National Public Radio | PACE UNIVERSITY
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National Public Radio featured Sociology Professor Mariajose Romero in "School Attendance In The COVID Era: What Counts As 'Present'?"
National Public Radio featured Sociology Professor Mariajose Romero in "School Attendance In The COVID Era: What Counts As 'Present'?"
The carrot and the stick
Mariajose Romero, a Pace University sociologist who has researched attendance for decades, calls it "a piece of information that has tremendous political currency," which only intensified when it became a measure of school accountability. Not only students, but also schools, succeed or fail based on the students who show up every day. And so, "it's important to count people properly."
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Of course, this raises the question of who is extended this kind of "creative" leniency. Romero, at Pace University, worries that high-income schools may be more likely than those in poor neighborhoods to provide excused absences for, say, a mid-year vacation. Meanwhile, she adds, "sometimes I'm concerned that the issue of chronic absence is used to demonise families in need."
