education in the internet age needs to evolve. I would love to see an education system centered around critical and entrepreneurial thinking, financial…
But it's also one of the biggest countries in the world. It's simply too big and undeveloped for education to work as well as in, say, Switzerland. See also public transportation.
"because teachers must slow down and adjust their approach to keep everyone on track." Do this and then you'll have your top performers start being absent as well -- out of boredom. I'd suggest sending kids that are lagging behind, and those that have high absentee rates, into remedial classes. Education should get kids excited about learning. From my experience, nothing gets kids more excited than the feeling that t…
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Homework has been demonstrated over and over again to not result in higher attainment. If your children are so smart they can surely do some reading and research of their own. That's what I did back in prehistoric times (1960s and early 1970s). In the subjects I enjoyed I was consistently ahead of the bulk of the class and occasionally of the teachers simply because I read all the text books and spent time in the lib…
Really? Just based on repetition and revisiting material you think it would have benefits
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~11.6 million children live in poverty in the US as of this comment, so while I have no context wrt the Bay Area (have never lived there), I can reasonably put forth that this cohort in particular will not receive the environment needed for robust educational development. https://datacenter.aecf.org/data/tables/43-children-in-pover...
Agreed, and I mention it in my comment as well, so IDK what your point is.
[2] https://archive.is/dXpQf/fba33991824e68e9b1ecfbde5c773bcbe92... (from [1])
Its just Covid, this is what living with this disease looks like.
Is it possible that expectations around attendance have never been reasonable or even safe? In an ideal world, people shouldn't go to work or school when they are sick. Not only does it slow their recovery, but in the case of communicable diseases, it spreads the illness. Yet a lot of schools have released post-pandemic guidance about how students should still come to school with minor illnesses. And most workplaces…
In my area, you get 10 days of unexcused absence per year before parents and kids start receiving fines and possibly a referral to CPS. That number is way too small IMO, and it forces folks to go to the doctor constantly for getting small illnesses excused (school policies are 24 hours without a fever, but they don't take temperatures, it's honor based...), since you want to keep those 10 days for an actual vacation.
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My mom's a teacher in a decent school district in California, and later school times didn't have a significant effect on post-pandemic absences in her experiences (for the students who did come in, it did have a positive effect on their performance though). The brutal truth is a subset of parents just don't care too much about education. It doesn't matter if it's an affluent or a working class district - there will a…
There are frequently threads on this site regarding the drop-off in fertility in advanced societies. When I point out that not all of us are capable of handling the stresses of modern child-rearing given the intense expectations for education and concomitant expense of that, someone will inevitably chime in with something like, "kids don't really need all that". I'm sure that they did not decades ago, and I'd love fo…
A lot of Americans and Westerners in general seem to ignore that reality, and will fall behind.
> In a working-class pocket of Michigan, school administrators have tried almost everything, including pajama day, to boost student attendance. Wow, pajama day didn't bring back students? So strange. I wonder if they tried less homework, shorter school-days and/or later start of the day? Basically the three reasons I myself was chronically absent from school for as long as I can remember.
..or maybe if they focused more on academics, reducing bullying and violence, and less political-socializing students would feel they are getting something out of it.
Is it possible that expectations around attendance have never been reasonable or even safe? In an ideal world, people shouldn't go to work or school when they are sick. Not only does it slow their recovery, but in the case of communicable diseases, it spreads the illness. Yet a lot of schools have released post-pandemic guidance about how students should still come to school with minor illnesses. And most workplaces…
Back when I was in school about a decade ago, kids came to school sick as dogs as taking time off for being sick was seen as malingering. A friend at another school knew a guy who came to school with a stomach bug and puked several times throughout the day as they had a perfect attendance incentive worth grades, so to ensure he got his grades, he walked around puking for the day. I spent plenty of classes hacking and…
The pandemic has clearly altered this mentality but it doesn’t seem like a good trajectory. A little cold is barely an inconvenience.
