4 Tactics Public Schools Are Using To Get Butts Behind Desks
School competition leads to surprising tactics to keep attendance from falling.
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GoogleThe last week of January marks National School Choice Week, a celebration of all the alternatives parents have rather than simply accepting the education their traditional local public school wants to provide.
School choice supporters have been doing well for themselves recently, though it’s been an uphill battle. Attendance in privately operated charter schools is on the rise. Around two million students now attend charter school programs. Washington State voters in November approved the creation of 40 charter schools. They’re one of the few states left that had not been allowing them. And on Tuesday, California’s first parent-triggered charter school takeover succeeded. Desert Trails Elementary School in Adelanto, one of the lower-scoring schools in the state, will be taken over by LaVerne Preparatory Academy, one of the highest-performing schools in its county.
Government funding for schools is partly based on student attendance. Public school systems have for decades drastically increased their number of employees at percentages far, far above the actual growth in student attendance. The result, combined with America’s ailing economy and growing public employee retirement burdens, has led to significant pressure for schools to keep those students’ butts parked firmly behind their desks. The battle for student attendance has led to evolving tactics by schools. Some are notably authoritarian and controlling, but not all tactics are bad. Some methods of improving student attendance actually may help undo authoritarian public education policies.
Here are four tactics public schools are using to keep attendance from falling.
1. Truancy Sweeps and Fines
Truancy sweeps are common occurrences in California. Just typing the words into Google will net you a page of California-centric stories of educators and law enforcement officials teaming up to scour communities for wayward students, detaining them and trying to force them back behind their desks by threat of fine or arrest. Sometimes these sweeps net homeschooled or alternative school students who keep different schedules from traditional schools, and sometimes these families discover the law doesn’t care.
Though law enforcement officials attempt to stress that keeping kids in school reduces potential criminal behavior in the future, the reality is that each of those truant children costs the school district cold, hard cash. And so, of course, fines become a tool not just for punishment, but for recovery. The government will get its money somehow.
Police at Los Angeles Unified School District, notably, annually hand out thousands of tickets to young students, particularly minorities. The Center for Public Integrity went through their citation rates for 2012 and found them little changed from 2011, despite a promise from the district to ease up on their sweeps that often targeted students not skipping school, but rather arriving at school late. As the Center’s report notes, these citations often ironically required students to then miss school in order to resolve them with the courts.
Next: Domestic surveillance is not just for the federal government.
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My one regret about my school years is that I did not skip school more often.
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1) Pay more to force the future burger flippers to go learn stuff they realistically won't apply in the future?
2) As a resident of San Antonio who hears about this ceaselessly, her objection is due to the badge being against her religion as it is "the mark of the beast".
3) See 1.
4) Would work, but mandating the incorporation should come with a reduction in brick and mortar teacher salaries. IF they do less they should make less.
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If you dislike the idea of carrying an RFID chip around with you, 3-6 seconds in a microwave oven will fry any RFID chip ever made. You can also use a needle to cut the antenna wires within the chip, rendering it incapable of powering itself.
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The school even offered to give her a badge without the RFID chip inside but she declined. It makes sense to me. They just want to make it appear that she obeyed when she didn't. In principle, you would be symbolically showing that you support the tagging and tracking.
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Small steps, very small steps. Having the money follow the child makes a lot of sense. Next step is to allow education to fall away from the industrialized one size fits all model. As far as I understand there are still all sorts of state/federal mandates than every school is still be bound by.
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Sounds like some crazy smack to me dude. Wow.
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Well, I'm fucking clueless that this sort of bizarre shit is occurring in America. I'm absolutely fucking shocked that a fucking subhuman piece of shit cop would ticket a home-schooler. Dude, there's very little I'm NOT aware of on this planet YET somehow this article FUCKS with my pathetic mind. WHAT the FUCK! What bag of worthless intestines-hauling crap human being actually TICKETS for truancy?!!! I'm blown away. FUCKING blown away. whew
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Charter schools whose students are in fact home schoolers... disregard the important socialization aspect of public education, do not serve the public purpose of promoting a sense of community...
IOW, in addition to costing teachers an extra 10 grand a year in health benefits, such schools also lift the boot of social indoctrination off their neck, creating people who don't submit to authority and agree in lock-step with their peers and teachers. Oh dear!
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I say sudbury and democratic schools for the win! I've always just ignored what my teachers say because they have no clue what they're even "teaching" they just read from a book they're given and expect us to just believe them like they were the almighty himself come down to dwell among us. Yeah when I've read more literature then my 60 year old teacher in the 9th grade and read her stupid mandated books in one day there's a problem. What a waste of 120,000 tax dollars for 12 years of public indoctrination.
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Yeah when I've read more literature then my 60 year old teacher in the 9th grade and read her stupid mandated books in one day there's a problem.
Yes, it seems the school system failed you. Is this joe's law? I can't remember anymore.
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