[rusabd]

It certainly school's fault. Maryland has truancy laws: https://www.peoples-law.org/truancy

Specifically: "Under Maryland law, a truant student is one who is “unlawfully absent” from school for more than: 8 days in any quarter, 15 days in any semester, OR 20 days in a school year."

Also, "What happens when a student is found to be truant? The student will be referred to the county board’s system of active intervention. Note that each county must develop a system of active intervention for truant students.

A school system representative will investigate the cause of the truancy. This representative may provide counseling or even notify the Department of Juvenile Services. "

There is whole system designed to handle such cases and it failed miserably

[edbob]

If the system tries to force compliance, it is invariably attacked for disproportionately penalizing minorities (even if the penalties are proportionate to non-compliance rates). How is the system actually going to force compliance without being attacked as racist?

It seems very logical (however shameful) that the system would optimize for passively allowing students to age out of the system, as letting minority students fail doesn't have anywhere near as much blowback as fining or locking up disadvantaged people for truancy.

[HeroOfAges]

Not sure why this comment is being downvoted. This is one of the unintended consequences of viewing every unequal outcome between ethnic groups as proof of racism.

[civilized]

Foreseeable consequences are not unintended. https://colorado-libertarian.com/2010/03/22/rcs-iron-laws/

[rusabd]

> How is the system actually going to force compliance without being attacked as racist?

Focus on actual outcomes would be a good start. I would replace the whole school administration with someone more capable.

[mlyle]

The big problem is that no one more capable wants to work there.

We have a mild teacher shortage across the board (which may become major with reports of as many as 40% of teachers seriously considering leaving the profession this year). And then in turn, inner city schools are worse workplaces... which attract worse peers... You need a hell of a martyr complex to take this on, and even if you have it you won't last.

And throwing money at comp won't fix this, either: that's not a great motivator to get the people with the passion to fix this.

[rusabd]

Someone quoted 15k USD spent in Baltimore for each student. That is a lot of money to attract top talent.

[mlyle]

Yup, but money isn't great at motivating people to work hard; a lot of evidence implies it even does the opposite. And a huge chunk of that money is vacuumed up by administration.

Inner city school systems are great at grinding up passionate personnel, making them quit or just surrender to do things that look good on paper but don't improve anything.

[rusabd]

Looks you are actually found who needs to be replaced

[mtVessel]

Is it? How do you know? Have you reviewed the budgets? Do you work in education in Baltimore, and thus, have a sense of what an appropriate number would be?

I don't know the answers, but I do know this -- it's a hell of a lot less than what gets spent in the NY metro area.

[todd8]

Here is the data.

According to the US Census[1], out of the largest 100 US Public School systems Baltimore ranked near the very top in spending per child (5th out of 100). Baltimore spent $15,793 per child. Only New York and Boston spent considerably more.

[1] https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2020/school-s...

[edbob]

Fines and jail time are the "actual outcomes" of truancy charges, and are much more immediate than proficiency tests and graduation rates. You simply can't force people to go to school without also punishing some of the parents and students, who are disproportionately in disadvantaged groups.

[rusabd]

In this specific case I didn't any failure of enforcement at all because there weren't any. The school administration just dropped the ball without any explanation and no corrective action against _itself_. I guess tree-jobs-mum doesn't have much time going to school and make sure administration does its job.

[edbob]

We've had years of Obama administration policies specifically designed to prevent enforcement actions against minority students on the grounds of such enforcement being racist. The system is in perfect alignment with the incentives given to it. The problem is that those incentives sometimes lead to outcomes like the case we are discussing.

A new administator or new system with the same incentives is likely going to give the same results.

[rusabd]

I can hardly believe that the system designed by intelligent people produces unintended outcomes after all these years.

[mlyle]

It's not like the systems we're talking about were performing well under Reagan/Bush, under Clinton, under G.W., or under Trump, either..

Truancy enforcement didn't work too well. Whether laxer truancy approaches end up with better outcomes overall is open to debate, but it's not like there's a clear answer.

[SturgeonsLaw]

What kind of a fucked up system throws kids in jail because they skipped school?

[edbob]

It is usually the parents that are penalized, but that's still pretty devastating to the kids. As for what kind of fucked up system does that, I was surprised to learn that it's something that some progressives have been pushing for[0][1], so I gather that it's a bipartisan thing. But it's fortunately fairly rare for someone to actually be jailed. In my personal experience, it was the threat of jail time that dramatically escalated the stress of the situation.

[0] https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/10/17/924766186... [1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kamala-harris-truancy-arrests...

[upbeat_general]

Why does the school system need to fine or lock people up? Sure that’s what would be required to force compliance but I don’t think the issue is that kids don’t want to go to school at all.

The parent comment even mentions that they have the option to contact juvenile services but can also provide counseling. That seems like the real answer in probably the vast majority of cases.

[edbob]

> I don’t think the issue is that kids don’t want to go to school at all.

