SFUSD Playing Hookey When It Comes To Truancy

"If nothing changes, about 20 percent of our children will continue to drop out of school,” begins a recent civil grand jury report on San Francisco’s truancy problem. The report goes on to excoriate the administration of the San Francisco Unified School District (not to be confused with the Board of Education) under the leadership of Superintendent Carlos Garcia. (PDF of report here: Download Truancy Report.)

According to the report, territorial government employees, sloppy or nonexistent data gathering and zero centralized efforts are just some of the pillars that make up our Kafkaesque, impotent “system” of dealing with truancy. Of the 56,000 public school students in San Francisco, about 4,900 will be absent without an excuse for 20 or more days in the school year — which, according to the report, is “chronic truancy.”

The most damaging finding in the report is that no one at the district seems to understand that this is an emergency. “Public outrage is in order here!” juror Abraham Simmons said at a hearing before the Board of Supervisors Committee on Government Audits and Oversight.

Actually, there were two hearings on the truancy report: one on Oct. 22 and the other on Nov. 16. Having basically been called lazy and bureaucratic by the report, the district apparently saw no irony in sending zero people to the first hearing and five people to the second hearing.

“Defend yourself,” Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi demanded at the second hearing when it was the district team’s turn to speak.

Associate Superintendent Trish Bascom tried to explain that a number of changes are in the works at the district level. Where “student support services” used to be addressed by 11 separate departments, there are now three “areas.” Apparently, this constitutes progress.

When pressed by Supervisor Sophie Maxwell as to why the district’s efforts appear to be happening only recently, Executive Director of Support Services, Meyla Ruwin answered, “I hear your concern. We feel it deeply. We have felt it deeply. I have to say that also, as time has progressed, we have learned where some of the issues have been occurring, and we are working more collaboratively in partnership to answer those questions.”

Huh?

Boxing such babble proved too much for even the motivated supervisors, who, like the jurors, gave up on understanding the current “system.” Instead, committee members Maxwell and Mirkarimi voted to give the district three months to submit a comprehensive plan to combat truancy. (PDF of the Board's action Download Truancy Resolution.)

For the district’s sake, I hope that plan is stellar. The City gives millions to the district each year, some of which is used to deal with truancy. Now that we’re desperate to cut spending, yesterday’s pork will soon resemble today’s dead turkey.

Comments

[kwk]

Those chronic truants ("about 4,900 will be absent without an excuse for 20 or more days in the school year")--figure they're prepping for a high paying job as Muni driver.
You imagine the job interview, "Your resume says you graduated Lowell and didn't miss one day of class from the 10th through the 12th grade. That's impressive, we don't see that too often."
He smiles across the desk at her.
She continues, "But I really don't think you'd fit in with the kind of people we hire here."

[Caroline]

Hi Melissa.

I can't really take issue with this particular Grand Jury report, because there is no doubt that truancy and dropout rates should be lower. Of course, you or I could say that without the time and effort that the Grand Jurors put in. It's obvious, and it's a universal problem that no diverse high-poverty public school district anywhere (that is, anywhere in the world) has solved.

I do have to question the Grand Jurors' obsession with attacking our challenged public school district, though. I haven't read THIS report, but I did critique their 2008 report on the school assignment process, line by line.

They got so many facts wrong and misunderstood so many situations in that report that I could only conclude that these people do not have the cognitive facility to actually understand complex situations. I'm not talking about *statements with which I disagreed*; I mean hard facts.

It provides no benefit to the community when volunteers blither around in a fog of incomprehension trying to make sense of complexities that they just don't have the wit to understand, let alone trying to pronounce solutions.

I think this Grand Jury is doing more harm than good when it comes to trying to "fix" our schools. If they can't understand the situation they shouldn't be trying to make pronouncements on it. And they all need to take to heart the H.L. Mencken quote: "For every complex problem, there is a solution that is clear, simple and wrong."

Here's my critique of the 2008 report on student assignment. If my kids had done such poor research and gotten so many facts wrong on reports, they wouldn't have made it through their (SFUSD) middle school:

http://www.sfschools.org/2008/06/flawed-grand-jury-report-on-sfusd.html

[Melissa Griffin]

Caroline,

I have no doubt that grand juries have gotten things wrong in the past. That's one reason why this report stood out from the rest. The district just had no rebuttal to the findings. AND, instead of dismissing the report as outside of their jurisdiction (which is what the board usually does with grand jury reports that involve the school district) the board of supes actually demanded a plan.

