Unwell or unprepared? Attendance rates suffer as students call in ‘sick’

The school is ranked as the 172th best high school in the nation and 27th statewide, according to 2015 US News and World Report’s annual survey.

But this may change with last December’s modification of a school’s API (Academic Performance Index), a measurement of academic progress used to rank schools, to include not only standardized test scores and graduation rates, but also attendance rates.

Compared to other top-notch schools in the country, the school has success in test scores and graduation rates, but doesn’t have as good of a record when it comes to attendance, according to assistant principal Brian Thompson.

“When students don’t attend school, it not only hurts them academically, but moving forward, it’s going to hurt the perception of our school,” Thompson said.

According to Thompson, the school’s current month-to-month attendance rate of 97.5 to 98.5 percent is below the 99 percent plus rate that the administration hopes for.

To explore a possible cause of these absences, The Falcon conducted a survey on Facebook, asking students if they had ever called in for an excused absence because they were not prepared for class that day.

Seventeen percent of freshmen admitted to skipping class when not truly sick, and the numbers only went up from there — 26 percent for sophomores, 36 percent for juniors and 59 percent for seniors. In total, 35 percent of the 320 surveyed said that they had feigned being sick to skip class, a tendency that Thompson ascribed to the amount of stress students face because of the many activities they do.

Thompson said these numbers were higher than he “would have expected.”

“The students and the school need to look at what activities perhaps are [taking] a little too much time [from] our students’ [days],” Thompson said. “When students call in sick because they’re not prepared, it usually means that they don’t have enough time.”

Senior Ellie Lee, who has witnessed her peers feign sickness, said that it happens for a number of reasons, especially academic or emotional ones.

“Some people I know would never miss, and other people need to for the sake of their well-being,” Lee said. “It happens sometimes, [and] I don’t judge.”

AP Physics teacher Kirk Davis said that although missing a regular day of class is understandable, deliberately skipping a test or quiz reflects badly on students’ character.

“These kids are intentionally making a decision to skip something so they have more time to prepare for it than everybody else,” Davis said. “It is a form of cheating, in my mind.”

He said that although students could try to hide behind the excused absence, “everybody knows what’s going on.” In the case of discovering an offender, Davis said it is up to him to decide how to change the questions on any makeup test the student would take.

Ultimately, Thompson stressed that students must carefully weigh their future course load each spring and see what classes and activities they can realistically handle.

“We are not limiting the number of AP or honors courses students can take; that ultimately is up to the student and their family,” Thompson said. “[But] we … will strongly advise students to be conscious of the amount of time [they] have in a day, in a week, in a month, in order to successfully navigate a course.”