Progress reports show the number of absences and late days (at least all I've seen). So do semester grade reports. It's extremely unlikely a present and engaged parent doesn't notice report card after report card coming home with C's, D's and F's, and hundreds of absent days piling up.

The article even states the parent claims to have been aware of all the failing grades, but somehow assumed her son was doing fine because he graduated to the next grade? How is that even remotely possible and not a major point of concern?

What we likely have here is an absent parent complaining that someone else didn't raise her child correctly.

Nobody ever claimed being a parent is easy... and working 3 jobs isn't an excuse to check out of your parental responsibilities.

Since the article involves review of records which include contact requests initiate by school staff, and does not cover any regarding attendance/truancy from administration, we can most justifiably assume that, like those concerning class performance from teachers (other than the one teacher request that there is no evidence ever went beyond the school office), there was nothing.

And we can be fairly certain, again, given the absence of remark on this being in the records, that despite absence far above the level that is legally defined a truancy in Maryland, the student either was not referred to the district by the school for truancy (most likely, as even a report without follow up would be reflected), or, if they were referred, the follow-up of either active contact by the district (if the school's own contact records did not show sufficient active effort) or referral to law enforcement (if the school's records showed all reasonable efforts at outreach had been exhausted or the districts own followup was unsuccessful) did not occur.

Even if the parent was actively and willfully wrong here, the authorities at the school and/or district failed their duty that exists for the the benefit of the student and for the benefit of the other students whose education the occasional presence of the intermittently attending student would interfere with.

So, while there is certainly a parental failure (the precise degree of culpability for which cannot be assessed from the information at hand), the parent is also completely correct (almost irrespective of the degree of their own culpability[0]) that school authorities failed her child (and, though she did not make this charge, in doing so they failed the public, as well, and the fact that her son was apparently fairly typical for the school tends to indicate that the failure by the school authorities was massive and systemic, not an isolated individual falling through the cracks.)

[0] absent some bizarre scenario llke a massive, elaborate documentation fraud that provided a plausible legitimate narrative supporting the degree of absenteeism, which not only strains plausibly initially, but is implausible would not have been noted were it documented.

The report card noted the teacher requested a conference. It's flatly on the parent to follow-up and schedule one. How else does that work?

The article writer looked at the report cards and totaled up 200+ absent days for crying out loud. How is it even reasonable to excuse the parent from just ignoring all these warning signs?

Could the school have done more? Sure, they could have jailed the child for delinquence, but putting children in jail really does more harm than good. What else was this school supposed to do? They quite literally gave the child and parent every opportunity to be included on the child's progress, and even (on record!) reached out in an attempt to discuss things with the parent.

I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on the rest of things. Raising children is a parent's responsibility... and now this part-time parent is aghast her son will have to repeat all the failed classes she was 100% aware of - as-if there's some plausible scenario where her child could just be graduated and go out into the real world on their own.