Outside reading Blog 8

I currently read an article entitled 'Report Studies Chronic Absenteeism in City Schools' by Jennifer Medina, and it was about how over 90,000 students in the New York area elementary schools are missing total over a month of school a year.  This means that about 20% of New York's kindergarten through sixth grade students are missing an average of 30 days a year of school.  This is statistic is unbelievable! The author reported, "The situation was even worse in older grades — 40 percent of high school students and 24 percent of middle school students were absent for at least one month — but the report focuses on elementary schools because absenteeism among young students is less widely discussed even though it is believed to worsen over time and lead to dropouts."  It just blows my mind that people can miss that much school.  Though the article did discuss how it is harder for under privileged and living in poverty were the ones making up most of the statistics.  It is hard for them to get to school everyday with all else that is going on at with their families and/or themselves.  After the administrators read these numbers they decided they needed to take action with the elementary school students.  There plans of action  were very simple, to make school a fun and place where students were excited to come everyday.  A place where students felt welcome and felt safe.  Once they focused on this idea, it started working and along with making the attendance policies are a lot stricter, the number of absentees is much smaller.