Kids Who Skip School Get Tracked By GPS 515
suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from the Orange County Register:
"Frustrated by students habitually skipping class, police and the Anaheim Union High School District are turning to GPS tracking to ensure they come to class. The six-week pilot program is the first in California to test GPS. Seventh- and eighth-graders with four unexcused absences or more this school year are assigned to carry a handheld GPS device, about the size of a cell phone. Five times a day, they are required to enter a code that tracks their locations – as they leave for school, when they arrive at school, at lunchtime, when they leave school and at 8 p.m."
Re:Great plan there (Score:2, Informative)
As I recall from high school, what was excused and what should be excused were two completely different things. There was a very short list of things that would qualify you as excused. Various things I saw count as unexcused included vomiting at school and being sent out by the school nurse and genuine medical emergency of a parent. Your own illness is always unexcused unless it is severe enough to go to a doctor, and I heard it gets tough to get excuses for a parent's medical emergency.
Overall, the high school I recall was more burdened with bureaucracy than any corporation I've worked at since.
Be VERY careful talking shit about these kids (Score:2, Informative)
Asian 12.09%
Filipino 3.94%
Hispanic 62.02%
Black 3.33%
White 17.17%
Free & Reduced Lunch 52.0%
Limited English Proficiency 27.6%
Fluent English Proficiency 36.1%
Native English speakers 36.3%
Now, who wants to take back their bigoted statements? Click reply to make apologies for unspoken assumptions about the low achievement levels of the student body.
Re:Great plan there (Score:5, Informative)
I missed 40 days of school in 8th grade (a personal high point), and I didn't get much better about it during highschool. Now I'm working on a Ph.D. in Neurobiology at a translation research and teaching hospital. I credit my not-being-at-my-public-school for the level of success I've achieved.
As a parent, it's my business where my kid is. I'll smash that damn device and hand it back to the truant officer on my kid's behalf. Schools have become the Juvenile Executive branch of the government, and it's not their responsibility. "We'll educate you with the information we want you to know, whether you like it or not!"
Send your kids to private school, or home school them; there is no law that says you have to send them to public school (at least in my state). There are options besides teaching them that its OK to completely disregard authority...