Truancy.

Coming off that high from the last week.

The boy that made huge gains in reading and then realized he was a math genius hasn't shown up the last two days of school, and so has missed all of his final assessments. I'm not sure if he gets to move to 5th grade now, and of course he doesn't get to see his hard work pay off.

I called yesterday and his mom said that she got a flat tire so she'd try to get him in today, but when I called again today the phone was disconnected. I hope they're all right.

I'm going to keep calling to give them information on how to get set for next year, but this kind of sucks.

On a related note:

Baltimore City Public Schools just came out with a press release that said:

"75.2 percent of students who attended school regularly last year scored proficient or advanced on the reading MSA, compared to just 59.6 percent of students who were chronically absent, meaning they missed at least 20 of the year's 180 school days."

Since we've started summer school, we've lost 13 students because they missed three days and were dropped from the roster. We have 12 now.