Smith 1

Hannah Smith

Mrs. Sambdman

Hon. English I

11 December 2017

Tardy Policy: Changing to Benefit Students

Attendance to this day continues to be a very important life skill, impacting your job and

even graduation from college and high school. North Scott High School has a tardy policy in

which if a student is over 10 minutes late to class, they are counted as truant and have a detention

to serve. If they are under 10 minutes late, they receive a tardy and detention. This is a policy

that can benefit students, however there are several harmful factors to this policy. With slight

modification, this can create a policy that beyond doubt will improve the ethics and attendance of

students.

The tardy policy at North Scott High School helps students by encouraging attendance,

which correlates with success. Students who truly care about their grades will make it a priority

to show up on time to class, which in return increases their academic performance. A study by

Evie Blad, who reports for Education Week, states that students who regularly miss class time

can be one to two years behind the rest of their peers. Placing a policy that holds students

accountable for their attendance and education will help them long-term, by increasing test

scores and emphasizing the importance of it in the real world. Alison Doyle, from The Balance,

reports that attendance is one of the leading causes of job loss. 63% of employees who are fired

is due to being late to work or just not showing up at all (Doyle). This statistic not only brings

awareness to the amount of people who are regularly being affected by their attendance, but also
 Smith 2

to how habits continue onto later in life. This policy prepares students for further along in their

life, where if they miss part of class or work because they did not feel the need to show up on

time, they can possibly lose their job.

The tardy policy at North Scott reflects a few negative qualities onto the students. The

legal reference, Code No. 501.10R1, states that if a student is more than 10 minutes late to a

class three times during the semester, they can have their credits for that course revoked. To

graduate, students must have accumulated a certain number of credits. If they do not receive

credits for simply being 10 minutes late several times, this could hold them back from

graduating. In addition, those truancies will be reported onto their academic transcript.

Transcripts, along with GPA and test scores, are among the first things colleges view when

looking at student applications, according to Brendan Williams, who writes for American

Graduate Organization. When a college sees that a student has additional truancies, the student’s

chances of being accepted decrease. In order to help students receive recognition and credit for

completing courses, and to contribute towards them getting accepted into choice colleges, the

tardy policy needs to be recognized as harmful in certain aspects and changed.

Although there are some beneficial factors to this policy, there are also some areas that

are not helping students. Niche, an organization dedicated to ranking and reviewing schools

across the country, finds that North Scott has nearly 1,000 students and a student-teacher ratio of

15:1. In a school of this size, it sometimes become difficult to find a good time in a teacher’s day

to go in for help. If a student goes in between passing period to get help but other students are

coming in for that period or to also get help, the teacher can become distracted and forget to give

a pass. This does not mean the student should be punished by being counted as truant. In the first
 Smith 3

10 minutes of most classes, attendance is being taken and students are getting prepared for class.

For a student to miss very little to no learning time and still receive a truancy is not fair to the

student unless they were intentionally wasting time and avoiding coming to class. Being 10

minutes late is not enough to determine with little doubt that a student was skipping class.

However, bringing slight change to this policy can limit doubt and benefit both teachers and

students.

The policy as it is poses both positive and negative factors upon students. It’s a beneficial

policy to have in place, because a student should not simply have a detention for missing half of

the class with no further reasoning. However, when a student is only ten minutes late, they

should not have credits they have worked for jeopardized. Students would be better off if the

policy extended to being over 15 minutes late. This ensures that the student is purposely skipping

the class. If this is not the case, and the student was talking with a staff member, then they should

have a pass. Although it can be argued that this policy is harmful or helpful, it is unanimous to

say that with a few adjustments, this rule can greatly help students.
 Smith 4

Works Cited

“10 Facts About School Attendance.” Attendance Works,

www.attendanceworks.org/chronic-absence/the-problem/10-facts-about-school-attendanc

e/.

“Education Statistics.” Iowa Department of Education,

www.educateiowa.gov/education-statistics.

“Every School Day Counts: The Forum Guide to Collecting and Using Attendance Data.”

National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Home Page, a Part of the U.S.

Department of Education, nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/attendancedata/chapter1a.asp.

“Latest Education Headlines.” Every Day Counts: Facts on Attendance, Achievement | American

Graduate (Main),

www.americangraduate.org/blogs/latest-education-headlines/2015/09/01/every-day-count

s-facts-on-attendance-achievement/.

“Search form.” Preventing Chronic Absenteeism & Truancy | IDOE,

www.doe.in.gov/student-services/attendance/preventing-chronic-absenteeism-truancy.