Why is nothing being done to address public school attendance crash?

[Strike 5,216]

45 minutes ago, IGotWorms said:

I agree with most of this except the last part.

And you seem like an assh0le. Who suffers because the parents are sh1tty? The kids. So yeah, it might make you feel all tough and smug to say fock the parents and move on, but it’s the kids who pay the price, and they don’t deserve that.

Good job resorting to personal insults.  The kids lose when they're raised by idiotic progressive parents too but I don't want the government intervening there either. 

[edjr 6,578]

Just now, Strike said:

Good job resorting to personal insults.  The kids lose when they're raised by idiotic progressive parents too but I don't want the government intervening there either. 

yup

[Cloaca du jour 2,147]

20 hours ago, Voltaire said:

If the public school in their community is low quality and/or has a bad reputation, parents go searching for alternatives.

Schools have a bad reputation because of shiittty parents.

 

[jerryskids 6,575]

15 hours ago, GutterBoy said:

How do you feel about electing a morally corrupt leader for our morally broken society?

I don't love or respect much of what Trump has done in his personal life.  The problem is, Biden has no morals, good or bad.  His brain is a vacuum at this point.  I don't know who is running the country, so I can't evaluate their morals.

Also, there is a difference between the personal morals of the president, and the impact of his policies on our society.  If Trump puts in policies which encourage two-parent households for instance, that would help this morally broken society, and that would be more important to me than if he shtupped a pron star 8+ years ago.

[Fireballer 2,639]

1 hour ago, Cloaca du jour said:

Schools have a bad reputation because of shiittty parents.

 

Part of it, yes.  You can’t ignore the impact that Dems have allowed teachers unions to have on education.  I’m not talking individual teachers.  NEA and AFT are nothing but activist lobby groups who have been allowed to shape the public education system into a progressive shathole. Fuk them.  

[Hardcore troubadour 14,954]

Parents had nothing to do with Obama’s dear colleague letter. If you don’t know what I’m referring to, you need to shutup about discipline in government schools.  

[purdygood 334]

A lot of successful people (like my brother and sister) who have kids and are on permanent "work from home" or only have to go into the office 2/3 days a week... use their flexibility, take their kids out of school, take their kids on vacation on "off days" to Disneyland and such because it's Ok if they miss a few days of school but then they get to miss out on the long lines.

[jonnyutah 250]

Stop wasting money on public schools. Spend more money on prisons. 

Helps the housing shortages and crime. 

[TimHauck 2,626]

3 hours ago, Strike said:

Good job resorting to personal insults.  

I’ll keep this in mind for the future

[jerryskids 6,575]

12 minutes ago, purdygood said:

A lot of successful people (like my brother and sister) who have kids and are on permanent "work from home" or only have to go into the office 2/3 days a week... use their flexibility, take their kids out of school, take their kids on vacation on "off days" to Disneyland and such because it's Ok if they miss a few days of school but then they get to miss out on the long lines.

Good point; this probably explains a lot of the increase in the more affluent areas.  The hood, not so much.

[GutterBoy 2,898]

5 minutes ago, TimHauck said:

I’ll keep this in mind for the future

Just last week, after I called out his lie on Biden and press conferences, he of course called me a pedo.  Trash person.

[Hardcore troubadour 14,954]

9 minutes ago, GutterBoy said:

Just last week, after I called out his lie on Biden and press conferences, he of course called me a pedo.  Trash person.

In January of 2023 I pledged not to refer to Gutterboy as a Pedo anymore. I have kept my word. Gutterboy on the other hand……..

[IGotWorms 4,057]

4 hours ago, Strike said:

Good job resorting to personal insults.  The kids lose when they're raised by idiotic progressive parents too but I don't want the government intervening there either. 

I guess you can call it a personal insult, but I think it’s relevant as a point of view. I am not an assh0le (well in some ways at least), so I think we still have an obligation to educate kids who were unfortunately born to sh1tty parents. It does make it harder to succeed, yes, but I don’t think society can was their hands of that obligation altogether.

Also I’m not an idiot, so I’m able to understand that we all suffer if people grow up without a decent education, regardless of whether they had sh1tty parents. If people have skills and are generally socialized, they can get jobs, add to the economy, pay taxes, hopefully commit less crime, etc, etc. Seems like a good idea to me, but then again, like I said, I’m not approaching the issue from the vantage point of a stupid assh0le

[Strike 5,216]

3 minutes ago, IGotWorms said:

I guess you can call it a personal insult, but I think it’s relevant as a point of view. I am not an assh0le (well in some ways at least), so I think we still have an obligation to educate kids who were unfortunately born to sh1tty parents. It does make it harder to succeed, yes, but I don’t think society can was their hands of that obligation altogether.

