My wife goes to an award ceremony today for our kid at his school. He made the all A honor roll. A-B kids go up, applause. Straight-A kids go up, applause. Perfect Attendance kids go up, the crowd goes bat****, standing, applauding, hooting and hollering. Why is this so important? It's more important to be there 100% of the time than it is to be a straight-A student? Priorities seems skewed here.
Cause that actually takes commitment. I mean how hard is it get get A's. Usually they curve the class so if you aren't dumb you get an A.
Yeah that is kind of odd. And that reminds me of the one student in my graduating class who had perfect attendence through all of high school. When that was announced at whatever thing it was announced at, people cheered the loudest. I apply Moreyball to these situations. So I look for the person who got the highest grades per days attended. These perfect attendance people are overrated IMO.
Agreed, it's easier to get A's than it is to get perfect attendance. How many kids get A's in class? Probably a lot more than the amount of kids with perfect attendance.
yeah i completely understand, i had a coworker who would make her daughter go to school no matter what, i'd told her that her kid is the reason my kid comes home sick and has to miss, i get it for some, they might be working hourly and if the kid misses they have to miss so it's a ripple effect but for the most part they push perfect attendance because funding is channeled through attendance as well
There's something about showing up every day that makes people go crazy: <iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/S_csuRfhDow" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
There weren't that many straight-A students, my wife said maybe 10%. My kid would have perfect attendance if it weren't for him being sick, which happens all of the time, just like every other kid. It boils down to parents using school as a babysitter, even when the kid is sick. At any rate, my wife and I don't put as much weight on attendance as we do on grades.
I would have had perfect attendance if not all for the times we skipped school to smoke weed at the vacant bowling alley.
I think it's because it's an average Joe's award. Anybody can make perfect attendance. Your kid has to be smart and care about school to make good grades. Parents can't make their kids be like that, but they can sure make them go to school every day.
I graduated with a guy that never missed a day of school in his life K-12 That is truly an accomplishment Maybe the kids with perfect attendance had the loudest parents Rocket River
No...what is boils down to (if the kid is not sick) is for the parents to take enough responsibility to get their kid to school. When I was still teaching, I could not tell you how many times we got requests from parents to take their kid out early for a holiday, or asking to miss a test because family vacation is coming up....and this wasn't planned. This was ALWAYS a last minute sort of thing What is that teaching a kid? Oh...work has a big project coming up, screw it, we're going to Vegas! Now, I won't deny that there are some parents just using the school as a babysitting service (as evidenced when I wanted to speak to some parents about behavior and/or schoolwork and they never had the time), but to show your kid being somewhere that ultimately enriches your life by educating you is important and not to be shrugged off is really important. And I would argue that, for many parents, this is the case. That being said...I do believe the grades thing is more important. But don't knock perfect attendance...that takes some doing.
I saw a quote somewhere that said something to the effect of one of the keys to having a great life is to never have perfect attendance at work. I may have seen it here, come to think of it. In my business unit, they have a list they release every quarter of the names of the people with perfect attendance. I see the same names on it every quarter and I always think to myself "wow, that person has no life." My name has never been on that list. And it never will be.
Do these kids never get sick? Or are these the kids that show up to school with the flu and infect everybody else?
I think it is a struggle to be there ALL the time... but... I think this is a GOAL that many families have... and to come to it is an accomplishment. I would venture to guess that it's a case of the former, not the latter. I was always getting sick, but still managed to get "perfect attendance" most of the time. There were other times that there was a dispute whether I was there "early" enough for teachers to take attendance, for the "official" attendance time, etc. It could always be a combination of the two above.
Perfect Attendance at my elementary meant that you provided a note for every absence... My brother got a trophy despite missing nearly a month of school. Suckers!
