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Home > Blogs > Springfield Schools News and Issues > Archives > 2008 > October > 06
Monday, October 6, 2008
Do candidates pass the truth test on education?
I’d like to introduce you all to one of my favorite new Web sites: politifact.com.
The St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly developed this fun fact-checker site that checks the accuracy of each presidential and running mate candidate’s claims. They were fact checking live last week during the vice presidential debate and also vet candidate’s statements in interviews, speeches and campaign ads.
Here’s the section on education statements. And it very well illustrates my point last week that education isn’t a hot topic in this election: On the list of most recent checks, Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul claims are pretty close to the top.
You can look by candidate, by subject, by political party and by a whole-lot-of-other-things, too.
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Schools take count this week
This week is Count Week, the annual set of five days used to determine things like enrollment and funding for local school districts.
Each day this week, officials will count the number of students in school. Any missing students must have an excused absence in order to count in enrollment. Students with unexcused absences can’t be included in the day’s tally.
At the end of the week, the attendance over the last five days will be averaged and that’s the Average Daily Membership of the district. This number is used for all sorts of fun calculations like the district’s funding for the year.
After this week we’ll also know how many students are attending charter schools, choosing to open enroll or using vouchers to attend private schools. And we’ll have the official count for Springfield High School’s enrollment.
See? All sorts of fun.
So be on the lookout for those numbers in the next few weeks.
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Springfield ramps up truancy efforts
For each day a student misses school, it takes two days to catch up, according to research.
That’s why several Springfield entities — the juvenile court, juvenile probation system, Springfield police and the city schools — are teaming up to crack down on truancy this year.
A couple weeks ago on the first sweep, 25 students were brought in by these groups’ efforts, said Wynette Carter, chief probation officer for juveniles in Clark County.
Authorities are making another sweep today. When they find students who are skipping classes, they take them to a central location where they call the parents and try to determine why the student isn’t attending school.
From there, officials have a few options to try to get the kids back in school and choose the option that will work best to encourage the student to attend each day, said Carter.
Look for more on the sweeps tomorrow.
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