Thank you for writing!!

-Melissa

[Caroline]

Well, as I say, the big picture is that dropouts and truancy are universal problems to which no diverse, high-poverty school district anywhere in the world has found an easy solution. So beating up our school district over it without some specific solutions is simply not very productive, and omitting the perspective that it's a universal problem that has no easy solutions (nor even hard solutions) is just clueless.

But the perspective that the Grand Jury members just do not, collectively, have the cognitive ability to do competent research and understand the situations they're researching is rather key too. And so is the point that they are very clearly out to bash and harm our public schools.

I believe that people they interview during their "research" are not supposed to discuss the details, but this is real life, so I can also point out that several people they have interviewed over SFUSD issues have said it was very clear that the jurors' minds were made up beforehand and they were paying no attention whatsoever to the witnesses responses.

These people are really doing more harm than good, and they need to be called out on it. I'm sorry, because I know they're volunteers, but can't they do beach cleanups or some project that doesn't require intelligence if they want to help the community?

[Grant H]

Caroline, let me make sure I have this right: You agree with the GJ's conclusions. You agree with the substance of the report. And yet for some reason, because of issues you've had with prior GJ's (which may or may not have shared any personnel overlap with this GJ), you believe the persons who arrived at the correct conclusions in the report "need to be called out," but that the "challenged public school district" deserves a reprieve from being "attack[ed]" and "beat[en] up," even though it's the managing body that ultimately sets and enforces policies to combat truancy/dropouts?

Huh? Come again? The GJ does something right and you want to "call them out"? And the school district is failing miserably and you believe they're being wrongly "attacked" and "beaten up"?

Wow. Try that one on your SFUSD kids. See if they detect a logical error.

[Caroline]

I think the GJ has decided to declare war on SFUSD. That's what I think they need to be called out for.

I have no idea if the current GJ is made up of the same individuals who were blundering about a fog of hopeless incompetence and uncomprehension when they tried (or allegedly tried) to understand and report on issues concerning SFUSD's assignment system.

If the personnel are different, they appear to have maintained the same determination to beat up on our public schools.

I'll repeat again. Truancy and high dropout rates are a UNIVERSAL challenge faced by EVERY SINGLE diverse, high-poverty school district in the nation (and, where the school systems are comparable, the world). Of course I agree that truancy and high dropout rates are a bad thing, so in that very large sense I agree with the substance of the report.

However, behaving like the truancy and dropout issues are some unique failing in SFUSD that need to be "exposed," which is the way the GJ report is being treated, is nonsensical. So I disagree that attacking and beating up the school district over it is doing "something right."

[Katy]

Caroline, you are not making any sense. The report is not making it out like the truancy problems are "some unique failing in SFUSD" ... that's your weird fuzzy take on it. Using your fuzzy logic, we should just rubber stamp everything SFUSD does, because, heck, things are shitty everywhere.

You melodramatically label ANY (yes ANY!) criticism of SFUSD as "attacking and beating up".

SFUSD deserves criticism. It deserves BUCKETS of criticism. But there you are, as usual, waving your cheerleader pom poms ... chanting and singing how "SFUSD is the highest performing urban school district in California" ... and yeah, that may be technically true, but only about 1 out of 5 African American children in SFUSD scores at proficient or above on English and Math tests. Only about 20%. While that may be BETTER than any other urban district in California, it still SUCKS, don'cha think? "BETTER does not mean GOOD" as my favorite English Teacher used to say.

I'm glad the Grand Jury has declared war on SFUSD. Someone has to. I hope the Grand Jury investigates the SFUSD's joke of a Special Education Department next. BRING IT ON.

[Caroline]

Katy, you know perfectly well that I don't label ANY criticism of SFUSD as attacking and beating up, and that I don't blindly wave my cheerleader pom-poms at every opportunity -- because I can easily cite issues with SFUSD that you and I have joined forces in criticizing.

We have different views about the impact of the cognitively challenged, blundering, uncomprehending Grand Jury's declaration of war on SFUSD.

To me, an all-out attack on our public schools does harm -- to our schools, to our kids and to our community. I view that as an entirely different animal from intelligent, informed, specific criticisms in areas that are not stubborn, intractable issues throughout education and communities worldwide.