Also I’m not an idiot, so I’m able to understand that we all suffer if people grow up without a decent education, regardless of whether they had sh1tty parents. If people have skills and are generally socialized, they can get jobs, add to the economy, pay taxes, hopefully commit less crime, etc, etc. Seems like a good idea to me, but then again, like I said, I’m not approaching the issue from the vantage point of a stupid assh0le

You can't MAKE a kid want to learn.  FORCING them to sit in class when they don't want to only hurts the kids that WANT to learn.  And passing them when they don't learn the material, as is becoming more and more common, isn't giving them the skills you think it is.

[TimHauck 2,626]

50 minutes ago, Strike said:

You can't MAKE a kid want to learn.  FORCING them to sit in class when they don't want to only hurts the kids that WANT to learn.  And passing them when they don't learn the material, as is becoming more and more common, isn't giving them the skills you think it is.

 

21 hours ago, TimHauck said:

Why are you assuming they don’t want to be there?  I’m sure some of it is younger kids who don’t have a choice but do what their parents have them do

^the above of course goes back to the comment about sh1tty parents.  It’s not a kid’s fault if they have sh1tty parents, which you seem to acknowledge but simultaneously minimize by saying “it’s not society’s responsibility”

[Maximum Overkill 1,741]

16 minutes ago, TimHauck said:

 

^the above of course goes back to the comment about sh1tty parents.  It’s not a kid’s fault if they have sh1tty parents, which you seem to acknowledge but simultaneously minimize by saying “it’s not society’s responsibility”

What if I suggested fining or locking the parents up? 

How fast do you think Democrats would scream racism? Be honest 

[TimHauck 2,626]

1 minute ago, Maximum Overkill said:

What if I suggested fining or locking the parents up? 

How fast do you think Democrats would scream racism? Be honest 

Fining a poor person seems counterproductive, but I’d be okay with locking up parents who intentionally do not send their kids to school.  Or maybe taking the kids away.

[Maximum Overkill 1,741]

3 minutes ago, TimHauck said:

Fining a poor person seems counterproductive, but I’d be okay with locking up parents who intentionally do not send their kids to school.  Or maybe taking the kids away.

We are in total agreement but where are you putting these Kids? With the Illegals? Most of those would love nothing more than to have their kids gone. 

Anyway you slice it someone will scream racism. 

[TimHauck 2,626]

2 minutes ago, Maximum Overkill said:

We are in total agreement but where are you putting these Kids? With the Illegals? Most of those would love nothing more than to have their kids gone. 

Anyway you slice it someone will scream racism. 

Adoption or foster care most likely.  Not a perfect scenario but probably better than a parent that can’t be bothered to even send their kid to school which is basically free child care

[jerryskids 6,575]

I've heard it said, and I'm sure I've said it here before, that for a kid to be successful in school, 2 of the following 3 need to care:  Parent(s), teacher(s), kid himself.

I think this is more true early in the kid's life, when caring parents and teachers can instill a desire to learn on the kid.  But if we're talking HS and the kid doesn't care, fuggettaboutit.  It's too late.

Perhaps I'm convincing myself that there is something to be done:  a strong focus on parenting in the first, say, 5 years.  If we can convince parents to do their job in that window:  read to the kid, talk to him/her, basically create a pint-sized lifelong learner, I think the rest will largely take care of itself.

There are probably a lot of people who simply don't realize the importance of such things from infancy.  Perhaps there is some low-hanging fruit there?   

[TBayXXXVII 2,485]

On 7/7/2024 at 2:05 PM, IGotWorms said:

After the pandemic, regular attendance in public schools crashed. Went from like 90% of kids attending on regular basis to 60% in my area.

Now it is coming back up in some, but not all, areas, but slowly for the most part.

How come there haven’t been any national initiatives to address this? It is a problem everywhere as far as I understand.

So where’s the bill offering federal dollars to hire more truancy officers? Maybe some kind of public education campaign about the problem and encouraging people to return their kids to school? I dunno, gotta be other solutions out there as well I’d think.

 

https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/whats-going-americas-public-schools-absenteeism-rates-tell-dramatic-tale.amp

Seems to me that all you need to do is read the article you posted, to figure out the cause.

When you read the article and ignore the reasons, I'm sure you won't realize your ideas won't work. 

