Are We Pushing Kids Out of School By Trying to Keep Them In? Truancy Policy in the United States

Are We Pushing Kids Out of School by Trying to Keep Them In? Truancy Policies in The United States

Background: Over a dozen Healthy People 2020 objectives focus on improving children’s educational outcomes, including chronic absenteeism. Poor attendance is strongly associated with school failure and poor health status in adulthood. Although few high-quality evaluations exist of efforts to reduce chronic absenteeism, we do know that punitive strategies do not work. We document the extent to which punitive attendance policies are implemented in U.S. school districts.

Methods: A random sample of 138 U.S. school districts with more than 5,000 students was drawn from the National Center for Education database, and the policies regarding chronic absenteeism were documented. This sample has adequate power to estimate proportions of 0.10 or greater.

Results: Most school districts use multiple strategies to improve attendance. Punitive programs are common: 43% of schools deny chronically absent students class credit, 54% require Saturday or after-school school sessions, and 22% fine parents. A quarter (24%) send truancy officers to homes. Court-based diversion strategies to keep students and families out court are almost universally implemented (85%). Most diversion programs have three steps: a letter to parents, meetings and an attendance contract, and referral to court. Just over half of school districts use positive social-emotional support programs (55%).

Conclusions: Although punitive programs have been shown not to prevent truancy, they are still commonly implemented. If schools want to reduce the numbers of students who are chronically absent, then there is a need to change truancy policies. In addition, rigorous evaluations of court-based diversion programs are needed.