More than a year ago, Rochester schools Superintendent Bolgen Vargas launched a major campaign to improve abysmally low student attendance in the city school district. Now teachers are in the hot seat. Vargas has sent an email to teachers saying that 730 of them were absent last Friday, and he he’s concerned that teacher absenteeism is on the rise.
Vargas’s email is creating waves. Critics of the district wasted no time sending out their own sharp assessments of the situation. Parent and charter school advocate Carrie Remis issued a statement seeking an examination of teacher contracts, which provide teachers with “considerable time out of the classroom.” And she recommends including attendance as part of a teacher’s evaluation.
Rochester Teachers Association President Adam Urbanski sent his own email to teachers to clarify that many teachers were not in their classrooms because they had been reassigned to administer and score tests. Others were on field trips or in professional development classes, all legitimate reasons, Urbanski wrote. The other absences were not due to playing hooky, as some have suggested, but the result of sickness, family emergencies, and scheduled personal days, according to Urbanski.
While it may be true that teacher absenteeism can adversely impact student learning as a report by the liberal think tank Center for American Progress suggests, there’s more here than meets the eye.
Last week, Vargas was immersed in a program that shows every school’s attendance data in real time. The color-coded information ranges from green, which indicates excellent attendance, to a cautionary yellow, to red — which indicates excessive absenteeism. He can drill down in the data to examine records of every student.
For many city schools, large red blocks are the norm. Despite an all-out effort to improve student attendance, Vargas said that nearly 13,000 city students have been absent for at least two weeks this school year. More than 8, 500 have been absent at least three weeks, and more than 5,700 have been absent at least 20 days. One group of students, though fewer than 50, hasn’t attended school at all this year.
Vargas has for the most part solved the record-keeping problem with attendance, but now what? It’s a bit ironic that much of the district’s plan for improving student achievement involves longer days.
Clearly, there is a serious attendance problem in city schools at every level of the organization. What is less clear is why and what to do about it.
This article appears in May 15-21, 2013.
This news article is really weird. The author asked a very important question (via the article’s Headline), but then he apparently forgot to write the correct story, that is, the content of the story does not correlate with the headline (AT ALL). It is very important to ask about logic regarding the so-called “extended-day,” which Vargas has been touting as part of the “solution” for addressing very old, widespread, massive, academic failure within the RCSD, i.e., the idea of (according to Vargas) creating additional opportunities for students to have more “time-on-task,” which really is an amazingly flawed idea and strategy, especially when considering that, under current school-day–schedules, hundreds upon hundreds of teachers are chronically absent. If, as Teachers’ Union President Adam Urbanski was quoted as having said: “Everything being piled on teachers right now has created such an atmosphere of stress and anxiety and feelings of being overwhelmed, that some teachers need the time off just to regroup” — then what exactly does Vargas expect will happen when the school-day is extended? Also, considering that (under existing time schedules) thousand upon thousands of students, many of whom are among the most needy relative to additional time-on-task, are currently missing huge amounts of school, what exactly does Vargas believe will happen under a longer school day? It is time for [Vargas] to go back to the drawing board, either that, or it is completely predictable, and certain that lots of money and time will be spent on a fundamentally flawed idea, which cannot possibly result in significant academic improvement. Another thing, which is very weird about the article, and others by the particular author, is that he continuously quotes suburban parents, such as “Carrie Remis,” and I keep asking who do these, much-quoted, white, upper-middle class, suburbanite, parents represent?
The same logic that has been in place (and failing miserably) for decades. If a child fails Math, give him two Math classes at the same time, If he fails these, make him go to summer school and then assign him two additional classes. None of which addresses the root problems, and results in the inability to take classes that might better suit the child’s abilities and interests, such as Art, Technology and other “elective” courses. I can’t tell you how many times I have been called to the office to explain my “poor attendance keeping records” because I was showing 100% or at least regular attendance for a child that was showing in school records as absent from school or missing classes. Only to walk the administrator to class and point out the student happily present and learning. The students would simply skip the classes they were failing and attend the classes they were successful and happy in. At the same time I would constantly hear from Math and English teachers that a student couldn’t do basic math or write a coherent sentence, only to show the same student using applied algebraic skills to solve a hands-on technical problem and write the required lab write up. There are solutions, and there are failed practices. Extending a school day to address the issue of truancy is ridiculous. They already, by their absence, have told you what they think about attending school at all, never mind for a longer day!
“The other absences were not due to playing hooky, as some have suggested, but the result of sickness, family emergencies, and scheduled personal days, according to Urbanski.” Well guess what, the same could be said about students in the RCSD. So when does it go from being a plausible explanation to a lame excuse. I guess when it’s a double standard that’s practiced with the RCSD. If attendance is important in reference to education, let’s not hold some accountable an not all. Urbanski, stop making excuses for “your” teachers and acknowledge, accept and then make changes!!!
The BLIND continues to lead the BLIND…………end of story!