Tardy Policy and Difficult Students

Two decisions

Tardy policy.  

Principal:    Two years ago (as you remember) , our school had a considerably high population of low  income students.  We had over 3000 students.   One major problem was with students being tardy.  I discussed the situation with principals from other schools.   I adopted a tardy system from another principal who had great success and said that the tardies dropped to almost zero.  The policy involved a lock-out  whereby all tardy students were sent to the cafeteria.   Security and staff would then obtain students names and hold them there for a  90 minute period of  ISS.  This was done for all 4 periods of the school day.    The policy failed.  Instead we went to random lock-outs. Teachers reported names and late students parent’s were contacted.  Two infractions resulted in ISS the following day.

Me:  I remember that policy and I knew why it failed.  You took the tardy policy from one of our most affluent schools.  A full period lock out hurt their grade.  At the time, at our school, students didn’t care about the effect of being locked out of class either on their grade or a 1 period of ISS.  It was a large time expenditure of staff resources.  Random lock outs followed by referrals, parental contact and consequences seemed to have effect.

Principal:  Yes some effect.  We never really solved the tardy situation that year no matter what we did but at least we were not spending as much time.  As our academic growth improved, our tardies started to come down.  Now with less security associates, we have had teachers monitoring the halls during planning and this has truly reduced tardies and cutting since there’s nowhere (or fewer) places to hide. 

-----Final thoughts.  Tardy policy has always been an enigma in large high schools.  I advocate a policy that is a firm but flexible.  Other teachers will hate that and think it’s unfair or wishy-washy.  However, I think we have to think about logistics and the types of students involved.  First, some students (if you have trailers) are coming from a land far, far away.  I timed it myself . It can take almost 8 minutes at a good pace just to get from gym to a distance part of campus.  That’s the same time as a ray of sunlight to reach the earth.  Our school has down-sized and we have almost no trailers (yeah) so that problem has removed itself.  Second, students who cut/tardy are often given 5 or 10 days of OSS.  The students effectively fail the year.  I think chronic cutter-tardie should be given escorted to class.  I don’t know if we have the staff resources to do this but we could try.

Difficult students

Me:  Last year I came to you and offered to take in some difficult, regular students into my honors class.  These were students from other teachers.  I have done this in previous years, although it  usually involved switching students between my own class.    The goal was to provide a better academic environment for difficult students.  It didn’t work.

Principal:  It did and did not work.  Those regular classes were better off with some of the difficult students removed.  Teachers felt they were actually able to teach ! Unfortunately, the difficult students did not succeed and the honors students did not receive the kind of instruction they deserved.   In the future, I would keep those students in that regular classes and design better interventions. We should have had a parent/counselor/student meeting and developed a plan. 

---Final thoughts.  Having several difficult students did ruin my honors class (even just 2 was enough).  Some part of me would still like to try it.  Perhaps just one difficult student.  As I think it about now though, I realize it wouldn’t work.  Even if you could correct or tone down the behavior and simplify the work, you’d still have a student wondering what the heck they’re doing there.  Intervention with difficult students who contain in their regular class is probably the best way to go.  However, perhaps the implementation of a plan is where at least some success could come.  Every student can learn, but you can’t force them.  It makes me realize  that more thought/resources are needed for “the difficult students” issue.