System should serve students and teachers, not itself

Like many districts across the nation, Mat-Su Borough School District has focused a great deal of time and resources on preventing students from dropping out of high school.

Professional development days at Colony and other high schools have included analysis of dropout statistics and discussion about when and how a student officially is classified as a dropout, as well as various methods of helping students remain in school.

Mat-Su classifies a student as a dropout if he leaves his current school and there is no subsequent request for a transcript from another formally designated educational institution.

While I am wholeheartedly in favor of keeping students in school rather than encouraging them to drop out, our concentrated focus on keeping them here has picked up an unspoken rider. In many cases, our zealous desire to keep students in school has extended to keeping them here at all costs.

To illustrate my concern, let’s consider two examples. Student A is enrolled in my fifth period, upper-level English elective. He attends sporadically, regularly missing a day or so a week, and sometimes missing three or more consecutive classes. He rarely submits assignments and his grade is hovering in the 50 percent range. I have called home several times, but have not received any assistance from his parents. Colony High and other district schools at one time had a policy in place stating that students missing 10 or more classes a semester lost credit for that class. The district abrogated that policy several years ago in favor of a blander policy that states class attendance is important, but imposes no consequences on students who fail to attend regularly. Teachers are actively encouraged to accept student work late and not to impose academic penalties for what is perceived as a behavioral issue. Running around after the Student As in my classes each semester, making contact with parents who either do not return my calls or don’t believe their child should be expected to attend class regularly, takes a significant toll on both my time and my energy.

Now consider the example of Student B, also enrolled in one of my upper-level English electives. Like Student A, Student B is a senior, ostensibly headed for graduation this May. Student B has significant family difficulties causing her to have missed three weeks of classes at the beginning of the semester. She arrives in my room one day after school promising she wants to get her act together and graduate, and that she will come to class from now on and turn in her work. Student B has been in my class before, where she followed a similar pattern and did not keep her word. She is in roughly the same boat in all six of her classes and needs all of those credits in order to graduate.

The amount of time and energy needed to assist Student B in her goal of graduation, while keeping up with everything else, is significant, but in her case I am willing to put that time and energy in. Student B’s history is rocky, but she has good intentions and I support her efforts to fight the many battles she is facing. She is what I would describe as a good investment.

Student A, on the other hand, I am less interested in helping. Student A is clearly working the system. He knows nothing serious will happen if he doesn’t come to class, and he’s expecting his teachers to do all the work necessary to get him to

graduation.

It may make me a bad person, but I resent our system’s accommodation of Student A and those like him. When I have more than 100 students each semester who actually come to class and do their work, and then about five examples of Student B, I’m pretty well out of time, energy and emotional resources for the Student As of the world.

No good teacher worth his or her salt would encourage students to leave high school. It is the nature of adolescents to test the limits of the system they are in, and it is part of our job as educators to understand this and work with them in reasonable ways. On the other hand, there are too many students who have serious problems and need serious help for us to be afraid of losing the few who would actually benefit from some solid boundaries and high

expectations.

The problem of high school students dropping out is a considerable one, and I don’t have the answers.

I would not be the first person to suggest our paradigm is antiquated and needs a major overhaul. It may be true that we are no longer able to do a good job given the nature of our goals and our population. Short of massive educational reform, however, which has been bandied about for many years but thus far remains an incorporeal idea, we need to work with the system we have and try our best to make it fit our students and our

teachers.

Prudence Plunkett teaches English at Colony High School.