Attendance
Why aren't students coming to school? Intriguing question...there are certainly understanding reasons like illness or a death in the family. Those are NOT the absences I'm questioning. My question is why are more and more students becoming an attendance problem, missing two, three, even four days a week. How can we educate an empty seat? Is testing and more testing, and then when they get done testing, have yet another test part of the problem. I can say it definitely isn't helping. All the educational research I have ever read says students are different, learn in different ways and at different paces. Why then do they ALL have to take the same test on the same day? Of course kids are becoming disillusioned to education and stay home. We need to make school a place kids want to come to. This is not to stay everyday should be movies and gum drops, but the school day should challenging, interesting, and dare I say fun. The mood of high stakes testing has made the school environment stressful and full of anxiety for student and teachers. Why would a student want to come to school knowing he or she is going to fail and be stressed out doing it! I want my students to come to school, but until we change to culture of public education, I feel attendance is only going to get worse. Anyone have any answers to this growing problem?
Paul Becigneul
Social Studies
