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LATEST LETTERS

DPS truancy

Sunday, July 1 at 2:00 PM

Glen Nogami of Denver writes:

The article on page 12 of the June 19th News informed the readership that DPS was soon to implement a program that would prevent students who miss large amounts of time at school from advancing to the next grade level. That is ... unusual, I think. Perhaps the measure is to ensure that students are prepared to enter the next grade level. I propose that, instead, we institute a widespread record-keeping system that tracks the student’s quality of work and completion of work as, perhaps, a percentage, with a sort of “Concluding” or “Final” Exam serving as the gatekeeper between one grade and the next.
In all seriousness, what does it say about the standards in DPS that we have to create a new system to hold back students who miss over a third of their classes? Shouldn’t missing a third of the knowledge supposedly taught in those classes already cause them to fail?

This letter has not been edited.

READER COMMENTS

As a former DPS teacher this is business as usual. Students miss 40-50 days of school, do poorly on CSAP, and the school is blamed for failing to teach. The truancy problem is horrible, the failure rate at HS is horrible because schools can not hold back students without parental consent. So a student can do nothing for grades 1-8 and get passed on. I saw a student fail 6th, 7th, and 8th grade (twice) before being moved to high school. How do you think their attendance was?
DPS needs to increase attendance because it is the only way left to quit losing money due to low enrollment.

Posted by tom on July 1, 2007 04:41 PM