Truancy

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Juvenile Delinquency/Truancy School Safety > Juvenile Delinquency/Truancy Table of Contents Abstract Keywords

Overview Compulsory Education Laws The Truant Officer Truancy by the Numbers

Further Insights State Compulsory Attendance Laws What Makes a Student Become Truant? How Does Truancy Impact the Individual and Society as a Whole? Community Based Approaches to Reducing Truancy

Viewpoints: Is Compulsory Education Outmoded? Terms & Concepts Bibliography Suggested Reading

Abstract Juvenile delinquency, when discussed within the context of education, refers to the broader topic of juvenile lawlessness, which encompasses everything from drug and alcohol abuse to school violence. Truancy can be seen as a specific type of juvenile delinquency that, according to Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention at the U.S. Department of Justice,

refers to the students’ unexcused absences from school. Beyond its connection to poor academic performance, many researchers have concluded that truancy is an important predictor of juvenile delinquency. In recent decades, as the U.S. public education system has developed a reputation for underperforming students and rising levels of crime and violence, politicians, law enforcement officials, teachers, parents and school administrators have made renewed efforts to curb truancy in the belief that regular school attendance is vital to improving student achievement in an increasingly global economy.

Overview Truancy is defined as an unexcused absence from school. This is not necessarily the same as excessive absence, which historically has been caused by a variety of factors, the most predominant being severe illness (Jennings, 1927; Brazelton, 1939), which now has been reduced due through widespread vaccination programs and much improved medical care. Truancy can be as mild as “ditching” school on a Friday in the spring, but it can also turn into the habit of avoiding school attendance whenever possible. Perhaps not surprisingly, the problem of truancy in the United States has existed since the passage of compulsory education laws beginning in the 19th century, which required public school students to attend classes for a given number of hours each week, for a number of days each year, and until a certain age (typically 16 or 18). Legally, truancy is what is termed a status offense, meaning that it only applies to children below a state-mandated age. The idea of hapless truant officers, in movies or television, chasing after petulant -- and surprisingly resourceful -- children in the hopes of dragging them kicking and screaming back to the school, has created an image of truancy in the United States that is in need of updating. Law enforcement officers, school officials and parents agree that today’s truancy has much wider implications for schools and the wider society than the bruised produce resulting from an overturned apple cart. Compulsory Education Laws In 1867, two years after the Civil War, the U.S. Congress created a special department of education to oversee the reform of public education in the United States. The South, which had Union

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Juvenile Delinquency/Truancy

Keywords

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3,000, and the number of high schools grew from less than 800 to 5,500 (Schlesinger, 1933, p. 162).

Compulsory Attendance

The Truant Officer

Dropout Age

In many locales a type of police officer known as a truant officer was charged with enforcing the compulsory education laws. While many truant officers upheld the highest ethical standards of their profession, scholars have shown that, in some cases, they were abusing their mandate. For instance, after Michigan passed a compulsory education law in 1883, 37 percent of anti-truancy arrests in the 1890s were made “between 8:00 PM and 2:00 AM, well outside of school hours” (Wolcott, 2001, p. 356). It also seems to have been the practice of the police to use the court system to prosecute only habitual truants. Others were sent home to their disapproving parents or enrolled in “truant schools” to, it was hoped, instill some discipline in wayward youth (Wolcott, 2001, p. 356).

Juvenile Delinquency Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Public Education Public School School Violence Truancy Unexcused Absence troops on its soil until 1878, was forced by the federal government to create public school systems to help educate freed slaves as well as the many poor white children who had little more than a passing acquaintance with formal education (Schlesinger, 1933, p. 160). In rural areas, where children still worked in the family fields, the school year was considerably shorter than that of students pouring in to America’s growing big cities. Beginning in the 1870s, more and more states, both Northern and Southern, began to pass compulsory school attendance laws, though states with large numbers of new immigrants, partially dependent on the wages from their children’s labor, moved more cautiously in that direction: During the nineteenth century, in particular, a large percentage of Americans were ambivalent about compulsory schooling laws. Some parents openly resisted enforcement of them, saying that it was no business of the state to meddle in family decisions...Many citizens regarded footloose truants as harmless Huck Finns. When attendance offers enforced child labor laws, parents often resented the loss of their children’s income, employers lost cheap labor, and many of the children themselves had no desire to return to school. One factory inspector in Chicago found that 412 of the 500 children she interviewed would rather have worked in the factory than gone to school (Tyack & Berkowitz, 1977, pp. 32-33). In 1918 Mississippi was the last of the 48 states to pass a compulsory education law. Today, all 50 states have such laws on the books. It seems that the laws had a positive educational effect: from 1878 to 1898, the number of children attending public schools rose from nine million to fifteen million. Meanwhile, during this same twenty-year period, in order to accommodate the influx of new pupils, the number of kindergartens rose from under 200 to

