Indianapolis: Too many empty seats in classrooms

Thousands of students are chronically absent from county schools. Ten-year-old Wesley, a student in Decatur Township's Lynwood Elementary, is the personification of an educational crisis. His brown hair is closely cropped and he's wearing a hooded jacket as he stands before a Marion County Superior Court commissioner. Wesley is in family truancy court because he's racked up nine unexcused absences so far this school year. (The Star generally does not fully identify defendants in the juvenile justice system.) If he skips school one more day, he'll join thousands of other Marion County students listed as chronic absentees.

Wesley is in court with his mother and four siblings. Sisters Kelsey and Jennifer have each missed 14 days this school year without a valid excuse. Older brother John recently completed probation for truancy and battery charges. Their mother, Joyce, says she's struggled to force her children to attend school. She says she even quit her job last year to focus on getting John and his sisters to school. When it comes to Wesley, however, she admits that, "I don't have an excuse for him (not attending school). I really don't."

It's a story frequently repeated in Marion County schools. A Star Editorial Board analysis found that about 13 percent of students in the county's public schools -- roughly 16,000 children -- recorded 10 or more days of unexcused absences in the 2005-06 school year. The high absentee rate is occurring amid an environment of intense accountability for teachers and administrators. Teachers can lose their jobs and even entire schools can be shut down if standards aren't met. But the frequency with which students miss school begs a couple of questions: Can children learn if they aren't in the classroom? And should educators be held responsible for ensuring that students are in school, a job that primarily is parents' responsibility? "Truancy is a symptom of a problem, not the problem itself," says Gaylon Nettles, the state Department of Education's chief attendance officer. "There is some reason why this kid didn't go to school."

As was the case until recently with Indiana's high dropout rate, official numbers released by the state Department of Education mask the extent of chronic absenteeism. According to the state, the attendance rate in Indianapolis Public Schools, the county's largest district, is 94 percent. Marion County's other 10 school districts report attendance rates of 90 percent or higher. The Department of Education touts a statewide attendance rate of 96 percent.

The reality is dismal. In Wayne Township, about one in three students qualify as chronic absentees. In IPS, about 18 percent of students recorded 10 or more unexcused absences last school year. And while chronic truancy is most often associated with high schools, it's occurring at every grade. Fourteen of the county's 31 middle schools had truancy rates of 10 percent or higher last school year. At 26 of IPS' 51 elementary schools, up to 18 percent of students were chronically absent.

Students who frequently skip school are at high risk of dropping out, tumbling into poverty, or worse, prison. A sixth-grader attending school less than 80 percent of the time has only a 1-in-10 chance of graduating from high school, according to a study by Johns Hopkins researcher Robert Balfanz and Lisa Herzog of the Philadelphia Education Fund. Balfanz found similar results among IPS middle school students in a study he's conducting for Achieve Inc. and the state Department of Education.

There is a strong correlation between truancy and the path toward crime. Chronic truants are 12 times more likely to commit a serious assault as students who regularly attend school and 21 times more likely to engage in larceny, burglary or vehicle theft, according to University of Colorado researchers David Huizinga and Kimberly Henry. Marion County Superior Court Commissioner Kelly Rota-Autry, who oversees the truancy court, notes that, in most cases, families that come into her court already have one child who has gone through the juvenile justice system, either for truancy or other charges.

Solving the attendance problem is a key part of improving the state's trend of low educational achievement. Yet, despite the emphasis put upon attendance by the federal government's No Child Left Behind Act, attendance data in Indiana -- and nationally -- is slipshod. The state formula for calculating attendance rates can mask what's really happening in classrooms. A school can appear to be doing well even if it has a significant problem with truancy. Until recently, teachers tracked student attendance on paper. As Wayne Township Superintendent Terry Thompson points out, that meant that schools were operating "a day behind," thus losing track of absent students.

The lack of statewide policies on attendance outside of what is considered "habitually truant" means that districts have wide leeway on what is considered an excused absence. In some districts, absenteeism may be undercounted as students call themselves in sick or skip school, with their parents' permission, for a vacation.

All of this has consequences in students' lives. During a series of focus groups involving high school dropouts, conducted last year by the state Commission for Higher Education, participants said they missed on average 30 days of school the year they dropped out. "They don't say one morning, 'I'm just dropping out.' They've been sending this message," says Higher Education Commissioner Stan Jones. "It's something we're not paying enough attention to."

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Britain's Anti-education education

In recent years, there has been concern over the underachievement of black boys in UK schools. Compared to a national average of 59 per cent, only 34 per cent of African-Caribbean boys attain five or more GCSE passes. Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), seems to think that black boys' cultural outlook is partly to blame. `There is an anti-learning culture whereby learning isn't seen to be cool.' (1) For Phillips, black kids just don't want to learn.

Phillips is right to blame `an anti-learning culture'. But this has little to do with hip-hop `playas' and everything to do with the government and the cultural elites. Blaming the gormless bravado of street culture for hostility to education suggests that Phillips is more in awe of 50 Cent and Eminem than the black kids I teach. Urban entertainers may loom large in the popular imagination, but they're hardly able to dictate the agenda on education, learning and culture. After all, it wasn't Jay-Z who grabbed headlines by declaring that `learning history is a bit dodgy'. That was the former education secretary, Charles Clarke.

