CRLS administration has announced a separation of student attendance from individual grading. As of October 4th, a 10% grade deduction will no longer be part of an Attendance Violation. The decision has already sparked controversy among teachers and students about both its ethics and effectiveness.
CRLS administrators explain that this decision was made in accordance with the school’s new Grading for Equity rhetoric, which prioritizes teacher grading based on content knowledge rather than class conduct. “As the high school is moving towards practices that are aligned with grading for equity, it’s not equitable to reduce the grade by 10 points when it has nothing to do with skill,” CRLS Dean Susie Espinosa told the Register Forum.
The current policy states that students may miss up to five days of class or up to 15 days tardy before the school administers an Attendance Violation, which will simply appear in notation on student report cards. It will not, however, be visible on college transcripts.
This possibly more lenient stance on student attendance appears to work against the current plan of CPS, aiming to reduce chronic absenteeism in 2023 for grades 9-12 by 2.5 percentage points. During the 2022-23 school year, 25% of all students registered at CPS were officially chronically absent, defined as missing 10% of the school year.
Students are divided around these changes. “I don’t think people will show up anymore,” Avery Medlenka ’27 told the RF, emphasizing that the removal of punitive measures provides less incentive for students to come to school. Acadia Boyer ’27 agreed. “This could definitely reduce stress in good ways, but there’s maybe no reason to come to school if you know what you’re doing.”
Others disagreed. “I don’t think that students are more likely to skip class if their grades aren’t deducted,” Priyota Imam ’26 told the RF. More students have pointed out that, regardless of how effective this policy is in terms of attendance numbers, it’s still more fair to students than its predecessor. “I think [having] attendance not having an impact on your grade is a great change to the rules,” Alexandre Hurel ’27 told the Register Forum. “Students often miss class or are late for a vast variety of reasons, and their attendance score doesn’t reflect their true desire to be in the class.”
Besides the removal of the 10% grade deduction, the other major change to CRLS attendance policy is that excused absences now hold the same weight as unexcused ones. Students are divided on this change as well. “Because excused absences now count towards an AV… I personally don’t think this new policy is much of a step forward,” Milkiyad Fetene ’26 told the Register Forum. “I feel like getting an absence excused is a waste of time knowing that it still counts towards an AV.”
Many educators and students agreed that the new policies do not change the essential purpose of coming to school and learning. “If students are absent from school, they’re going to miss the content they need,” Alicia Roth, teacher of ESL2 and ESL3 at CRLS, said. “So maybe it won’t affect their grade on the report card directly, but indirectly, their performance will still reflect the time they spend in class.”