In the 20th century and on into the 21st century, truancy has been addressed with a combination of methods, depending on the nature and frequency of the offense. Many public school districts offer counseling services to attempt to get to the root causes of a student’s truancy, social workers assist with family therapy sessions as needed, and the juvenile justice system provides a last resort of court-ordered drug and alcohol treatment programs or even imprisonment in a juvenile facility for truants who commit crimes. Truancy by the Numbers Given what’s at stake in truant behavior, the numbers for truancy in the United States at the turn of the 21st century are maddeningly imprecise. As one recent scholar noted, [W]hile anecdotal evidence suggests that truancy has reached epidemic proportions, we do not have accurate estimates of the prevalence of truancy in the United States due to inconsistent tracking and reporting practices of schools. As a result, our best current estimates of the national state of truancy are from self-reported data (Henry, 2007). Even so, the information that is available is sufficient to paint a very different picture of the truant student than that of the “harmless Huck Finn” or enterprising street urchin envisioned by many Americans at the turn of the 20th century. There is evidence from Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee and many other metropolitan schools, for example, of thousands of instances of truancy each day. In Minneapolis, researchers noted that only 47% of students were in school at least 95% of the time during the 1999-2000 school year, though the number rose to nearly 57% in 2001-2002 (Hinx, Kapp & Snapp, 2003, p. 149). Among a random sampling of students who participated in the national Monitoring the Future survey in 2003, 10.5% of 8th graders reported that they had skipped school at least once in the previous four weeks, while 16.4% of 10th grade students said they had done the same (Henry, 2007). Local work has been done, for example, by three different grand juries in Miami-Dade Country in Florida, which found that 75-85 percent of its serious criminal offenders in the early 1990s had a

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history of being truant or absent from school for long stretches of time beginning in the third grade (cited in NCSE, n.d.). It is also the case that truant students account for a large percent of juvenile crime: in San Diego alone, 37 percent of juvenile crime in 2001 occurred between 8:30 A.M. and 1:29 P.M. (cited by San Diego Public Safety & Neighborhood Services Committee, 2002, p. 8). Finally, and perhaps contrary to some assumptions, only 54 percent of truancy cases that went to court involved boys (cited in NCSE, n.d.). The picture of truancy facing school officials, civic leaders, and parents is much more complicated and challenging than it has been in the past. It is incumbent upon state and federal governments to develop a common methodology for assessing truancy in America so that researchers can develop a more precise understanding of truancy and how it can be prevented – something that will be a benefit both to students and to society as a whole.

Further Insights State Compulsory Attendance Laws Each state has a law on the books that stipulates the age at which a student must begin attending school and the age until which he or she must remain in school (the “legal dropout age”). Every state requires that students remain in school until at least age 16, while a number require students to remain in school until age 18. For more detailed and up-to-date information on specific state requirements, see “Compulsory Attendance Laws Listed by State,” a publication of the National Center for School Engagement. What Makes a Student Become Truant? While there are many theories regarding the causes of truancy, Henry (2007) points out that one thing is consistent: there is very little information on the subject. In addition to a paucity of research pertaining to the prevalence of truancy in the United States, we also know surprisingly little about the correlates of truancy. That is, while several studies have assessed the consequences of truancy, no studies that could be identified have assessed the predictors, causes, or correlates of truancy using a nationally representative sample of youth. It is surprising to note that very little research has been conducted to understand truant behavior (Henry, 2007, p. 30). However, it is possible to draw some preliminary conclusions based on self-reported data, localized case studies, and the like. Given the complexity of the context in which truancy takes place, establishing causality (e.g., establishing that truancy leads to drug use) may prove to be more difficult. More than a half century ago, Formwalt (1947) made an astute observation: “Truancy may be ‘absence without leave’ but seldom is it ‘absence without reason’” (p. 89). According to the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, there are three factors that tend to make students truant:

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• A negative school environment • Problems within their families or communities • Psychological factors within students themselves (OJJDP, n.d.) A Negative School Environment

Some schools have poorly developed attendance policies where students don’t fully understand the schools’ attendance expectations. Other schools, due to a lack of organization, fail to inform parents of their child’s truancy, thus preventing parents from addressing the problem. In terms of the school culture, some schools fail to prevent violence within schools, such as bullying, and marginalized students use truancy as a safety option. Finally, some schools do not provide an adequate level of service to special education students, thus allowing them to become frustrated and eventually disillusioned with school altogether. Problems within Their Families or Communities

Students in high-crime, high-poverty areas are often faced, on a daily basis, with many negative role models, including other truants, drug dealers and gang members, and some choose the path of least resistance. Some students are required to look after their younger siblings while parents work or seek adequate child care. Other students are victims of abuse and neglect, and their parents don’t stress the importance of education or make the effort to see them off to school. Older students, particularly teen mothers, might be truant because they are caring for their own children. Psychological Factors within Students Themselves

Some students, for whatever reason, do not value education, and thus they don’t see the harm in skipping school on a regular basis. In some cases they create a self-fulfilling prophecy by skipping a few days of school, suffering the academic consequences, getting discouraged, and then skipping more and more frequently. Other students suffer from low self-esteem or from an undiagnosed psychological disorder that prevents them from living healthy lives. Finally, some students are habitually truant because of drug or alcohol abuse. How Does Truancy Impact the Individual and Society as a Whole? Researchers have been able to trace the impact of habitual truancy on the subsequent lives of those students. While there is no one-to-one or strict cause-and-effect relationship between truancy and any particular result, the research collected by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention does show that students who are habitually truant display these tendencies: • Do poorly in school • More isolated from the wider society • Display low self-esteem • At greater risk for abusing drugs and alcohol

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• Truant girls are more likely to become teen mothers • Have poor employment records and/or job prospects • More prone to violence and incarceration Habitual truancy does not simply impact the individual in question. For the wider society, according to the National Center for School Engagement (2006), there are four main costs of truancy: • The immediate costs to solve the problem, including truant officers, court costs, counseling, etc. • The well-established relationship between habitual truancy and dropping out of high school; high school dropouts earn considerably less in a lifetime and are much more likely to be dependent on state or federal social welfare programs;

A 2007 study released by the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago found that race and socioeconomic level were not as important in predicting whether an incoming high school student would graduate than freshman grades, which are dependent upon attendance rate (Allensworth & Easton, 2007). “On average, a Chicago public school freshman misses 20 school days a year -- enough to give just a 50-50 chance of graduating, regardless of test scores in 8th grade, according to the study” (Demirjian, 2007, para. 7). Parental Involvement in Truancy

School principals have long been concerned that lack of adequate parental involvement in the education of their children has made life for teachers and school administrators more difficult than need be. A 1937 survey of public school principals revealed that the top four “problems they would like to lay before parents” were:

• Habitual truants tend to become involved in juvenile crime, and combating such crime involves law enforcement resources;

• Time spent on homework/Amount of homework

• Habitual truants who are juvenile offenders tend to remain criminals as adults, committing more serious types of crimes; this puts added stress on the criminal justice system.

• Lack of cooperation between parents and their child’s teachers

School Attendance as a Predictor of Graduation

Increased school attendance is directly correlated with higher achievement on standardized tests. In Minneapolis, for example, attendance rates have been an important predictor of achievement on 8th grade standardized reading and math exams: Figure 1. Attendance Correlated with MBST Passing Scores (Minneapolis Public Schools, 2005)

Reading

80%

Math

60%

40%

• Amount of time and the type of “entertainments”

• Their children’s “excused and unexcused absences” (Shannon, Fridiana, Gabrielis & Leonardilla, 1937, p. 366). This list would probably match one written today. Most educators continue to be concerned at the lack of parental involvement in the lives of their children, including the lack of consequences for repeated truancy. Educators understand that their policies are often effective only when they benefit from strong parental support. Thanks to a growing number of state laws that allow courts to hold parents responsible for their habitually truant children, some states and local areas have taken a get-tough approach. In a suburb of Denver, the parents of a girl who missed 43 days of school were held in contempt of court and sentenced to 10-day and 30-day jail terms, respectively (“Daughter’s Truancy,” 1987). In St. Petersburg, Florida in 2003, one parent received 179 days in jail, and school officials noted that whenever they prosecuted such careless parents, truancy rates would drop by more than half (Johnson, 2003). Because truant children are minors under the law, many argue that parents remain ethically and morally responsible – if not legally responsible -- for their behavior. Community Based Approaches to Reducing Truancy

20%

0%

33% 22% Less than 85%

42% 32%

54% 42%

63% 58%

85%-89% 90%-94% 95%-100% Attendance Attendance Attendance

Attendance correlated with 8th grade Minnesota Basic Standards Test passing rates, 2002-2003.