Yet this wasn't just a rash comment by Clarke. Instead, hostility to learning for learning's sake currently informs every aspect of the education system. For example, the government has long attempted to put vocational learning `on a parity of esteem' with academic subjects. The drive to vocationalise education won't necessarily bolster the status of NVQ's in Hair & Beauty, but it has cast academic courses in a negative light. When Clarke suggests that academic subjects are dodgy, he really means that they are not `accessible' enough. Middle managers in further education colleges are following suit. At one inner London college at which I have taught, the Sixth Form Centre was constantly threatened with closure by the management, which deemed teaching A-levels as elitist.

Such an anti-learning culture is also prevalent in today's classrooms. Teachers are discouraged from extended their students' vocabulary in case it `alienates' them. And if students are having trouble participating in classroom discussion, teachers are recommended to introduce kindergarten-style games to pass the time. In the past, educationalists would seek to overcome the barriers to learning. Today learning is seen as a barrier to developing that all-important self-esteem. Indeed, the current teaching adverts suggest that learning is an alien concept for most schools. Classrooms are represented as similar to `crazy' youth centres where teachers simply turn up, arrange the chairs and distribute soft drinks. The apparent upside is that adults `get to hang out with Raj' and, in a spectacular reversal of roles, get to learn a `new language'.

This isn't merely the outcome of a daft advertising agency. In PGCE courses, student teachers are encouraged to incorporate as many hip-hop tracks and videos into lessons as possible. But such tricks are more likely to irritate students than bring them onside. Nothing is more grating for clued-up students than teachers getting down with `the kids'. My authority would be seriously undermined if I scribbled `blood, this is the shiznit!' on their work, or delivered sociology in a series of raps. Compared to Trevor Phillips, most of the black students I teach don't take hip-hop's ludicrous postures seriously.

The underachievement of black boys is a concern for educationalists and wider society. But the causes of the problem are varied and complex, and can't just be reduced to students' listening habits. Because there is an obsession with interpreting social groups purely in cultural terms, it is rarely acknowledged that African-Caribbean students are predominately from poorer working-class backgrounds. This isn't to suggest that social class is the only factor in determining their educational performance. But it is an important explanation for why a significant proportion of white and Bangladeshi boys also fall behind the national average.

Nevertheless, softening the education system can't compensate for the negative effects of social and racial inequalities. In fact, the government's measures are likely to make them worse. If learning appears alien and `uncool' to some African-Caribbean students, Trevor Phillips should look less at `the street' and a lot closer to home.

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Must not expose the chaos of Britain's schools

A whistleblower who should get a medal is being prosecuted by a rotten system

A supply teacher who covertly filmed her pupils swearing, fighting and attempting to access pornography on the internet was misusing her professional position, a tribunal was told yesterday. Angela Mason recorded footage in late 2004 and early 2005 at 18 schools in London and the North of England for Classroom Chaos, a documentary shown on channel Five. She arrived at classrooms with a miniature camera disguised as a button that allowed her to record pupils smashing furniture and making false accusations that teachers had touched them.

Mrs Mason, from London, was accused of unacceptable professional conduct yesterday at a hearing in Birmingham of the General Teaching Council, the professional body that regulates teachers. She faces a second charge of failing to promote the education and welfare of the children by failing to manage their behaviour properly. Five concealed the identity of all the pupils and schools caught on film before the programme was broadcast.

Bradley Albuery, the presenting officer outlining the case against Mrs Mason, said that by filming teachers and pupils without their knowledge or consent she created a conflict of interest. “She was there not as a broadcaster but as a teacher,” he said. “All of her attention should have been directed at the education of the children. That she took a camera into the classroom shows that her agenda was not . . . focused wholly on the needs of the children.” Mr Albuery said that teachers and students had reacted with anger to the programme. Pupils from one school were “angry and upset”, he said. Another student, who said he could be identified from the footage, felt “embarrassed and humiliated”, the tribunal heard.

During the documentary, which was shown to the tribunal, one boy tells Mrs Mason to “take a nap” when she attempts to restore order to the class. Another is shown using a school computer to look for “anal sex” on an internet search engine.

Mrs Mason admits the secret filming, but denies that it amounted to unacceptable professional conduct, claiming that she acted in the public interest. Mrs Mason, who is married with two children, originally left teaching in the 1970s to work in educational broadcasting but enrolled with two supply teaching companies — Brent Supply Service and Teaching Personnel — to take part in the documentary. If the case against Mrs Mason is proved, she could be banned from teaching.

Clive Rawlings, appearing for Mrs Mason, said that she had embarked upon a “responsible and reasonable” piece of journalism, and that her actions had contributed to the public debate on classroom behaviour. “Angela Mason’s actions were in the public interest in its broadest sense,” he said. “She is merely the messenger, and we submit that you should not shoot the messenger.”

Outside the hearing Mrs Mason said: “It’s not my profession — I left it 30 years ago — but I still feel strongly about it. I believe there is a major public policy issue to do with pupils in classrooms and poor behaviour. I’m standing up for the supply teachers and other teachers who have to endure this every day.”

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

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