This is an incredible assumption. There are probably millions of people (Paul Graham, for one) who would agree with Scott Alexander's "description of experiencing school as tortuous": one such example, "Scott, your description of school-as-hell deeply resonated with me. I can say without exaggeration that my time in the public school system was more miserable to me, and left me with deeper scars and issues, than my time in Iraq."[0]. Most of these complaints about child-prison hell-schools are from people who went to far better schools than the one in the article. I spent ten years in prison, and I have far more hatred for the public school system than I do for the prison system.

I agree that counseling could help in many cases, perhaps most, but it's deeply mistaken to say that the vast majority of kids are willing to go to school. There will always be a significant number of kids who simply don't want to go, or would rather spend their days involved in drugs or gangs. Plenty of people think that going to school is "acting white".

[0] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/highlights-from-the-co...

[Consultant32452]

A friend of mine is a public school teacher. They have a standing policy to not report anything to the state for minority students, even violent ones. This is because it shows up on reports and makes the school look bad, school gets accused of racism.

[macspoofing]

Let's say the school failed miserably in notifying the parent about this kid (and that's not settled fact, the school claims they did, but for argument's sake let's assume they didn't)...SO WHAT??? How does that absolve the parent of responsibility? How could this parent not be aware what her kid has been doing all these years? She didn't bother looking at his report card even once(the web portal is open to all parents)? Didn't bother meeting one of his teachers even once? Who is ultimately responsible for raising this kid? School or the parent?

[jdavis703]

The report said the parent was working three jobs. I don’t know how we can expect someone like this to be a good parent. The blame here at least partly goes to a system that doesn’t provide all parents with the resources to raise successful children.

[macspoofing]

It's the system's fault. It's society's fault. It's the school board's fault. It's the school's fault. It's the teacher's fault. Who else's fault is it?

[brnt]

The only thing at fault is the cultural need to isolate fault.

We've created a society, a system far too complex for such simple attributions. You're only fooling yourself if you blame any one of those parties.

A whole system analysis and solution is the only way to make meaningful progress.

[richwater]

Everyone but the parents

[umvi]

I think the argument is yes it's the parents' fault. But that's not something we can directly fix. We can directly fix school budgets and stuff so that's what gets the blame. How do you fix broken families from a government perspective?

[lurquer]

Abolish divorce, criminalize adultery, castrate men who knock up women out of wedlock...

Something less drastic?

How about this..

Look at this thread. You’ll read all kinds of excuses for and blame of the mother.

Yet nobody mentioned the father.

A father — under our system — faces no penalty for neglecting a child. None. In a custody order where the mother has primary, the father has NO OBLIgATION to see the kid.

This is so engrained in our culture that, like I said, the thread doesn’t even mention a father...

[SamPatt]

Maybe we shouldn't be expecting the government to solve every problem in society, and the fact that we have this expectation might actually be making the problems worse by not allowing other non-governmental forces to play out?

[mlyle]

Yah. Because these broken families are going to produce more broken students next generation. The only option is to fix the system somehow.

[why_Mr_Anderson]

I think we should blame Canada! from South Park movie for those who didn't get the reference, it's scary how relevant it still is

[pvaldes]

> I don’t know how we can expect someone like this to be a good parent.

You either are or not. My bet would be that the parent is fully aware, but ashamed and in denial about the situation.

A busy mother is still a mother. Should know when their son is lying. She could be tricked for a month, for one year maybe, but when 4 entire years passed and she claims that didn't suspected anything... either she barely talks in the dinner with the boy about his day or she carefully circumnavigated the theme and don't really wanted to know the details of his education.

And some parents just don't like the school system. I know a case of a divorced mother that deliberately boycotted the education of her daughter repeatedly asking her to be at home so she didn't feel alone. The outraged school wanted to do a point and the truant girl had to repeated several years, with the same outcome and less effort put on it each year. Everybody, was relieved when she eventually reached the legal age, was dumped from the school, show the middle finger to everybody and keep with their former life (Partied hard, socialized a lot, found a partner and married). We could say that she is doing fine, in fact.

[cannabis_sam]

>You either are or not.

This is a lie you tell yourself to be able to continue to look down on people.

In the real world, people are affected by their circumstances, regardless of whether they have the ability to change them.

[pvaldes]

> This is a lie you tell yourself to be able to... (unrelated bad thing, you should be ashamed, blah, blah, blah...).

Not, this is a dichotomy covering all the possible outcomes, thus can't be a lie, by definition.

Some people are good parents, other are terrible at parenthood. Where is the lie in my statement? There are millions of examples.

If your son failed the school for four years, failed in ALL classes, didn't learn anything in your face, and you are clueless about that, don't blame other people. You have a responsibility in this train crash. You must calm down, do damage control and exercise more the communication part in your parenthood. You can be busy and tired, but this is no excuse for not showing the slighest interest for your boy's life, future plans, interests, or education. Not at this level.

Being a good parent is more than being just a food providing machine.

[RhysU]

Not looking at a report card for multiple years is not a resource issue.

[Alupis]

The system did provide the resources to raise successful children. This parent chose to ignore all of it.

Parents have to care for a child to do well (or even mediocre) in school. A child isn't going to choose to do difficult homework in lieu of video games if left up to their own choices.

