Educational Neglect cases filed in Allen County
Posted by Mike Sylvester - 11/25/09 @ 10:19 pm - Filed Under Featured, Local Politics
The News-Sentinel has an interesting article about this on the front page of today’s newspaper.
Apparently the Allen County Prosecutor has decided to prosecute two women who said they were home schooling their children; however, did not keep the necessary paperwork to prove they home schooled them. The same prosecutors office decided not to prosecute check fraud when it was purposefully conducted against my business; however they have plenty of time to go out and prosecute two people for not properly home schooling their children.
This same newspaper article lists the number of students who had ten or more unexcused absences from the local school district in the 2007/2008 school year. Consider these statistics from the article:
- NACS had .048% of its students with ten or more unexcused absences in the 2007/2008 school year.
- SACS had .059% of its students with ten or more unexcused absences in the 2007/2008 school year.
- EACS had 2.43% of its students with ten or more unexcused absences in the 2007/2008 school year.
- FWCS had 6.4% of its students with ten or more unexcused absences in the 2007/2008 school year.
So a casual glance at these statistics shows that FWCS has a completely unacceptable percentage of students who had 10 or more unexcused absences in the 2007/2008 school year. Basically out of every 16 kids; one kid had 10 or more unexcused absences.
EACS is significantly better than FWCS; yet, they still have one out of every 43 kids who had ten or more unexcused absences in 2007/2008.
SACS is significantly better than EACS; in fact, they only have one out of every one thousand six hundred and ninety five students who have ten or more unexcused absences in the 2007/2008 school year.
NACS is slightly better than SACS; in fact, they have one out of every two thousand and eighty one students who have ten or more unexcused absences in the 2007/2008 school year.
Let’s consider the above statistics. First they are statistics from four public school districts within Allen County. That being said the numbers show that the school districts have a frequency of unexcused absences that vary by huge amounts.
These statistics are so bad that the Allen County Prosecutor should prosecute parents who allow their children to miss school with an excessive amount of unexcused absences. I gaurantee you that if they prosecuted every parent whose child had 20 or more unexcused absences in a school year word would get around and parents would pay more attention to their childs education.
These statistics also show what most conservatives know and most liberals will argue against until they are red in the face. The quality of education is largely due to parental involvement and parental involvement is directly correlated to economic well being…
Mike Sylvester
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12 Responses to “Educational Neglect cases filed in Allen County”
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Amazing isn’t it? Skipping school used to be called truancy. They would send the truant officer after you. Now they can do it ten times with no consequences except the “pyramid of discpline” might go into effect the 11th time. When they come back to class, they beg off doing anything because they were gone and they think it’s up to the teacher to see that they get caught up.
These are the kids who are failing and dropping out. So how much is it costing us for each of them to take up space in a classroom? About $11,000/year, isn’t it?
Mike — I know of no one, liberal or conservative, that would disagree that parental involvement is one of the most important factors in quality education. It is the conservatives, however, that are first to want to establish merit pay systems and cut off funding for schools that have low SAT scores. If your point is that the schools and teachers can’t offset home problems, why are we constantly disparaging the urban public school systems?
I wrote Karen Richards a letter in 2006 explaining the problems in my neighborhood and with the Fort Wayne Police Department. She replied that the internal affairs of FWPD were none of her concern.
This is the same posecutor who thinks it is worthwhile to put the weight of the prosecutor’s office behind the p.r. campaign against the casino.
So, the prosecutor doesn’t want to mix with the city when it comes to violent drug dealers and corrupt cops, but she sees gambling as a huge problem.
I am pretty certain I will be voting for just about anybody who runs against Richards in 2010.
Z Man-
Without going into a long dissertation, the jist of it is that traditional public schools are mostly about money and jobs for teachers. Mike’s example about absences is a case in point. Kids that don’t come to school in an urban district will fail. None of the kids I see in the high schools do any work outside of class to start with. Many of them (almost half in FWCS) can’t read well enough to learn on their own from a textbook so they, even more than the rest, are totally dependent on being spoon fed by the teacher during class time.
But the discipline policies, which could ultimately result in expulsion, are not enforced because the state allocates money based on the student population. They don’t want to lose students because they will lose funding. So these kids are allowed to come to school when they feel like it, forcing teachers to teach to the lowest common denominator to the detriment of the kids who at least show up.
