MCPS principals debate new loss of credit policy

Written By:
Eleni Edwards

Published:
Jan. 06 2010

A Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) work group has been taking action to reform the Loss of Credit (LC) Procedure that currently exists throughout Montgomery County schools. Based on the philosophy and the regulation of Grading and Reporting, “attendance and tardiness are not calculated in the grade,” the work group has decided to draft recommended revisions to the current procedure, which will be sent to the Board of Education at the end of the year.
On November 12, a formal draft was issued and sent to principals across the county. Before being finally summarized and sent to the Board, principals will add their revisions to the proposal.
The draft includes four different recommended changes to the policy.The number-one recommendation is to eliminate the loss of credit procedure altogether. The rationale is that the implementation of the policy is inconsistent among county teachers, time consuming and ineffective at reducing unexcused absences.
The current procedure tasks teachers and attendance secretaries with additional responsibilities of documenting attendance, monitoring for unexcused absences and printing and reviewing loss of credit appeal forms. This takes away from the critical tasks that staff must also do on a day-to-day basis.
“I do think the current LC procedure is worth looking at because it obviously isn’t working. I do agree with the other principals, however, in that if we do get rid of the whole procedure altogether, we would have to worry about giving students a valid excuse to cut class. I don’t want to give the idea that school attendance is not important or have the procedure too loose and ambiguous,” Principal Dr. Debra Mugge said.
The second, third and fourth recommendations all state what would replace the LC procedure, ranging from consequential punishments for unlawful absences to each school having their own policy.  An incredible number of different ideas have been suggested in the draft.
“The LC policy should definitely be revised so that only students who miss class and are late on a regular basis should have to worry about losing credit,” junior Sam Mengistu said.
Sudents who are new to the school are finding it hard to adjust to the current procedure.
“As a freshman, I think that the policy is difficult to get used to. Even though I think that if there no LC policy, more kids would not come to class, I think that if there were a different LC policy, it would make school a lot less stressful. We would not get in trouble for coming to class late or missing a class and we would still get credit,” freshman Tam-Anh Ngyuen said.
Any changes and/or eliminating the LC procedure would have an effect on our school, students and staff.
“I could live with the change if we tweaked it a little bit. Maybe students should have a number of sick days in which they can miss school. What I do not want is to have a procedure too open because if principals are each given leeway to interpret the procedure, it sort of pits principals against each other. The Northeast Consortium should all agree on the same thing so that incoming freshmen do not choose schools for the wrong reason,” Mugge said.