Blame the Teacher When Students Cut Class?
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses the unfair practice of holding teachers responsible for student attendance when they have no control over whether students show up.
Key Takeaways
- Teachers can't control attendance - Blaming teachers for students cutting class puts responsibility on the wrong people
- Attendance is a systems problem - Schools need effective attendance policies and family engagement, not teacher blame
- Accountability should be properly placed - Students, families, and administrators all share responsibility for getting students to class
Transcript
Whose job is it to get students to class?
If they're hanging out in the hallway and not going to class, is that the teacher's job to get them to class, or is it the administrator's job?
I saw this question online, on social media, and as you can see in the question, this school has apparently for a long time accepted the reality that if students don't want to go to class, I guess they don't have to.
And what was interesting to me was seeing the response from other people to this question, so many people said, well, that's the teacher's fault.
It's the teacher's job to be engaging enough, to be interesting enough, to build a relationship, to make the students want to come to class.
And of course that matters.
Of course, having an interesting and engaging class matters a great deal.
But if the student is not in class, where do we start?
Like if you're an administrator and you go and a lot of people said, talk to the students, find out why they're not coming to class.
If you do that, Then you're going to learn, you know, whatever the reason for not going to classes.
And you might have already suspected, you know, maybe there's an issue with cultural competence of the teacher or maybe the student just doesn't want to.
But they're probably going to in some way complain about the class or the teacher.
And then you're going to have that information and the students going to know that you have that information.
And then you're going to have to decide what to do with it.
And you're really still in the same spot with the student where.
even if they don't like the class even if they don't like the teacher even if the teacher is not very good the student still has to go to class and that is the administrator's responsibility to get the student to go to class and what i think is happening here in this particular case is that there are simply no consequences for not going to class so everything else stops mattering when that's the case.
If there are no consequences for not going to class, why on earth would students go to class, right?
I mean, most will, but you're going to have a lot of students who just say, well, if there are no consequences, I'm going to go vape.
I'm going to go play on my phone.
I'm going to go hang out with my friends.
If there are no consequences for skipping class, students are going to skip class, no matter how engaging it is, no matter how fun it is, no matter how nice the teacher is, they are going to skip class if there are no consequences.
So I believe very firmly this is an administrator responsibility, that there have to be enforcement measures in place.
We have to make sure that kids are going to class if they're on campus.
It's dangerous to have kids on campus and we don't know where they are.
They're not in class when they're supposed to be.
It's dangerous.
It's a liability issue.
So I believe we absolutely need to clear the hallways out, get students to class, and of course we need to care why students are not going to class, but we need to be very careful about asking that question because we can inadvertently blame teachers for things that are, you know, maybe potential opportunities for improvement.
But ultimately, it is not the teacher's fault if the student is not coming to class.
It is administrator's responsibility.
And of course, it's the student's responsibility to go to class as well.
And this is a high school.
We're talking about older students.
So complicated issue.
But let me know what you think about this.