Thursday, March 19, 2009

Make School Attendance a Major Priority




With spring just around the corner, you may be planning to take your child out of school for an extra day or two. You’ll just ask the teacher for advance homework. Missing a few days won’t really matter, will it? Actually, those few days of absence can matter a lot. Think about the things your child may be missing that can’t be made up with homework. The class discussion about the book they are reading can’t be captured in homework. Neither can the science demonstration or the group project for history. In some subjects, like math, missing even a few days is a problem because learning builds on what students already know. Extra homework will not make up for the things your child misses when their out of school. So instead of taking your child out of school, make an extra effort to improve their attendance this month.


Source: Jennifer Railsback, “Increasing Attendance: Strategies from Research and Practice” (Northwest Regional Education Laboratory, www.nwrel.org/ request/2004june/warm.html).

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