But you’ll never hear this from the hypocrites who run our schools. Too many parents are already fleeing urban schools and publicly admitting to this kind of situation would only speed up the exodus and reduce the flow of money.
Z Man,
Your question is a good one…
You cannot seriously be saying that the entire educational establishment downplays parental involvement can you?
Heck I know of one local school (In my school district) who does not want to even have a parent teacher organization because it removes control from the principal. I know of another local school (In my school district) who only wants a PTO if the Principal has 100% control of that PTO.
On the other hand my own school has a Princiapl who loves having a PTO and is very supportive of the PTO.
I feel that the bias against parental involvement in many cases comes from inside the education system.
Mike
ZMan,
I support using test scores as ONE of many factors used to evaluate teachers.
Mike
Evert,
Well said my friend…
Mike
Mike,
I had a post long ago that’s now linked at the bottom of this one describing the issue regarding the lack of parental involvement.
At the end of the day if a kid has lousy parents then the kid pretty much has no chance. That’s just the way it is and there isn’t a damn thing the schools or anyone outside the immediate family can do about it. That’s why continuing to throw more money at the problem won’t work.
Successful schools find ways to engage the entire community (but specifically parents) to ensure that everyone has some skin in a kid’s education. It is a very difficult problem and one that plagues schools across America.
But when your #1 mission is PR and you ignore the problem while simultaneously pushing propaganda instead of digging in to solve problems then you get what we have now at FWCS - stagnant (and more like a regression) in academic achievement.
I am a substitute teacher and tutor, and I believe in parent involvement, it is the backbone of a strong school. With that being said, I can see the slippery slope of control issues, although parents and principals often have different angels to the school environment, they want best for themselves, and thus has to cover themselves for security. As a sub, in a school system within Allen County, I would love to see parents who help teachers, work with students, and help parents to solve problems from time management to housing issues. I do know that the principal at one of the high schools is working in partnership with a local youth minister to stem some problems. I think that liberalism has crept into our school systems, and too many teachers and administrators have begun the parenting way too seriously. MHO, I am not a parent, I teach, I glad to know the student, but I always tell my students that are very respectful to me “Go thank your parents, they have done a wonderful job!”
In regards to cutting classes, there needs to be alternative preventive methods. Marion County and Hamilton County schools make their parents show up in court if the students miss more than 10 times without a doctor’s note. If the schools were so money hungry, they would be running to Karen’s office. They would also come up with alternatives for holding students whom they suspend and expel. I understand that Dekalb County has such a program, where if a student is suspended they are required to report to the Auburn City Hall, where the student are required to show up at early hour and work on homework all day! If they don’t they go to juv. hall. I understand that the parents have to take the students and sign them in, and thus this interferes with the parents work schedules, and makes them tick off. I understand the usually it only takes one day of City Hall to get the kids’ behavior to improve.
My experience with schools in FWCS, they don’t care. I remember my time as a sub in district I ran across a high school student with severe emotional problems, that only wanted to read. Sadly this student was so neglected that he couldn’t read. I think an alternative placement would have done this student, however the parents had no clue on how to navigate the system. I am waiting on the day I see make the headlines - in not a good way. So if you feel no one cares about your performance you simply give up!
Has anyone ever gotten as much mileage out of being a “tutor” as the aptly named “tutor?” It has been a while since he posted, glad to see he survived those grueling 22 hour days.
At the end of the day if a kid has lousy parents then the kid pretty much has no chance.
I absolutely disagree with that statement! I’ve met several young adults and older individuals, who have had parents from hell, but have worked hard to not fall in the same trap. The key to success are 1.) Belief in self 2.) Supportive people that work to better the child - teachers, youth counselors, ministers, etc.
Here today’s schedule:
4:30 a.m. Wake-up and shower
5:30 a.m. Lesson Plan Prep/Filing
7:00 a.m. Drive to School to Sub.
7:25 a.m. Arrive at School
3:15 p.m. Drive to Tutoring Site #1
3:30 p.m. Tutor Student #1
5:00 p.m. Tutor Student #2
6:30 p.m. Tutor Student #3
8:00 p.m. Library for More Materials
9:15 p.m. Home/Dinner/E-Mail
9:30 p.m. Paperwork
10:30 p.m. Reading Blogs for a few seconds
10:45 p.m. Make file folder games for students.
Hopefully by 1 a.m. I can be in bed.