Arizona lawmaker Rep. Laura Terech is again trying to bar schools from using out-of-school suspensions to punish students who miss class, arguing the strategy is not only ineffective but harmful, and disproportionately affects Black, Latino and Indigenous students.
It also wasn’t really applied equally. I would know, I had a lot of attendance issues in my junior and senior year when I was living on my own.
Turns out that if you had a gifted kid that suddenly has to work to live, they stopped looking gifted, and start missing a lot of school. I think they made some exceptions for me simply because if they didn’t it would be a very bad look on the district.
I think in my case the factor there was I would roll in on a standardized testing day, get 100% on every single aspect of the standardized tests. And walk out and go back to work.
But yeah, if I was Black or Latino I don’t think I would have gotten that same consideration - gifted or otherwise.