by James C. Sherlock
There is a rule: nothing else schools do will matter much for kids who are chronically absent.
In Charlottesville, it is the Black children who dominate the chronic absenteeism statistics.
Their SOL performance validates the rule.
The process for preventing and dealing with chronic absenteeism within the school system is so lengthy, bureaucratic and “progressive” (literally and figuratively) that it has failed Black children starting in kindergarten.
Absenteeism and social promotion are recipes for educational failure.
They also contribute directly to the breakdown of order and discipline in schools, as kids who are frustrated and lost in class act out first in disruptive, and then destructive ways.
Yet CCS schools allow runaway Black chronic absenteeism without truancy charges and engage in wholesale social promotion of Black students who do not have the academic skills to learn in the next grade.
Lest they be labeled racist.
What they get are racist outcomes. Continue reading