Here, Here for Stricter Attendance Policies : Limiting Missed School Days Prepares Students for Future

Officials at Chatsworth High School in the San Fernando Valley knew something had gone awry with their attendance policy when certain bizarre tales came to light. On more than one occasion, for example, students had missed days of classes because their parents had taken them on vacations . . . such as ski trips.

“There are times when travel is extremely educational, but we’re not talking about that kind of trip here,” said Ann Petty, an assistant principal at Chatsworth High. Remembering that and other examples, Petty added: “You would have been amazed at how many absences some students had.”

At Kennedy High School in Granada Hills, officials began to see an increase in the so-called “casual attender.” Those students missed a few days and then came back to school, then missed a few more days before returning, then leaving yet again. They were able to exploit the Los Angeles Unified School District’s loose attendance policy as long as they maintained a passing grade. Those students went through school doing as little as possible, under the mistaken impression that they were putting one over on the school system and not harming themselves. An LAUSD teacher’s thoughts on this appear on the Commentary page.

Such problems are all too common. Slightly more than a year ago, a survey of truancy problems in the public schools of Washington, D.C., turned up such egregious examples as the student who somehow managed to stay on his school’s attendance rolls even though he had been absent for 174 days. That was one of the reasons why officials in Washington and surrounding school districts came to the not-so-momentous conclusion that it was time to toughen attendance policies, linking them to grades and promotion standards.

Now Chatsworth and Kennedy are among four Valley high schools that are part of the LAUSD’s school-based management program that have decided to enforce much more strict rules on attendance. This comes as welcome news. The steps that these schools have taken are in sharp contrast to the options of non-school-based management campuses in the LAUSD that are forbidden by district policy to flunk students based solely on attendance.

Birmingham, Chatsworth, Kennedy and Taft high schools are restricting students to 15 to 20 absences per semester. Students who exceed those numbers will be flunked--given failing grades in their courses, barring some persuasive excuse for not being in school.

The new attendance policies were formed at the behest of individual leadership councils that are composed of parents, teachers and administrators at each of the schools. Each school obtained a waiver from the LAUSD in order to put its plan into effect.

The goal here is not punitive, and the intention is not to rid schools of chronically truant students. Rather, it is to encourage students, and their parents, to take regular attendance much more seriously, especially since it is routinely expected in the adult work force. Moreover, it can hardly be considered a harsh standard. Students at these campuses can miss 30 to 40 days a school year and that, arguably, is still far too many.

Roughly half the LAUSD’s high schools are school-based management campuses. The others have their hands tied in matters of attendance: Students who repeatedly fail to show up for classes can only be denied participation in graduation ceremonies. That is so lenient as to be practically meaningless.

The next step here is to determine the effects of the more stringent attendance policies at the San Fernando Valley schools and at the other school-based management campuses that may soon follow their lead. Indications of success might then lead officials to employ the policy districtwide.