EDITORIAL: At-risk students at even bigger risk

In 30 states, special for-profit charter schools are supposed to rescue students at risk of dropping or failing out of traditional public high schools.On paper it sounds like a good idea. But too often in practice the taxpayers are shelling out millions to educate students who don't show up for class and are unlikely ever to graduate.Scripps Howard News Service reporters Thomas Hargrove and Gavin Off have christened these "ghost schools" for the thousands of students who are on the rolls but rarely in class. In most places, the schools get reimbursed regardless. What checks are in place tend to be cursory at best.Ohio, hardest hit by the trend, paid $29.9 million during the 2006-2007 to educate students who weren't there at 47 "dropout recovery" schools. At one school in Cincinnati the daily absentee rate averaged 64 percent of those enrolled. And still the state paid.The crux of the problem, according to Hargrove and Off, is that the for-profit charters "are paid based on the number of students enrolled -- not those who actually attend -- so the schools get their money even if the desks are empty.""It's a cash cow!" said one former principal.While some states have thresholds for attendance, the teachers at those schools are under considerable pressure from the administrators to generate paperwork changing unexcused absences into excused absences. The emphasis was on getting the excuse in the files, not its accuracy. "I've seen documents I know were written by students and the administrators just took them," said a former teacher at one at-risk charter.Texas, in the words of one of its educators, settled on the seemingly obvious premise "that attendance is important to achieving good performance in school." It is one of the few states that pay by attendance rather than enrollment and as a result has a significantly lower absentee rate.These at-risk schools can perform an important service and it's important not to underestimate its difficulty. Students who are failing or in danger of dropping out of one school are likely predisposed to do the same at another school. But a ghost school that purports to be teaching absent kids is providing a phantom education.(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)

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The constitution allocates

The constitution allocates education as a responsiblity of the state. However, the federal government continues to push deeper and deeper into states' rights by dictates through special education programs, free lunch programs, etc...much like they've done with the highway systems. Of course, parents taking responsibility for their children by ensuring that they go to school every day,

The constitution allocates

The constitution allocates education as a responsiblity of the state. However, the federal government continues to push deeper and deeper into states' rights by dictates through special education programs, free lunch programs, etc...much like they've done with the highway systems. Of course, parents taking responsibility for their children by ensuring that they go to school every day

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While I do not agree with

While I do not agree with taxpayer monies having to pay for the lack of student attendance in the classroom, what are the alternatives? Regulation has to start from the bottom up in the high schools.

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That is just rediculious. I

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It is teachers job explain to students why they must get education, if students do not attend classes it is clearly teachers fault.

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