Threatened by "jail time," Philadelphia parents of chronic truants showed up at a group meeting to hear a lecture on truancy from Mayor John Street. The city sent letters to parents of 6,000 truant parents; about 4,000 people came to hear the mayor's pitch, accompanied by threats. The Inquirer reports:
From now on, (Street) said, Philadelphia School District students with more than three unexcused absences will get a home visit from a truant officer. And parents whose children rack up eight or more illegal absences could find themselves in weekend parenting classes, hauled before a judge, or even in a jail cell.
For years, teachers have been complaining that they're held accountable for the progress of students who don't bother to show up every day. They want parents held accountable. But how? Following through on the mayor's threats will be an expensive proposition. For a start, Philadelphia is hiring 400 new truant officers.
Some parents clearly are reluctant to accept responsibility.
. . . the threat of a fine she can't afford or of jail time was enough to get (Krissy Jackson) to the meeting.
"It's $500, or you could go to jail," Jackson said. "I don't want to do that."
Jackson said she does her part. She faulted the schools for not being able to keep students in class.
"What should we do?" she asked. "We're a lot of single parents. I give them [SEPTA] tokens and send them to school - I can't do anything else."
Chronic truants start missing class in elementary school. By high school it may be too late for parents to assert control. Education Gadfly has more on "anti-poverty paternalism."
It's nice to see someone at least making the effort to address this problem. Not all of these kids are beyond help, surely.
The main point to be noted is that it is absurd to hold the school responsible for educating students when they and their parents don't want to make the effort. Fully ten percent of registered students in Philadelphia are missing daily. The day after the meeting, the Inquirer reported no significant change in attendence.
This is the flaw in "No Child Left Behind" It looks at school perfromance where the schools are only marginally responsible for performance. The key is the student and his or her family being interested.
That is why Charter Schools and some private schools with similar demographics do better. Parents must be sufficiently involved to put their children in these schools. Without parental involvement, it is a rare child that will do well.
I am curious: does mom attend PTA meetings and other events at the school? Does she check her children's homework every night? Has signed their quizzes, tests, and report cards? Any or all of the above actions should help a parent determine if their child is a truant. I wish I could release myself from life's responsibilities with a mere subway token...
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Some years ago, my daughter was asked by a woman in a shop why she wasn't in school. She gave the answer I had previously suggested, half in jest. "My daddy doesn't believe in your schools. He says they're controlled by the communists." Further deponent sayeth not.
Or any of a host of individually rare but cumulatively not-so-rare situations that can turn up. (What if the PTA meeting isn't actually during job hours but going there means the mother gets 3 hours of sleep that night? What if the mother simply has something more important to do, a health clinic appointment for instance?)
We can't assume all mothers have the freedom that the upper-middle-class has.
Now if something meaningfully bad started happening to habitually truant kids, including failing classes, truancy problems might decrease significantly.
Nick
If "unexcused" == "illegal", then what precisely consitutes "unexcused" ? I am not familiar with Penssylvania state law, or whatever local law may apply in Philadelphia, but I can add the following to the discussion:
This schoool year, our local school district [in Indiana] has started to send letters to parents when their child accumulates 4 "unexcused absences"; an additional letter is sent if the child then reaches 9 "unexcused absences" by the end of the year. Here's the important part: an absence is "unexcused" unless a written or faxed document signed by a physician is received by the school. Neither a written note signed by a parent, nor a phone call is deemed to consitute an "excuse".
I have been told by two school officials that there is (currently) no law relating to unexcused absences, but that "several dozen" districts in the state are part of a "pilot program to improve attendance" -- the cost of hiring of additional truant officers and "attendance counselors" is covered by additional funding from the state.
Here, of course, we have the unintended consequences. Responsible parents are now sending their sick children to school rather than keeping them home, where they are of course exposing an entire classroom of children to germs, viruses, etc. Responsible parents keeping their sick children at home are now making unneccesary trips to their physician. Responsible parents who might normally be able to rely on grandparents or other caregivers to at least stay in the home with their sick child are required to miss a day or more of work to go to their physician.
Physicians, of course, are wasting innumerable hours seeing mild- to moderately-sick school children and filling out a form for the parent. Many, of course, are advising parents to "just call the office when your child is sick, and we'll fax over the form". However, physicans are unsure of their legal liability (and ethical reposnsibilities) regarding signing a form without actually seeing the patient.
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Most parents of juvelile delinquents and chronic truants love their children, but they often lack basic parenting skills. I am inherently sceptical of social workers, but if it works, and it is no more burdensome that the alternatives, try it.
And I don't bother going. The same clique knows what it's going to do -- the exact thing they did last year. I was starting to put in face-time at a K-5 school's PTA (as well as being on the principal's privy council), but then we got redistricted, and it didn't seem worth the bother to start all over.
My mother went to one PTA meeting, right around the 1968 school strike in NYC. There was a motion to suspend the rules to allow someone to speak or something, and she voted Aye but the motion failed; then another such motion for a different speaker, and Mom figured if they weren't going to allow suspensions they should be consistent, so she voted Nay, and someone said "Why do you vote to allow white people to speak but not to allow black people to speak?" and she said to hell with this.
We have parent-teacher conferences, one-on-one, but that's something different.
"Would anyone care to comment on the constitutionality of imprisoning a person for actions (or inactions) committed by another? That's smells un-kosher to me, but I'm not sure what the basis would be (--Nobody)
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Perhaps more interesting -- is the constitutionality of any "truancy" law whatsoever.
Under what constitutional provision are truancy-laws enacted and enforced ?
There seems to be no basis for truancy-law in any state constitution... and certainly not in the U.S. constitution.
A legal requirement for long term attendance/obedience at a government or government-controlled institution ("school") would seem a fundamental deprivation of personal liberty.
If such deprivation is truly legal -- what are the limits of government action/control of the citizenry in that area ?
Because high school students (and most adults) have a defect in their ability to properly judge the economic benefits of delayed gratification. Due to the way the teenage brain is wired, they are simply unable to make economic decisions that properly account for future utility.
It's the same reason we don't allow them to open credit cards - it would irresponsible to put that sort of decision making in the hands of people that are unable to appreciate the consequences down the road.
I'm no lawyer pretty sure the courts have ruled repeatedly that some provisions of the Constitution don't fully apply to minors. Hence, random car and locker searches in high schools, for example.
I suspect that there is something more to it than that going on--such as the state or the federal government withholding funds for schools whose registered students don't do well on standardized tests. Something can be done about that, too--change the funding rules.
"Unless the state constitution LIMITS the state government, States have a pretty free hand to do stuff like this under the police power. States, unlike the Federal government, are not constrained to enumerated powers." (- Daniel Chapman)
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... State governments certainly do NOT have unlimited authority to legislate as they please. State constitutions impose severe limits upon government actions -- which is a prime purpose of such constitutions to begin with.
The Pennsylvania state constitution (Article I) makes it quite clear that state powers are delegated -- and may not override the inherent &stated rights of Pennsylvania citizens ... especially rights to life and liberty.
Hard to see how compulsory education laws (..truancy laws) are constitutional in Pennsylvania, or any other state ?
One of the delegated powers (requirements, actually) in the PA constitution:
"Public School System (Article III, Section 14)
The General Assembly shall provide for the maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of public education to serve the needs of the Commonwealth. "
I know nothing of the laws of PA, but the text above suggests to me that truancy laws can be legal in PA, if permitted by the legislature.