Ben walked into class late. Again. And Ben left early. Again. He told me it was going to happen, and I wouldn’t have been surprised, even without a warning. Because it was late October, and Ben was on his way out.
Ben isn’t his real name, but he stands out in my mind: a lanky teenager with shock of white-blond hair and a face that always teetered on the edge of genuine surprise and familiar regret. Some piercings, some chains, all the normal teenage “Don’t mess with me” signals.
I knew him for a couple of years before that October – probably not a kid you would want your daughter to bring home, but surprisingly honest and naturally intelligent. From what I could tell, his parents were out of the picture, so he was living with someone else.
One day that autumn, he pulled me aside after class and told me that he and his guardian had a counseling appointment upstairs. The school wanted to counsel him out. Ben said, “Mr. Howe, they want us to sign some kind of form later today. I know I don’t do great in school. My grades are pretty low, and I don’t show up every day. But when I’m here, I’m not getting in trouble. I’m not doing drugs. I don’t want to drop out.”
I shook my head, quietly advised him not to sign anything, and wished him good luck.
Ben understood something that most of us take a long time to realize: that for many kids, school isn’t just about school. School is about not being home. The hours they spend at that building are about not being hungry, or not being abused, or not abusing. Those seven or eight hours of the day may represent the only consistent structure they know. Students like Ben have a love-hate relationship with school.
But that year, in the middle of October, the relationship shifted. The principals and counselors who had tried for the last 2 months to keep Ben in school now wanted him out. Why the sudden change?
Well, in my state, and maybe in yours, they pick a day each year to count every student in the state. Based on the number of butts in seats in every school, the state then distributes the federal and state education funds that keep the districts running. That count happens on or around October 1 where I live. Schools try all sorts of creative ways to get kids to show up on that day – drawings for prizes, ice cream parties, pizza, movies – the usual low-budget incentives. And the investment pays off – if they spend 300 bucks on door prizes to get one student in the building who doesn’t usually show up, that brings in several thousand dollars of per-pupil funding.
If a kid is sick and doesn’t show up on October first, the school can audit attendance records from an 11-day window around the official count day to show that she is actually an active student at the school, even though she wasn’t there on the count day. So after about mid-October, the count is complete. And at that point, they can expel Ben. They have secured their funding for the year, and they don’t really want to deal with the problems Ben brings with him.
Of course, after he was kicked out of school, Ben defied the odds: got a GED, went to college, became an attorney and now does social justice work.
Okay, not really. We want so badly for those stories to be true, and a few are. But the odds are the odds because of long-term trends. And a kid who gets expelled from high school has pretty slim odds of professional success. As for Ben, I still see him around town or on Facebook occasionally. His life seems to have followed the trajectory you would expect. I’m pretty sure he never quite made it to the alternative school where he was assigned. I don’t know if he’s employed at the moment, but most of his social media posts are drug memes, shirtless selfies, and vague statements about loneliness.
If it was just this Ben, there would be no story here. But most school systems manufacture Bens every year. For every class of graduates tossing mortarboards in the air, there is a byproduct – an invisible group that doesn’t cross that stage. And in many schools, the tipping point happens right after the state counts the students, when Bens and their parents are invited to the office for a quick chat, a quick ultimatum. Sometimes an application for a local charter school is pushed across the desk. Sometimes an alternative school placement. Sometimes just a withdrawal form.
And there are no quick answers. Make no mistake: the Bens need major help. They are tough students. They require resources that the school might not have, or that they might prefer to spend on somebody on track for graduation. And it shouldn’t be the school’s job to parent when Ben’s parents don’t. But then, who will?
A school is like a hospital, treating academic and social infirmities, running tests and prescribing remedies. And that hospital saves many lives, literally and metaphorically. But too often, in our haste to see measurable healing, kids like Ben are transferred prematurely from intensive care to the morgue.
But not until after October first.
Music:
Minimalist Study in F Minor by Nathan Howe.
Sources: