Tardy Tracker — the one place everyone dreads going to. If you were only one minute late before, you’re guaranteed to be another 10 minutes late by the time you actually get to class. Some people are really lucky and get a teacher who doesn’t care if you’re a couple minutes late. Other people don’t have it quite as good.

What is the purpose of Tardy Tracker?

It’s supposed to give you an unexcused pass to class and count how many lates you have until you get a detention. It’s supposed to relieve teachers of counting tardies and marking students absent. But is it really more hurtful than helpful?

Most people arrive just after the bell, and their teacher makes them go to Tardy Tracker. If most teachers in the school do this, then there’s usually a lot of people lined up at the door waiting for that white ticket.

It becomes hurtful when you have a test that morning and receive 10 minutes less than you originally planned, which causes you to rush and do worse on your test. Even if you don’t have a test, you still miss 10 minutes of instruction.

It’s been proven that students who are consistently late to school do worse and have higher dropout rates (Education.com). This is because they miss instruction from the teacher and perform worse on whatever topic they arrived late for.

If Tardy Tracker takes 10 minutes from receiving instruction consistently, it can have serious negative effects in the long run.

The obvious solution is to just get here on time to school, but everyone is late sometimes.

There should be more than one Tardy Tracker room just so that waiting in line takes less time, and the students doesn’t have to miss as much instruction.