If the Grand Jury did investigate SFUSD's Special Education department, my informed speculation is that they'd recommend reducing funding and services, because they would utterly fail to grasp the need, the legal issues, the morality and ethics, and whatever other complexities require at least functional intelligence to comprehend.

And by the way, dear readers, Katy IS correct that SFUSD is the highest-performing urban school district in California. She's also correct that it struggles with a stubborn achievement gap -- as does every other diverse, high-poverty urban school district in the nation and the world.

I was in Montecito shopping center in San Rafael earlier today, and noted that the shopping center has a generic sign: SUPPORT OUR SCHOOLS. The high-income, high-functioning San Rafael community is aware that supporting public schools is beneficial to the entire community. That doesn't mean "never criticize anything that's wrong," but it does mean "don't declare all-out war against our schools," too.

[Caroline]

I have to add one more point.

There are issues involving SFUSD that we bloggers (like me) and parent advocates (like Katy and me) scream and yell about that the mainstream press doesn't cover because they aren't able to meet the standard of research and proof with the resources they have.

For example, Katy investigated and revealed the obscenely lavish spending habits of a top-level SFUSD administrator, Francisca Sanchez, in a post on BeyondChron -- but the Chronicle hasn't followed up, apparently because mainstream journalism standards would call for so much legwork comparing Sanchez' Champagne tastes to the expense accounts of other SFUSD administrators, of administrators in other districts, etc.

And yet. The Grand Jury has no standards at all -- they don't need to be intelligent enough to even remotely understand what they're "researching," they don't need to grasp any complexities or put anything in context, they don't need to be accurate (and believe me, they aren't) -- they can just basically write up all their clueless, uninformed and whimsical opinions and issue them with the imprimatur of an official report. And the press -- the same press that won't report on Francisca Sanchez' expense-account retreats at the Claremont resort because of its scrupulous standards -- covers the Grand Jury's hooey as credible! Does that even make sense?

[Melissa Griffin]

Caroline,
I covered the report because the SFUSD had no answer to it, and didn't even send anyone to the first meeting to discuss it. AND because members of the board found it important enough to act upon, which is unusual.

Before you blast away at me or the CGJ any further, I suggest you actually read the report with which you take so much umbrage.

-Melissa

[Caroline]

I'm not blasting you at all, Melissa.

But it's a bizarre system. I specifically used the Chronicle as an example -- they apply such scrupulous standards to their own reporting that they won't touch important stories. Then they give all this credibility to GJ reports, which employ no standards whatsoever -- none for accuracy, none for understanding, none for ethics, none for intelligence.

My issues with the GJ are based on their previous two reports on SFUSD, which I did read thoroughly -- plus on the fact that they are making it clear that they are waging war on our public schools. But I guess I have to waste more unpaid volunteer time reading their latest output too.

[Caroline]

-- Here's a quick take on the GJ report on truancy.

Aspects of the report that are valid:

-- Yes, SFUSD's truancy and dropout rates are too high. But I have to put the asterisk here, as before -- there is zero mention of comparing this to any other cities, national rates, anything. It simply makes no sense whatsoever to report this in a vacuum. And if these problems are universal and nationwide, it similarly makes no sense to report on them as if there are easy solutions that SFUSD petulantly refuses to pursue. That's a fatal flaw in the report. Did the GJ even consider looking at other districts' rates and whether these problems had ever been solved anywhere? Did it even occur to them? There's no indication.

Back to valid aspects:
-- Yes, SFUSD has creaky, inconsistent, outdated, unreliable technology and record-keeping.
-- Yes, SFUSD can be a maddeningly complex, unyielding and defensive bureaucracy.
-- Yes, it can be difficult to get information from SFUSD.
-- Yes, CBOs that work with SFUSD were probably wary of being publicly identified as having ratted out SFUSD to the GJ. But that's not all that outrageous if, as "partners," they depend on goodwill from SFUSD staff to maintain that status.
-- Yes, people within SFUSD were probably wary of or hostile to the GJ -- after all, the GJ has been repeatedly bashing SFUSD and individuals who work for SFUSD and clearly set out to do it again, so that's hardly surprising.

The tone of aggrieved outrage at the poor treatment the GJ feels it received from SFUSD pervades its report, which seems to me to be rather childish and highly unprofessional. Whether SFUSD is nice to the GJ is beside the point of the report.

Continued...

Problems that I see with the report:
-- The big one, again is its failure to compare SFUSD truancy and dropout rates to those in other comparable school districts, or even to allude to the fact that this isn't a unique issue to SFUSD. And its one effort to cite programs being implemented elsewhere is fatally bungled; see below.
-- Throughout, it repeatedly pronounces programs and proposed solutions with no specifics and/or backup ("part of the answer lies in outreach to families before truancy becomes a problem") as to why the GJ feels they would work. Are there more specifics? Is something like this working elsewhere? Did someone knowledgeable recommend this? There's no clue.
-- The report glowingly describes programs in Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Jacksonville, Fla., which it says SFUSD refuses to emulate. But one problem here: Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston all have higher dropout rates than SFUSD's (I can't find Jacksonville's in a quick online search) -- and the GJ report neglects to mention that. Did our intrepid GJ researchers not think to check into those cities' dropout rates (or not have the research skills to do so) before they cited their programs as successes? Or did they look at the dropout rates in those cities and decide not to mention them because it would discredit their claim that those programs would be solutions -- that is, were they actively being dishonest?
-- There's a sneering tone, to the point of sounding juvenile, throughout the report that strongly backs up my and others' views that the GJ has declared war on SFUSD ("SFUSD is poised to argue truancy is being reduced, no one else understands the problem, additional programs are on the way, the Strategic Plan will make 'joyful learners' of us all, and we should just trust them...") Sometimes it's even dishonest: "The Board of Education and the Board of Supervisors each point fingers at the other while explaining that truancy is 'not our problem'." (Using quotation marks around a snippet that is clearly not a quote would be a serious offense in journalism AND in an SFUSD middle school research report.)
-- The report seems to wobble back and forth as to whether it views SFUSD's assertion that truancy is an issue for city agencies and police to deal with as valid, or as a contemptible weaseling excuse. In the end, I'm honestly not clear which is the case. Are the Grand Jurors?
-- As a parent volunteer and not a teacher or school administrator, I can only say that there are many areas -- recommendations and issues that the GJ clearly views as lost opportunities for easy quick solutions -- in which my gut is that there are two sides to the story. If I were a professional educator, I would probably see far more, and more clearly. For example: "Teachers do not always accurately record truancies... [partly] because they hope to protect the students. ... SFUSD personnel acknowledge that some schools have been reluctant to record all truancies because they fear that the District Attorney's policies are too punative (sic)." Shouldn't we know more about what those educators' concerns are before the GJ writes them off as stupid?
-- One example of unintended consequences that the GJ clearly doesn't have the imagination or intellect to spot is when the report (in two places) treats absence excuse notes from parents/guardians as suspect and to be investigated. It doesn't take much discernment to see the issue with that: If school staff decide to sharply question absence notes from likely truants but not other students, they will be trusting my blond daughter's absence notes and sharply questioning notes brought in by black and Latino students -- that's a given since truancy is much higher in those groups. Then the GJ can do a whole new report on racist treatment of black and Latino students by school staff. And of course in the cases where those notes were legitimately written by parents/guardians, just picture some poor attendance clerk getting yelled at and even threatened when she questions them. Perhaps the Grand Jurors should be volunteering to make those calls.

I could go on, but I'm out of time and bandwidth. I did that hastily and at the end of a long day, so I hope I'm making sense.

[Steve G]

Fascinating discussion. Stumbled across an SFGate article Kamala Harris has posted on her site discussing her efforts to reduce truancy. Sadly, the main gains were in elementary school kids, but I tend to think once a kid has bad habits it's hard to change them, so starting in elementary school and tracing the program up would be a good thing.

The correlations between violent crime and high school drop outs are astounding, so it does actually make a lot of sense for the DA to pay some attention to local truancy rates, and the excuse that it's a universal problem does not logically extend to deciding to do nothing to work on reducing the severity.

http://www.kamalaharris.org/news/462

[Caroline]

Elementary students are almost entirely truant because their ****ed-up parents didn't get them to school, Steve G. It's a different situation, though of course that situation is likely to lead to the students' own habitual truancy later on. I think that with many untogether parents, educating them, guilt-tripping them and/or threatening them with legal consequences may have some effect. With teens -- well, if you know any, you know just how likely they are to listen to adults in authority.