If we examined the parent's school grades, we'd probably find a similarity, unfortunately. Same with the parent's parents. All this ultimately leads to working 3+ low-skill/low-education jobs just to keep a roof over your head. Every statistic about high school graduation rates firmly says so.

[t-writescode]

> the web portal is open to all parents

... you even assume that the family has internet at home...

[jonas21]

In the first 60 seconds of the video you can see:

- The mom holding an iPhone 12

- Her son playing video games on a large TV then pulling a smartphone out of his pocket.

I think it's reasonable to assume they have internet access, at the very least through their phones.

It's fine to challenge someone's assumptions, but it kind of feels like you're trying to pull a "gotcha" that doesn't apply in this case.

[cameldrv]

If you meet a poverty threshold, you can get a free government subsidized phone including internet.

[macspoofing]

You got to be kidding me.

[t-writescode]

I don't think you even begin to comprehend the beginnings of an idea of the poverty that some people in the United States live in.

In Florida, my mom taught students whose homes *didn't even have floors*.

[VRay]

I think a lot of the people here just don't understand how overwhelmed/exhausted people in serious poverty are. In the USA, with enough gumption and know-how it's theoretically possible to get government-provided internet/food/health care and work your way up to a decent career.

BUT that's a very challenging process, and we should still have compassion for people who haven't managed to pull it off yet.

(I have no input on the specifics of this situation though, just trying to provide some context)

[ALittleLight]

I recently helped an unemployed friend with getting healthcare. It was actually incredibly easy and took maybe thirty minutes start to finish - where "start" was "Do you know if I can get health insurance through this program?" And "finish" was having good health insurance with active coverage confirmed on the phone with papers about to be mailed.

[nate_meurer]

Per a sibling comment, this lady has an expensive iPhone. And floors.

[slibhb]

The idea that we can offload child-rearing to the government is insane and will never, ever work. When shown proof of that, your response is to double down on your mistake. Parents need to actively encourage and discipline children. The fact that this isn't obvious to everyone is deeply troubling.

What we're seeing here is the breakdown of extra-legal authority and responsibility. Truancy laws and CPS only work when the vast majority of parents do their job.

[rusabd]

> Truancy laws and CPS only work when the vast majority of parents do their job.

That is a dangerous thought. The next thing one might say is why we need truancy laws and CPS if not to harass well-behaved middle class parents.

[slibhb]

That's the opposite of what I said. Truancy laws and CPS work great when parents are "well-behaved".

But they aren't a substitute for "well-behaved" parents. No matter how much money the government spends it will not be able to raise children.

I don't know how to solve this problem but I am sure any solution involves recognizing what's going on here, which you are not doing.

[rusabd]

> But they aren't a substitute for "well-behaved" parents

Should we discourage some people having children then?

[justsid]

Realistically and objectively, the answer has to be yes. Although you get into all sorts of issues if you actually go down that line, so practically the answer is no.

[unishark]

I think the point was the student will still fail. Truancy laws can force them to sit in a chair. But they can't make the student care about passing when their parent isn't holding them to any such standards.

[seiferteric]

In general I agree, except he was in the top half of the class... So it sounds like at least half the school just routinely does not show up. So how does the system deal with a situation like this? I think it would completely overwhelm the school/local PD.

[rusabd]

Well, the school was fully aware what is going on and instead of taking any action as they are obliged to do they decided to do exactly nothing. The school might not be able to do much in this case, but the _school system_ has enough resources to change the situation.

[unishark]

> ...they decided to do exactly nothing.

They were very slow and weak about responding, but you're overstating. They did a few things over the three years, up to and including finally bumping the child back to 9th grade.

The mother apparently did exactly nothing. Until the school's actions finally hit home hard enough.

[rusabd]

The headline literally says "ranks near top half of class with 0.13 GPA". So it is not an isolated incident. That is a lot of mothers who did exactly nothing

[unishark]

Maybe? I don't know.

My complaint is with your misuse of language to make a point. "Exactly nothing" means beyond zero is excluded. At worst you need to use "essentially nothing" or some such vague/weasel words rather than stating logical falsehoods.

[civilized]

What's your plan? Let's hear it

[rayiner]

When only 60% of kids show up to school on a given day, as in this school, there is nothing the school can do to fix things. Laws and rules and enforcement are there to nudge occasional non-compliants back in track. Social norms are what are supposed to make the vast majority of people follow the rules.

[JustSomeNobody]

It is not just the school's fault; it is society's. This is a systemic issue with how the poor are treated. Our medical system is a shambles, so disorders go untreated. Nutrition is a problem (can't have a healthy mind when you don't have enough good food to eat). Parents were victims of the system so they'll rarely be able to get a job that will get them out of this. It's cyclical, the parents, and eventually the children of these kids, go through the same thing. Over and over and over. It won't stop on its own.

[cwhiz]

Are you serious? Kid isn’t showing up to school, and you think the school is to blame?

What the hell happened to personal responsibility? The parents are 1000000% to blame here. The school system isn’t your nanny.