As a teacher at Santa Fe High School for the last ten years, I have seen various tardy policies implemented with varying degrees of effectiveness. One such policy created an absence for the student each time they accumulated three tardies. The students would then have to attend ‘make up time’ in order to regain their 90% attendance rate required by the state in order to receive credit for their coursework. The result of this policy was that students were passing their classes, but risked losing credit if they failed to make up the absences. Students who had chronic tardiness were, sometimes, being retained and missed graduating on time. The policy had little effect on the number of times students were tardy.
The current policy requires teachers to contact parents and issue an in-class after school detention before referring students to the assistant principals for subsequent tardiness. The assistant principals then have a range of consequences that will be assigned based on the number of times a student is tardy. In order for these consequences to occur, the teachers must fill out and submit office referrals each time a student is tardy to their class beginning with the third tardy. I have observed that some teachers tend not to enforce this policy due to the number of office referrals they would be generating on a daily basis.
Having seen various tardy policies put in place with varying degrees of effectiveness leads me to these questions:
How can the current tardy policy be revised in order to increase teacher enforcement of the policy?What effect will the increased enforcement of the current tardy policy have on those students who are chronically tardy to class?
GOAL: The goal of this action research is to revise and refine the current tardy policy at Santa Fe High School in order to increase enforcement of the policy and decrease student tardiness resulting in fewer disruptions to student learning at the beginning of the class period.
PERSON TIME LINE NEEDED
ACTION STEP(S) RESPONSIBLE START/END RESOURCES EVALUATION
1. Create a survey to Susan Bledsoe Aug 2010 Survey Tabulate the
be completed by all results of the
returning teachers to survey
determine the rate of
teacher enforcement
of last year’s tardy
policy.
2. Create a list of Susan Bledsoe Aug 2010 Student Creation of
students who have Attendance Clerk attendance research sample
exhibited chronic records
tardiness.
3. Review the available Susan Bledsoe Aug-Oct Professional Development
literature dealing with Administrators 2010 journals of ideas for
tardiness in the high revision of tardy
school population. policy.
4. Brainstorm ideas for Susan Bledsoe Aug-Oct None Development
revisions to the tardy Leadership 2010 of ideas for
policy in collaboration team revision of tardy
with the high school policy.
leadership team.
5. Implement policy All teachers Oct ’10-May ’11 Tardy policy On-going
Revisions All administrators monitoring of
student tardiness
6. Monitoring Susan Bledsoe Oct ’10-May ’11 Attendance report Report comparing
effectiveness of tardy Attendance clerk for research tardy rates pre-
policy revisions on Assistant Principals sample on a and post-revision.
reducing student monthly basis
tardiness.
7. Monitor Susan Bledsoe May-June Teacher survey Compare pre-
effectiveness of policy 2011 and post-revision
revisions on teacher rates of enforce-
enforcement of the tardy ment of policy.
policy.
8. Report findings Susan Bledsoe June 2011 PowerPoint Teacher feedback
Presentation
