Truancy Reduction: Keeping Students in School

1 Department of JusticeOffice of Justice ProgramsOffice of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention September 2001A Message From OJJDPEach School day, hundreds of thou-sands of Students are missing fromtheir classrooms many without abona fide unchecked, Truancy is a risk fac-tor for serious juvenile s impact also extends intothe adult years where it has beenlinked to numerous negative out-comes. Consequently, it is criticalto identify strategies that interveneeffectively with youth who are chroni-cally truant and that interrupt theirprogress to delinquency and othernegative behaviors by addressingthe underlying reasons behind theirabsence from Bulletin provides an overviewof the problem of Truancy ; describesthe correlations of family, School ,economic, and student factors withtruancy; notes Truancy s role as apredictor of delinquency, includingjuvenile daytime crime.

2 And talliestruancy s social and financial OJJDP-funded projects are fea-tured: the ACT Now program oper-ated by the Pima County Attorney sOffice in Arizona and the TruancyReduction demonstration Program,a partnership with the ExecutiveOffice for Weed and Seed and theSafe and Drug-Free is an early warning sign forfuture problems and should not beignored. This Bulletin should assistour efforts to give it the attention , or unexcused absence fromschool, has been linked to serious delin-quent activity in youth and to significantnegative behavior and characteristics a risk factor for delinquent be-havior in youth, Truancy has been foundto be related to substance abuse, gangactivity, and involvement in criminal ac-tivities such as burglary, auto theft, andvandalism (Bell, Rosen, and Dynlacht,1994; Dryfoos, 1990; Garry, 1996; Huizinga,Loeber, and Thornberry, 1995; Rohrman,1993).

3 Much of the work in the area of develop-mental pathways to delinquency showsthat these behavioral problems often arefollowed by progressively more seriousbehavioral and adjustment problems inadulthood, including an increased pro-pensity for violent behavior (Bell, Rosen,and Dynlacht, 1994; Dryfoos, 1990; Kelleyet al., 1997). Further, adults who werefrequently truant as teenagers are muchmore likely than those who were not tohave poorer health and mental health,lower paying jobs, an increased chanceof living in poverty, more reliance onwelfare support, children who exhibitproblem behaviors, and an increasedlikelihood of incarceration (Bell, Rosen,and Dynlacht, 1994; Dryfoos, 1990; Haw-kins and Catalano, 1995; Ingersoll andLeBoeuf, 1997; Rohrman, 1993).

4 Truancy Reduction: Keeping Students in SchoolMyriam L. Baker, Jane Nady Sigmon, and M. Elaine NugentLeft unaddressed, Truancy during thepreteen and teenage years can have sig-nificant negative effects on the student,schools, and society. It is important toidentify promising strategies to intervenewith chronic truants, address the rootcauses of Truancy , and stop youth s pro-gression from Truancy into more seriousand violent Bulletin highlights some of the majorresearch findings regarding the problemof Truancy and demonstrates why it isimportant that schools and communitieswork to prevent and reduce its also discusses Abolish Chronic Truancy (ACT) Now and the Office of JuvenileJustice and Delinquency Prevention s(OJJDP s) Truancy Reduction Demon-stration Program (TRDP) and the of theTruancy ProblemEvery day, hundreds of thousands of youthare absent from School .

5 Many are absentwithout an excuse and deemed national data on Truancy ratesare not available (in part because no uni-form definition of Truancy exists), manylarge cities report staggering rates of tru-ancy and chronic cities report that unexcused ab-sences can number in the thousands2toward education are also importantfactors in the of DelinquencyTruancy has been clearly identified as oneof the early warning signs that youth areheaded for potential delinquent activity,social isolation, and/or educational studies have established lack ofcommitment to School as a risk factor forsubstance abuse, delinquency, teen preg-nancy, and dropping out of School (Bell,Rosen, and Dynlacht, 1994; Dryfoos, 1990;Huizinga, Loeber, and Thornberry, 1995;Rohrman, 1993).

