By Tom

There are two students in my class with attendance issues. They sit three feet away from each other. One student is the son of a banker and his mother is able to stay home with him when he’s sick, like recently when he missed about a week of school with bronchitis. His mom emailed me once or twice a day with updates on his health and requests for assignments so he wouldn’t fall too far behind. 

The other student also has health issues that affect his attendance. His mother has a low-wage job and doesn’t have the time – or the computer – to contact me twice a day when her kid is out sick. Not only that, when I called her in this week for a conference to talk about how her son was falling behind and how important it was to get her son to school “each day no matter what,” I quickly discovered that the root cause of everything was the fact that they were about to become homeless and she was at her wit’s end trying to figure out where to go and where to put their stuff while they couched-surfed for the foreseeable future.

As I was winding up my conversation with this desperate mom, racking my brain; trying to come up with resources that she hadn’t already contacted, the Washington State Senate was busy passing SB 5748, a bill that would tie teacher evaluations to student test scores.

When I heard about the bill, I immediately thought about those two kids, sitting three feet away from each other, both missing too much school, but with very different family situations. And I thought about how their physical proximity in the classroom belies the enormous difference in the level of support they receive from home and ultimately, their academic achievement level.

I doubt there’s an amendment to that bill that would take into account the living standards of the students taking those tests.

As we enter the Testing Season, it’s important for stakeholders to understand the enormous impact family life has on the performance of our students. It’s all fine and good to expect the best from both of these boys – and I do – but to expect their best to be comparable is simply unrealistic.

Accountability is important; for students, teachers and administrators. But please, hold me accountable for what I can control: how I plan my lessons, how I deliver those lessons, how I assess my students and how I communicate with their families.

I’m hoping the House will defeat their version of this bill. But I’m also doing everything I can to get all of my students to come to school each day so I can teach each of them the best lesson I know how to teach. 

And I’m also trying to find that mom a place for her family to live.