[Strike 5,216]

12 minutes ago, jerryskids said:

I've heard it said, and I'm sure I've said it here before, that for a kid to be successful in school, 2 of the following 3 need to care:  Parent(s), teacher(s), kid himself.

I think this is more true early in the kid's life, when caring parents and teachers can instill a desire to learn on the kid.  But if we're talking HS and the kid doesn't care, fuggettaboutit.  It's too late.

Perhaps I'm convincing myself that there is something to be done:  a strong focus on parenting in the first, say, 5 years.  If we can convince parents to do their job in that window:  read to the kid, talk to him/her, basically create a pint-sized lifelong learner, I think the rest will largely take care of itself.

There are probably a lot of people who simply don't realize the importance of such things from infancy.  Perhaps there is some low-hanging fruit there?   

To me the low hanging fruit is the high school age kid you are ready to discard.  If they don't want to study Shakespeare and Calculus maybe we should bring back shop class.  There is a shortage of plumbers and Carpenters.  Several of my best friends from HS didn't give a sh*t about academics but were damned good at trades.  One owns his own construction company now and remodels celebrity homes. 

To me, the more difficult case is the young kid with apathetic, or worse, parents.

[jerryskids 6,575]

2 minutes ago, Strike said:

To me the low hanging fruit is the high school age kid you are ready to discard.  If they don't want to study Shakespeare and Calculus maybe we should bring back shop class.  There is a shortage of plumbers and Carpenters.  Several of my best friends from HS didn't give a sh*t about academics but were damned good at trades.  One owns his own construction company now and remodels celebrity homes. 

To me, the more difficult case is the young kid with apathetic, or worse, parents.

Good point.  I was thinking more about the traditional reading writing rithmatic kinda studies.  

[Maximum Overkill 1,741]

43 minutes ago, TimHauck said:

Adoption or foster care most likely.  Not a perfect scenario but probably better than a parent that can’t be bothered to even send their kid to school which is basically free child care

That's great but there's already a huge shortage of fosters. And then we're talking possibly hundreds of thousands of Kids thrown into the system. More kids that nobody wants. 

It's a bad situation. 

[TBayXXXVII 2,485]

Read the article.  The solution is obvious.  Remove the liberal idealogy from the government. 

Why is enrollment down?  From the article: "The number of homeschooled kids is increasing dramatically"

Looks to me that the people who can remove their kids from liberal public school policies are doing exactly that.  Why is anyone surprised?    Only Leftists will be surprised because they can't fathom that they are the problem. 

 

'Oh yeah Mr. Alt-Right MAGA man, how come poor kids aren't going to school.'

Read the article, they tell you the reason.  Quote from the article: "A lot of young people are scared of going out and getting shot — for things like sneakers."

Meaning, liberal social policies about not enforcing crime, is giving criminals a lot of freedom on the streets.   I thought crime was down?  Guess not?  Or, maybe it's down because cops aren't arresting criminals and/or prosecutors aren't doing their jobs when cops are allowed to do theirs.  This is common sense.  Only a Leftist wouldn't realize this, because that means coming to the realization that they are the problem... and that'll never happen.

[Maximum Overkill 1,741]

8 minutes ago, TBayXXXVII said:

The solution is obvious.  Remove the liberal idealogy from the government. 

Why is enrollment down?  From the article: "The number of homeschooled kids is increasing dramatically"

Looks to me that the people who can remove their kids from liberal public school policies are doing exactly that.  Why is anyone surprised?    Only Leftists will be surprised because they can't fathom that they are the problem. 

Great points 

[TimHauck 2,626]

2 hours ago, TBayXXXVII said:

Read the article.  The solution is obvious.  Remove the liberal idealogy from the government. 

Why is enrollment down?  From the article: "The number of homeschooled kids is increasing dramatically"

Looks to me that the people who can remove their kids from liberal public school policies are doing exactly that.  Why is anyone surprised?    Only Leftists will be surprised because they can't fathom that they are the problem. 

 

'Oh yeah Mr. Alt-Right MAGA man, how come poor kids aren't going to school.'

Read the article, they tell you the reason.  Quote from the article: "A lot of young people are scared of going out and getting shot — for things like sneakers."

Meaning, liberal social policies about not enforcing crime, is giving criminals a lot of freedom on the streets.   I thought crime was down?  Guess not?  Or, maybe it's down because cops aren't arresting criminals and/or prosecutors aren't doing their jobs when cops are allowed to do theirs.  This is common sense.  Only a Leftist wouldn't realize this, because that means coming to the realization that they are the problem... and that'll never happen.

More homeschooling is contributing to declining public school enrollment.  But most would argue the bigger issue is absenteeism and homeschooled students don’t count in absenteeism numbers.

