Ever since the state mandated that teachers would be evaluated based on test scores (thus eliminating final exam exemptions), students of MHS talked about how the attendance rate would drop dramatically; however, the truth of this situation may be a surprise.
Last year, while MHS still had exemptions, the average attendance rate was 97.1 percent. This year, after a rough estimate, the attendance rate is 96.52 percent, which is less than 1 percent lower than last year’s. The drop was not so dramatic after all.
“I’ve been doing this for over 10 years,” attendance secretary Mrs. Becky Bischoff said, “and the attendance rate hardly ever changes more than one percent whenever exam exemptions are affected. Even when exam exemptions were first created there was hardly any difference.”
What does this mean? Students are still coming to school without the reward at the end of the year. Whether it’s because they don’t want to fall behind in schoolwork or they can’t afford to miss, the exam exemptions didn’t matter as much as many people believed they did.
“There will always be kids who come to school every day and there will always be kids who just don’t,” Bischoff said.
But here’s the question: Should there still be some type of reward system at the end of the year to recognize kids who come to school every day?
The Pulse believes there should be. Why shouldn’t students be recognized for being at school a certain amount of days? Even if it was a small prize, it would be enough just to be acknowledged for their achievements.
