Picturing high school success: Why attendance matters most

Eastman Kodak couldn’t find enough skilled workers to make its line of digital cameras, so the upstate New York photography giant recently announced it is sending this production to a manufacturing firm in Singapore—marking the first time in more than a century that the company would completely outsource the labor and manufacture of a product.

Fellow New York manufacturing giants IBM and Xerox, along with other businesses large and small, are also turning to companies overseas where employees are geared for creative design and technical production.

What this trend means for our students

Workers require more academic and technical education than ever before. And employers are looking for their new hires to come to them job-ready. In fact, most of today’s jobs—from auto mechanics to Internet Web design—require additional training beyond high school, if not a two-year or four-year college education. Of the 30 fastest-growing occupations in the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2006-07 Occupational Outlook Handbook, only three list short-term, on-the-job training as the most significant source of post-secondary education or training.

Attendance is not a school elective

To move ahead, teens need the strong academic foundation of a high school education. To help better prepare them for the world of higher education and work, the high school curriculum has become more challenging and varied.

Additionally, the way teens learn is changing so it better reflects the work world they’ll soon enter. High school students are being asked to collaborate on long-term projects with their classmates both at school and electronically with their peers in other locations. They are also learning while using many of the same types of technologies (e.g., PowerPoint presentation software and desktop publishing) currently used in the workplace.

This type of learning takes dedication. And, unlike simple memorizations of facts, which can be done just about anywhere, teens need to be at school and on-task each day to get the most from hands-on learning.

Unfortunately, a lot of teens have yet to get this message.

School administrators say that many teens are not making regular attendance a priority. And, unless teens are at school and ready to learn, there’s not much that teachers can do to help prepare them for the world they are moving toward.

During the 2006 Union Pacific/Principals’ Partnership summer leadership institute, nearly 350 public high school principals were asked, “As the 2006-07 school year begins, what are the three most important actions a family should take to assure success for its high school student?”

School attendance was one of the most important factors in school success that respondents noted.

“Attendance is directly related to successfully completing high school. You can’t drop in occasionally and think that you can keep up,” said one high school principal. “Families need to get students to school. We’ll take responsibility for educating them once they’re here,” said another.

Helping teens make school their top priority

Although teens might be tempted to skip school on occasion, school needs to be the priority in their lives.  Along with strong reading, writing, mathematics and thinking skills, employers say they value such work habits as attendance, timeliness and dedication. Regular school attendance— especially when they’d rather not make the effort— is one means of teaching teens these all-important life skills.

Even though teens are moving toward young adulthood, parents still have the ability to influence their attitudes and behaviors. Here are some ways you can help instill an ethic for attendance and school performance:

• Talk in terms teens can relate to. Although school is not a paying job, the dedication teens put into it will pay off. Help them see how the attitudes they develop now are the ones they will carry into adulthood and can limit or expand their personal and professional options (e.g., If they repeatedly skip classes in college they’ll fail out and waste a lot of your family’s money. In a competitive workforce, frequently skipping work can cost them their jobs.)

• Familiarize yourself with the high school attendance policy. It can help to have the letter of the law on your side when trying to reason with teens. 

• Institute a work first/play later policy. This means that school attendance and schoolwork need to come before friends, extracurriculars and part-time jobs. Sometimes, the real reason teens are reluctant to go to school is that they haven’t finished assignments or presentations or prepared well for tests.

• Encourage reasonable bedtimes. On average, teens need eight to nine hours of sleep to be healthy and alert. As they move into the high school years, teens’ brains begin to signal them to stay up later—and to sleep in later the next day. Also the draw of the Internet and online conversations with friends can have teens burning the midnight oil, making early morning wake-ups and school start times difficult.

• Schedule medical and other appointments during non-school hours whenever possible. Arrange family vacations during school holidays or the summer recess so that students aren’t missing important lessons and struggling to make up for lost time.

Frequent absences can signal teen troubles…

If absences become common, they could signal personal, emotional or academic problems your teen might be having. Talk with your teen in caring, non-confrontational terms (“You’ve been missing a lot of school. Do you think it’s time to go see a doctor?” “What’s going on with your classes, friends, etc.?”) Enlist the help of your teen’s guidance counselor, teachers, school social worker or doctor. Working as a team can help provide a more complete picture of what might be the source of the attendance problem.

High school studies prep teens for higher ed and work

To help better prepare them for the world of higher education and work, the high school curriculum has become more challenging and varied. All teens who attend public high school in New York are now required to take coursework and pass Regents exams that demonstrate that they’ve mastered the basics such as English, mathematics, science, and history (U.S. and global) in order to graduate. They are also being encouraged to tackle more challenging math, science and technology electives that can give them more of a competitive edge. [top]