6 Decades of research havealso identified a link between Truancy andlater problems such as violence, maritalproblems, job problems, adult criminality,and incarceration (Dryfoos, 1990; Cat-alano et al., 1998; Robins and Ratcliff,1978; Snyder and Sickmund, 1995).More recent studies, such as OJJDP sProgram of Research on the Causes andCorrelates of Delinquency,3indicate thattruancy may be a precursor to seriousviolent and nonviolent offenses and thatthe connection between Truancy anddelinquency appears to be particularlyacute among males (Kelley et al., 1997).In addition, findings from OJJDP s StudyGroup on Very Young Offenders indicatethat chronic Truancy in elementary schoolis linked to serious delinquent behaviorat age 12 and under (Loeber and Farring-ton, 2000).

7 Juvenile Daytime CrimeIn several jurisdictions, law enforcementofficials have linked high rates of truancyto daytime burglary and vandalism (Ba-ker, 2000). Before TRDP started, for exam-ple, police in Tacoma, WA (one of OJJDP sTRDP sites), reported that one-third ofburglaries and one-fifth of aggravatedassaults occurring between 8 and on weekdays were committed byjuveniles. In Contra Costa County, CA(another TRDP site), police reported that60 percent of juvenile crime occurred be-tween 8 and 3 on daytime juvenile crime rates were aprimary reason that sites began imple-menting and Financial ImpactStudents with the highest Truancy rateshave the lowest academic achievementrates, and because truants are the youthmost likely to drop out of School , theyhave high dropout rates as well (Dynarskion certain days (Heaviside et al.))

8 , 1998).In Detroit, MI, for example, School atten-dance officials investigated 66,440 com-plaints of chronic absenteeism during the1994 95 School year, and in Chicago, IL, theaverage 10th grader missed 6 weeks of in-structional time during the 1995 96 schoolyear (Garry, 1996; Roderick et al., 1997).A national review of discipline issues inschools conducted in 1996 97 found thatpublic School principals identified studentabsenteeism, class cutting, and tardinessas the top discipline problems in theirschools (Heaviside et al., 1998).In general, the proportion of truancycases handled in juvenile court is rela-tively small. However, the juvenile justicesystem is increasingly serving as the finalstop for truants and as a mechanism forintervening with chronic truants.

9 Recentstatistics available on the extent of truan-cy cases in juvenile court clearly demon-strate how important it is for schoolsand communities to confront this 1998, Truancy accounted for 26 percentof all formally handled status offensecases, representing an 85-percent in-crease in Truancy cases in juvenile courtsince 1989 (from 22,200 cases in 1989 to41,000 cases in 1998) (Puzzanchera et al.,forthcoming).A closer look reveals that the number ofpetitioned Truancy cases around the coun-try is about evenly divided between boysand girls and that whereas the majority ofpetitioned Truancy cases involve 15-year-olds, there have been petitioned casesinvolving boys and girls as young as 10(Puzzanchera et al., forthcoming).Correlates of TruancyPreliminary findings from OJJDP s evalua-tion of TRDP (see page 9) confirm previousfindings that, in general, the correlates oftruancy fall into four broad categories: uFamily include lackof guidance or parental supervision,domestic violence, poverty, drug oralcohol abuse in the home, lack ofawareness of attendance laws, anddiffering attitudes toward include schoolclimate issues such as School size andattitudes of teachers, other Students ,and administrators and inflexibility inmeeting the diverse cultural and learn-ing styles of the Students .

10 Schools oftenhave inconsistent procedures in placefor dealing with chronic absenteeismand may not have meaningful conse-quences available for truant youth( , out-of- School suspension).uEconomic influences. These includeemployed Students , single-parenthomes, high mobility rates, parentswho hold multiple jobs, and a lack ofaffordable transportation and include drugand alcohol abuse, lack of understand-ing of attendance laws, lack of socialcompetence, mental health difficulties,and poor physical not mentioned specifically, thecommunity significantly influences theoccurrence of Truancy as well. Communityfactors are folded into the above fourareas. For example, economic conditionsand differing culturally based attitudes3and Gleason, 1999). The consequencesof dropping out of School are well docu-mented.