COMPULSORARY NON-ATTENDANCE: OR PAYS TO CUT

This may sound like a cliche, but schools were at one time supposed to nurture and encourage positive values about work, ethics and morality to aid students in finding and keeping gainful employment. If a high school graduate cannot successfully navigate the intricacies of attaining and maintaining a position in the job world he or she will either spend their lives on the dole or turn to criminal activities to support themselves. For every individual who fails to assimilate into the work world the taxpayers will have to spend millions in welfare, incarceration expenses, court costs, drug rehabilitation and medical expenses. Moreover, the burdens of society multiply in Malthusian progressions when these failures have children of their own.

Yet the schools instill youngsters with negative values that if translated into the job world will result in termination and unemployment. One major example of this trend is the encouragement of non-attendance in class. Now it would seem simple and basic to most reasonable people that arriving in school daily and on time are basic tenets of positive values for education and work,. Certainly this was the case when I began teaching in 1969. At Bayside High School in 1970 (in the pre-computer era) the attendance office spent a great deal of time, effort and funds preparing what were dubbed Mandatory Failure Lists at the end of each and every marking period. (Today with computer spreadsheets the same task could be performed in minutes.)

Any student who cut class even once during the marking period had their name proscribed on the list; and the principal instructed teachers that they must fail these students. It was a great policy as students killed themselves to show up in class, lest they fail the marking period. It also backed the teachers up, as students could not argue and debate teachers if their names cropped up on this non-honor roll. Bayside High had a cutting office and a cutting coordinator to investigate and verify that students were truant before being proscribed. There was also a list of kids to be failed for being absent too many days during the marking period. The system also backed up and rewarded positive behavior, as the students who meticulously came to classes every day were the beneficiaries of these policies
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When Hillcrest High School opened in 1971 we had similar policies, whereby if you missed a certain number of classes you failed automatically for the cycle. Around 1980 the Board of Education issued a fatwa that prohibited mandatory failures and forbid teachers from using attendance as a criteria in grading. (For teachers it was the equivalent of a soldier going into battle without a gun. Your leverage and authority over the students was cut out from under you. The standards were now that there were no standards. One of the rationales for the change in policy was the conundrum of why should a failing truant ever return to class if he knows he has no chance of passing. Simultaneously teachers were placed under a gag rule whereby they could never tell a student that he is failing. Even if a student had a zero average and started three fires in the room you must hold out hope that he can pass. Once again the students who played by and obeyed the rules were slapped in the face so that the lowest students at the bottom could be rewarded. To pour salt onto the wounds, the cutting office and cutting coordinator were eliminated, sending the message that absence from class was fine.

As a veteran teacher I creatively managed to work around this nonsense by giving lots of quizzes in class and not giving make-up tests. I carefully never told kids they were failing, but I always reminded them the odds of passing were greater than being struck by lightning. However, many of the younger teachers slit the throats of the veterans by passing any warm body. In fairness to them they were under pressure from the principal to pass anyone who breathed. However, by giving the kids a free pass the principal and the chairman always demanded to know, "Why is Mr. Smith’s passing percentage so much greater than yours?"

AS I mention in other portions of my narrative the administration creatively thought up policies under the rubric of REDEMPTION, that permitted kids to pass while never attending class. At the end of the term any cutter was allowed to come up to you and ask for a Redemption Plan, which consisted of take-home busy work that would allegedly compensate for never attending lessons. There was even the AL WEINER special: go home, write a so called research paper and hand it in the following morning. Redemption also abetted the administration in securing brownie points by showcasing better passing statistics. If you didn't give the kid a Redemption Plan, the truant just went right to the principal and was accommodated. Yes, the Jesus Christ Superstar of the education world saw nothing amiss in this massive compromise of grades. Did the student gain any knowledge from all this make- work? In a way it was the modern day meaningless equivalent of writing one hundred times on the blackboard, "I will come to class every day in the future."

It's interesting to note that while standards were being thrown to the wind, the summer school program still successfully maintained attendance policies. During the six week summer school you were only allowed three absennces; after which you were dropped
from the program. It didn't matter if you became sick, had a death in the family, experienced psychological problems, had personal or family business to take care of, etc. Once you hit the magic number three that was it; three strikes and you were out. Moreover, any kid who cursed, mouthed off or became a discipline problem was expelled. There were no laws on the books that required kids to go to summer school, nor required us to keep them in the program.

Nevertheless, the students always rose to the occasion, as they knew and understood that there were real standards here. After the first week the traditional malcontents and orthodox cutters were gone with the wind, while the bulk of the pupil population learned in unbearable conditions. The heat in the classrooms was often over one hundred degrees; yet the kids killed themselves to come to class. I remember in 1986 when I was teaching summer school at Francis Lewis High School in Fresh Meadows, a student fainted from the heat and fell out of his chair. The assistant principal called an ambulance to take him to the hospital. As the paramedics placed him in a stretcher, the student (now partially-revived) asked the assistant principal, "This won't count as an absence will it?"

In education all good things must come an end. Any worthwhile program has to be killed or done away with. Alas when Joel Klein became chancellor the standards and bedrocks of the summer school program were abolished. Attendance and cutting requirements were eliminated. Kids could be out for days on end and still pass. You could now go to the beach every other day and receive course credit. Discipline problems could no longer be eliminated by eliminating the problem kids. Studentsscan now act up every day and stay in school.

When I was the summer school librarian at Flushing High School in 2004 Principal Gutwein employed me to do outreach all day long. From eight in the morning to one in the afternoon I had to call up the homes of students who were not showing up to summer school, find out why they were absent and somehow encourage them to return to class. Each day I was handed a detailed and lengthy computer printout of no-show kids, complete with addresses and phone numbers. For each call I made I had to write an explanation of what transpired.
Nobody home.
No-one speaks English.
Student promises to return to school.
Pupil claims he does not have to go.
Student is out of the country
Phone has been disconnected.
Each day I was handed a new list of truants, many of whom had missed many days of the thirty day summer school program. What was the point of calling up kids who had already missed fifty per-cent or more of the sessions? I had to then document daily the number of calls I made and what happened with each one.

How do these attendance policies translate into the real world? Can you hold a real job if you stay out every other day or often arrive late? Will your bosses or supervisors sympathize with the fact that, "I took unannounced vacations every month at Flushing High School and they were fine with it. What's your problem man?" Doctoral candidates who are looking for unique and original subjects for a PhD thesis should study the repercussions of how the encouragement of non-attendance in school plays out when graduates enter the work world.

Attendance is not the only area where school instills negative values in kids. Students know they can curse, make death threats or say anything they want to teachers, without any meaningful consequences. In many cases they can even physically attack staff members without punishment. No matter what the infraction, the deans merely tell the kids to write or orally give an apology, which instantly lets the perpetrators off the hook. What happens when graduates emulate these antics on the job and are instantly canned?
Any rule or deadline in school is made to be broken. For example, if kids are told to pay their senior dues by May 1 and fail to follow through on this, there are no consequences. Kids can just bring on their money on May 15, June 1 or whenever they feel up to it; no questions asked. If the boss asks for a paper to be handed in at work on May 1 will he wait patiently wait until June 1? Many schools allow kids to wear hats all day in school. Are hats regularly worn at business meetings?