I notice the quote about “many students being afraid of being shot over sneakers” has no citation.  Considering the topic is about schools, it’s interesting that you would blame this on “leftist policies.”  More gun control isn’t going to reduce gang violence, but it might help reduce school shootings.  Good to see you actually think school shootings are a legitimate concern though.

[TBayXXXVII 2,485]

12 hours ago, TimHauck said:

More homeschooling is contributing to declining public school enrollment.  But most would argue the bigger issue is absenteeism and homeschooled students don’t count in absenteeism numbers.

I notice the quote about “many students being afraid of being shot over sneakers” has no citation.  Considering the topic is about schools, it’s interesting that you would blame this on “leftist policies.”  More gun control isn’t going to reduce gang violence, but it might help reduce school shootings.  Good to see you actually think school shootings are a legitimate concern though.

The concern was because of sneakers getting stolen, not getting shot in school.  Nice try, but a big swing and miss.

[TimHauck 2,626]

1 minute ago, TBayXXXVII said:

The concern was because of sneakers getting stolen, not getting shot in school.  Nice try, but a big swing and miss.

If the concern isn’t getting shot in school, then it’s irrelevant to this thread which is about [checks notes] kids not showing up to school.

And that quote looks like something the Fox News author just made up to rile up conservatives anyway.  Congrats, you fell for it hook, line and sinker.

[TBayXXXVII 2,485]

3 minutes ago, TimHauck said:

If the concern isn’t getting shot in school, then it’s irrelevant to this thread which is about [checks notes] kids not showing up to school.

And that quote looks like something the Fox News author just made up to rile up conservatives anyway.  Congrats, you fell for it hook, line and sinker.

So after your false narrative got b!tch slapped, you're pretending that the author made that up?  LOL

[TimHauck 2,626]

7 minutes ago, TBayXXXVII said:

So after your false narrative got b!tch slapped, you're pretending that the author made that up?  LOL

I had already expressed skepticism about that comment earlier by calling out that it had no citation.

But even if someone actually said that to the author:

1) Is your position really that that quote was not in the context of being afraid of getting shot AT SCHOOL over sneakers?

2) If yes to #1, how the heck is that relevant to this discussion?

[TimHauck 2,626]

Just reread the article.  So the “citation” is an anecdote from his wife who runs a charity.

But, it immediately follows a line saying “Why are so many students missing from class?”…

[GutterBoy 2,898]

Just now, TimHauck said:

Just reread the article.  So the “citation” is an anecdote from his wife who runs a charity.

But, it immediately follows a line saying “Why are so many students missing from class?”…

It's a foxnews opinion piece.  Of course it's going to push the crime narrative.  Also of note, it's one school district, in DC.  It's quite possible that it's true, or that one kid said it, but it's not indicative of a nation wide problem.

[TimHauck 2,626]

2 hours ago, TBayXXXVII said:

The concern was because of sneakers getting stolen, not getting shot in school.  Nice try, but a big swing and miss.

Wait are you claiming the supposed concern wasn’t about getting shot at all, but rather getting their sneakers stolen?

[Hardcore troubadour 14,954]

I think I know why nothing is being done. These kids don’t live in important areas. Thus, they aren’t important. Fits the pattern. 

[Cloaca du jour 2,147]

Roommate parenting...basically they only interact with their kids at mealtimes or to watch tv

[Fireballer 2,639]

19 hours ago, TimHauck said:

More homeschooling is contributing to declining public school enrollment.  But most would argue the bigger issue is absenteeism and homeschooled students don’t count in absenteeism numbers.

 

You do realize that if the total number of students drops, but the same number of students are absent, the percentage of absent students increases, right?  

[TimHauck 2,626]

4 minutes ago, Fireballer said:

You do realize that if the total number of students drops, but the same number of students are absent, the percentage of absent students increases, right?  

Yes.  Do you think that is what’s happening?

[Fireballer 2,639]

44 minutes ago, Cloaca du jour said:

Roommate parenting...basically they only interact with their kids at mealtimes or to watch tv

Wait, your wife’s a teacher right?  I have no idea what she and her co workers are like, but  you’re blind if you think this is all on parents.  Ever check out the websites to the orgs she pays dues to?  

[Fireballer 2,639]

3 minutes ago, TimHauck said:

Yes.  Do you think that is what’s happening?

All I’ve seen in this thread is percentages of absenteeism rising, not actually quantity of students absent.  Am I missing something?  If less students are enrolled, then obviously those homeschooled kids are impacting stats.