‘F’ Grades Reduce High Truancy Rates

Four San Fernando Valley high schools may have found an antidote to the disease of truancy that has plagued schools since their existence: an F.

According to preliminary figures, attendance rates have improved markedly at four schools where policies allowing teachers to fail students who miss a fixed number of days in class were implemented last year.

“There aren’t many consequences today that mean something to students,” said Errol Jacobs, an English teacher at Taft High School in Woodland Hills, where 20 absences mean an F. “This is an area where it really affects them.”

Compared to their own statistics from a year ago, Taft, Chatsworth and Van Nuys’ Birmingham High School showed improvement in attendance rates after starting a policy that limits students to between 15 and 20 absences a semester before they fail a class. Figures for Kennedy High School in Granada Hills are trapped in an earthquake-ravaged building, but administrators say improvement was marked there as well.

At Birmingham High School, at the end of the first semester of the 1992-1993 school year, there were 360 students with more than 20 absences. At the end of the same semester this year, there were only 87 students who had more than 20 absences. At Taft, the attendance rate in the first three months of the school year increased from 85% last year to 90% this year. At Chatsworth, attendance in the fifth month went from 80% to 89% after the policy was begun.

Attendance rules like these are against the policies of most high schools, which are governed by a districtwide prohibition against directly linking grades to attendance.

But because the four schools are school-based management campuses, they have the flexibility to skirt district policy with a waiver.

At school-based management schools, decisions about operations such as budget and teaching methods are made by a leadership council composed of parents, teachers and administrators.

There is no evidence linking the improved attendance to the new policies. All of the schools are evaluating the program to fully gauge its effect. But many teachers and administrators believe the most meaningful measure of all is the increased student awareness about truancy.

“People are worried,” Taft junior John Pipkin said. “I know I have eight (absences). I’m scared. I wouldn’t want to fail.”