> He's not the victim, he's actually a failure

He's a kid. He made bad decisions. He needs support, role models and being gently but firmly held accountable for his decisions in a way that ramps up gradually. I don't see these things in this story.

The school informed his mom of his grades but - at least as reported here - didn't explain the eventual consequences to her. They did not impose the 'natural' consequences of not progressing in classes that she was expecting. There's a communication failure there, a weird policy, and a failure to escalate this case. He was not held accountable for his decisions regularly with gradually increasing stakes. There's also the bad reassuring incentive provided by publishing his peer ranking in a failing peer group.

The mom also apparently did not escalate these very bad grades and attendance into a major issue for her son. She didn't go down there and dig into it. And now she is avoiding any overall responsibility for the bad situation he is in. Perhaps she didn't learn personal accountability at school. Certainly she trusted the school too much.

Shit is messed up.

But we take schooling as a shared responsibility, and that's the only piece of this puzzle we have collective control over, so let's focus on how that can be improved. It's a long game. The kids of educated kids will almost always be educated. Blaming the mom is not productive. Calling the kid a failure is unhelpful.

> He's a kid. He made bad decisions. He needs support, role models and being gently but firmly held accountable for his decisions in a way that ramps up gradually.

This is not exclusive to failure. He failed AND he needs help.

I think the issue here is that missing 270 days of school requires some detailed explanation. There’s a reason, but having once been a teenager the most reasonable is that he skipped a lot of school.

Blaming “the system” for this level of just plain missingness is not telling the whole story.

Unless you want to go deeper in that the underlying condition that made it hard for the parent to not check grades in 4 years and the kid to skip that much school without anyone noticing.

1. I maintain there is a big distinction in language between "the kid failed" and "the kid is a failure." 2. You don't blame the system if it's one failure – you blame "the system" for this being _the median outcome_ for this school. That is way more trouble than one kid, or parent, or school, or heck probably even _school district,_ can take the blame for. That is an "all of Baltimore," or "all of Maryland" size problem, maybe even bigger.

The article is about a kid who ranked in the upper 50% -- they chose to do a story about him because this means he's not an outlier, he's the norm for this school. It's very likely that failing / skipping class is the only way to fit in, that students who put in too much effort or do too well get beaten up or worse for it. The school's faculty also probably understands the problem better than anyone else, but doesn't have the resources to provide a solution. Smaller classes helps but you need more funding to pay more teachers to do that. And any problems at home the school has no control over.

> It's very likely that failing / skipping class is the only way to fit in, that students who put in too much effort or do too well get beaten up or worse for it.

Bingo. Not the only thing of course (as you mention some issues with schools government funding structures) but a critical one.

Although I've learned talking about culture is often taboo in academia and polite serious conversation. You have to be extremely careful so many don't breach the subject at all, so it gets ignored like many important obvious things. Like "The Wire" it's easier to show it in it's raw form than to analyze it in discussion or in papers.

But still it's a giant elephant in the room which I experienced heavily as a poor performing student early on in my life. Before I (fortunately out of circumstance with my single mother) moved to a better environment and set of friends.

I made far worse choices at that age. But I attended a school that was aggressive about face-to-face meetings with parents of failing students, and I had parents who showed a modicum of responsibility for monitoring my schooling.

That's the difference. This kid was failed by the all of the adults who's fucking job it is to care for him.

Well, maybe my parent comment was too harsh. Leaving his reasons aside, the kid knew what he was doing, because he kept doing it for three years, he knew he would be found out eventually. I completely agree that the adults failed him, both in school and in his house. the mom blaming someone else and painting her son as a victim just makes everything worse.