Perfect attendance: Let charter schools keep track of charter students
Pennsylvania school districts pay the tuition of 119,000 students who don’t attend their schools but instead go to charter schools or learn online through one of 14 cyber schools. Should the districts that don’t teach these students have to monitor their attendance?
State Rep. Dom Costa thinks not. The Stanton Heights Democrat has a bill that would require charter schools, including cyber schools, rather than the students’ home districts, to report truancy. Some charter-school chiefs are concerned about that, saying they are already stretched too thin. But all schools are. Attendance can’t be divorced from achievement, and the charter schools should not dump their work on the school districts.
While brick-and-mortar schools monitor absenteeism through empty seats, cyber charters measure attendance electronically. Students must check in each day through Blackboard.com, and their presence is monitored via their online activity. In both physical and cyber schools, truancy — in Pennsylvania, defined as three or more unexcused absences — has significant social costs. Chronic absences are considered a predictor of substance abuse, teen pregnancy and delinquency. One California study showed that 60 percent of juvenile crime occurred during school hours. Another, at Johns Hopkins University, estimates that 10 to 15 percent of U.S. students are chronically absent.
The idea that a school district, which has nothing to do with a student other than paying the tuition bill, should be responsible for attendance is nonsense. Charter schools, like their traditional compatriots, should be responsible for every aspect of their students’ learning — including that all important “Here.”
