Graphs and Laughs: Impact of Missing School

From nationally acclaimed economist Elliot Eisenberg, Ph.D's blog, Graphs and Laughs:

While school closures for bad weather may hurt student achievement, absenteeism profoundly hurts achievement. Each one-day increase in absenteeism lowers math scores by 5% of a standard deviation! Schools deal with school-wide closures by adding days or speeding up the curriculum, but can't do so with absenteeism. Rather than experimenting with costly and unproven longer days or longer school years, reduce truancy! It's low hanging fruit!

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In the News: Tossed Out Lunches

I know, I know, it's not Tuesday. But I saw this article and had to talk about it. The Associated Press has reported that parents stated approximately 50 elementary students in Salt Lake City, Utah had their lunches tossed in the trash because money was owed on their food accounts. Cafeteria servers are unable to see the debts owed until the child checks out with their lunch tray. For health reasons these lunches couldn't be served to other students, so they were taken away and thrown out, and the students with overdue bills were given fruit and milk.

Now, keeping in mind that the news isn't always accurate, if this report is even remotely true, it's disturbing. With the economy the way it is and the unemployment numbers what they are, overdue lunch accounts aren't surprising. Families are struggling. But to mortify any child and draw attention to his overdue account in such a public fashion not only goes against common decency, it sets up the child to be teased and bullied by his peers. Isn't that something schools are working to curb? And let's not forget, this isn't the child's fault, yet he is the one suffering for it.

What do you think about this?