Who's really failing?

I spent about an hour this afternoon catching up on grading and on entering those grades in my gradebook. When I finished, I prepared individual student reports of their grades for the third quarter. I noticed a pattern, so I decided to do an actual count. Here are the details:

Total Number of Students: 51
Number of Failing Students: 23

Awesome.

When I was a student, I used to think that if a lot of students failed, the teacher missed something. It wasn't that I thought the teacher was to blame, rather that somewhere there had been a miss-communication. I'm beginning to wonder if that was right.

You see, the thing that all of these failing students have in common is a failure to turn in their work. At all. They have had two SSR journals due this quarter and almost 90% of them have failed to complete both. Additionally, the majority have BOMBED recent vocab quizzes; we're talking scores in the 20s and 30s.

On the one hand, I think to myself that perhaps I need to do more - hound them, given them extensions, something so that they get the work done. And, in September I probably would have. But it's February. The year is more than half way over. They should know by now that assignments can be turned in ONE DAY late for up to 80% and that after that it's a 0. They should know that EVERY FRIDAY they have vocab quizzes and that every other week they need to write 1 page about their SSR book. They are freshman; it shouldn't be on my shoulders anymore.

One of the things we have to do at my school is contact parents if students are at risk of failing. I'm not making 23 phone calls. No way; I'd be on the phone until 11pm.

So, tomorrow morning, I'm printing out these grade reports. Our grading program even adds a line for parent signature. Every student will be bringing these back signed or they will get a detention, and during that detention we will call parents together to explain why the student is failing.

I started this post with the idea that I might be able to convince myself that there is more I could or should do, but I can't. If I coddle these kids, they're going to fail completely next year. It's a catch 22.