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By Dr. Harry Tennant
Saturday, April 28, 2012 Education Ride 365: Make It To Class If You Want To Dance! East High School, in Des Moines IA, enacted a new policy this year that I have no doubt provoked some negative response, as off-base as that response probably is. The policy seems to make sense at a time when schools are held highly accountable for attendance rates and student achievement. Increasingly often in our society, the distinction between rights and privileges is perhaps not as clear as it should be.  It is a privilege---not a right---to attend a school dance---> even prom. The "no class, no dance policy" adopted by East High prevented students there from attending the school's winter formal if they had any unexcused absences within a defined period of time before the dance. Attendance at the fall dance declined by "a few hundred students," but this spring the policy was applied to prom and East High students seem to have responded as hoped for. Any student with an unexcused absence between March 13-April 27 lost the privilege of attending prom. Magically, attendance is up from the prior year average of 88 percent to 94 percent for the period leading up to prom. One student was quoted as saying: "People are making sure they go to classes just because of prom. The boys, especially, are like: 'My girlfriend is going to kill me if I don't go to class.'" An abbreviated online article about this policy can be referenced here from The Sioux City Journal. I read the longer article in print. The print article concluded: "East's focus on attendance is part of a larger effort to increase its graduation rate: 74 percent of the school's seniors received diplomas in 2011, and the statewide average is 88 percent." Some students and parents surely blurred the distinction between rights and privileges underlying this policy. As a school administrator, just about every time I/we denied students a privilege based upon noncompliance of one sort or another, there was an adult(s) who vigorously asserted that I/we were denying their young person a 'right' they possessed irregardless of whether or not they fulfilled the most basic requirements. It seems to me that selective denial of privileges is fair game in the attempt to compel proper student behavior. Posted at 2:26 PM Keywords: Education Ride 365 , EdClick , Cycle Of Education , Discipline 0 Comments |