17. What Does It Take to Get Kids to Stop Skipping School?

             Richmond, the Atlantic`s editor, wrote an article about the problem of chronic absenteeism of the students since most of them are skipping classes frequently. Chronic absenteeism is characterized as missing at least 10 percent of the school year which is around 18 days. Once the students pass this limited amount of days, then they automatically is considered as a failing student.  According to a new report of New York City, one out of every five students has issues with chronic absenteeism and this is a worrisome situation to both the parents and the schools. A recent study at Chicago discovered that student missing at school contributes to the social emotional developmental delays and also to the academic hurdles that the students tried so hard to overcome. Johns Hopkins University performed a report to address the city`s high rate of school absenteeism and their main findings are that students that live in poor community were 15 percent less likely to miss at school compared to their peers at similar campuses.  On the other hand, students that live in temporary shelters are 31 percent less likely to absent. Another discovery that they had is that students that have one on one teacher are more caught up on the school days. They are 52 percent more likely to enroll the following academic year than their comparison peers. In addition, the students who tend to be absent in the 2009 to 2010 academic year at the task force schools are more likely to be still in school three years later compared to the other students who did not enroll in the task force schools.  

             Richmond wrote a well developed essay to inform her readers about the seriousness of the student absenteeism at school. She used several credible researches and studies to back up her arguments so that her essay may be more reliable. An example of credible source used in the article would be the research done at John Hopkins University where the results of the studies are very significant since it showed some significant information. She also used several examples and statistics to make her essay more shocking for the readers. These statistics add to the impact that the article has on the audience and enforces the seriousness of this subject. As an illustration, one out of every five students has issues with chronic absenteeism and most of them are failing at school. She used good vocabularies to transmit to her readers information about the chronic absenteeism. She also had a small background of the term chronic absenteeism so that the readers may have a basic knowledge of what this term means. This strategy allows her to introduce her main topic and also to give her audience a clear definition of this term. She used bullet points to organize her essay so that it is easier for the readers to distinguish the discoveries of the John Hopkins University. However, she did not have an interesting attention getter; therefore, the readers did not have their attention captured by the article. She could have used one of the shocking details from the research to open her essay because then, the readers would have their first interest for the article and the whole essay would be more interesting. 

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/11/what-does-it-take-to-get-kids-to-stop-skipping-school/281898/