Combating Truancy in America
ABSTRACT:
Truancy is the first sign that a youngster is giving up and losing his or her way. Research shows that students who become truant and eventually drop out of school put themselves at a long-term disadvantage in becoming productive citizens. Dropouts are more likely to be on welfare or unemployed than high school graduates. High truancy rates are also linked to high daytime burglary rates, vandalism, and juvenile gang activity. In some cities, unexcused absences can number in the thousands daily. Combating truancy is a way for communities to reach out quickly to disaffected young people and help families struggling with rebellious teenagers. This guide offers parents, school officials, law enforcement agencies, and communities a set of principles for designing their own strategies. Schools and communities are advised to involve parents in all truancy-prevention activities, adopt a zero-tolerance stance against truancy, create meaningful incentives for parental responsibility, establish ongoing truancy-prevention programs in school, and involve local law enforcement in truancy-reduction efforts.
Truancy: Problems of definition
Stoll (1990) defines truancy as 'absence from school for no legitimate reason '. The key terms of this simple definition have, however, been much debated. Atkinson, Halsey, Wilkin and Kinder (2000) point to differences in the extent of absence, from avoidance of single lessons to absences of several weeks. The definition is designed to cover the long-term absence of a depressed school refuter or a teenage mother, the gesture of bravado of an occasional truant, the child kept at home by a parent to help care for siblings, and the child taken out of school for an out-of-season family holiday – and many other variations on this theme. Kinder, Wakefield and Wilkin (1996) noted that ‘post-registration truants’ were not always absent from school, but sometimes remained lurking within sound of the school bell, so that
Truancy is the first sign that a youngster is giving up and losing his or her way. Research shows that students who become truant and eventually drop out of school put themselves at a long-term disadvantage in becoming productive citizens. Dropouts are more likely to be on welfare or unemployed than high school graduates. High truancy rates are also linked to high daytime burglary rates, vandalism, and juvenile gang activity. In some cities, unexcused absences can number in the thousands daily. Combating truancy is a way for communities to reach out quickly to disaffected young people and help families struggling with rebellious teenagers. This guide offers parents, school officials, law enforcement agencies, and communities a set of principles for designing their own strategies. Schools and communities are advised to involve parents in all truancy-prevention activities, adopt a zero-tolerance stance against truancy, create meaningful incentives for parental responsibility, establish ongoing truancy-prevention programs in school, and involve local law enforcement in truancy-reduction efforts.
Truancy: Problems of definition
Stoll (1990) defines truancy as 'absence from school for no legitimate reason '. The key terms of this simple definition have, however, been much debated. Atkinson, Halsey, Wilkin and Kinder (2000) point to differences in the extent of absence, from avoidance of single lessons to absences of several weeks. The definition is designed to cover the long-term absence of a depressed school refuter or a teenage mother, the gesture of bravado of an occasional truant, the child kept at home by a parent to help care for siblings, and the child taken out of school for an out-of-season family holiday – and many other variations on this theme. Kinder, Wakefield and Wilkin (1996) noted that ‘post-registration truants’ were not always absent from school, but sometimes remained lurking within sound of the school bell, so that