In addition to holding parents accountable for their children’s attendance, more and more cities are taking a proactive approach. In Philadelphia, where 9.5 percent of students are truant on any given school day, the School District of Philadelphia has created the Parent Truancy Officer Program. The program is staffed by 500 Parent Truant Officers who fan out over Philadelphia’s neighborhoods to ensure that students find their way to school (“Mayor John Street,” 2007). Clearly, in the opinion of the mayor and other community leaders, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure: Truancy and curfew violations are among the strongest indicators for identifying children at risk for delin-

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quency or violence,” Mayor Street said. “Parent Truant Officers are an important component of our increased efforts to ensure our children have a successful life. Parents and guardians are the first line of defense and the home is where the important message of attending school must originate, but everyone in the community must play a role in ensuring children are in school. These additional Parent Truant Officers will make a difference (“Mayor John Street,” 2007, para. 8). Philadelphia also allows students to expunge their prior truancy records by signing a pledge to remain in school and upholding their end of the bargain. If they don’t, their parents face fines or even imprisonment. The U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention provides a helpful Model Program Guide that presents information on successful, cost-effective truancy reduction, prevention and rehabilitation programs. The programs address the entire truancy continuum, from prevention to sanctions (family therapy, case management, etc.) to residential programs to reentry into adult society. The site uses robust scientific methodology for scoring each program. For those interested in developing truancy prevention programs, or simply seeking to understand how they work (or don’t work), the National Criminal Justice Reference Service offers a Tool Kit for Creating Your Own Truancy Reduction Program. And though slightly dated, the Manual to Combat Truancy (1996) from the U.S. Department of Education in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Justice remains a useful resource for establishing best practices in combating habitual truancy.

Viewpoints: Is Compulsory Education Outmoded? While compulsory education enjoys widespread public, political and teacher support, there are critics – many sympathetic with the homeschooling movement – who believe that requiring students to attend classes at and for a certain period of time is an unjust limitation of their civil liberties, not to mention expensive and sometimes futile. John Taylor Gatto, a former New York State Teacher of the Year, left the public school system and has become a harsh critic of the public school system. In his seminal history of American education, The “Underground History of American Education: A Schoolteacher’s Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling,” Gatto argued, against John Dewey and others, that public schools are enemies of individualism that stifle exceptionalism and creativity (Gatto, 2001). Most recently, Robert Epstein, former Editor-in-Chief of Psychology Today and author of ‘The Case Against Adolescence,’ has argued that one-size-fits-all education prolongs adolescence and gives young people excuses not to grow up. In a recent blog message about his thesis, he writes, “I say that we need to give young people incentives and opportunities to join the adult world.

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For many, this will mean quickly testing out of high school and pursuing work interests. High school is a waste of time for many or most young people, which is one reason the dropout rate is so high” (Epstein, 2007).

Terms & Concepts Compulsory Attendance: The idea, enshrined in the laws of all 50 states, that children should remain in school until a specified age and should be in class during the school year unless they have a legitimate excuse. Dropout Age: The state-approved age (typically 16 or 18) at which students can withdraw from school. Juvenile Delinquency: A term used to describe illegal behavior by minors (those under 18). Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention: An office of the U.S. Department of Justice that is a clearinghouse for information on juvenile delinquency and truancy in the United States. Public Education: A system of free K-12 education designed for all children in the United States. Public School: A local school that typically is either an elementary school (K-6), middle school (7-8) or high school (9-12). School Violence: Any aggressive behavior that takes place on school grounds before, during or after school hours. Truancy: A term used to describe students who are absent from school without a valid excuse. It can exist in mild or extreme forms. Unexcused Absence: A term used to describe the fact that a student who should be in school is away without a valid excuse.

Bibliography Allensworth, E. & Easton, J.Q. (2007). What matters for staying on-track and graduating in Chicago public schools. Consortium on Chicago School Research, University of Chicago (July 2007). Retrieved August 25, 2007, from the Consortium on Chicago School Research http://ccsr.uchicago.edu/content/publications.php?pub_id=116. Brazelton, C. (1939). Excessive absence of high-school girls. The School Review, 47(1), 51-55. Daughter’s truancy lands parents in jail. (1987, August 14). New York Times. Retrieved August 25, 2007, from http:// query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE5D6123F F937A2575BC0A961948260. Demirjian, K. (2007, August 15). Freshmen schooled on need to attend. Chicago Sun-Tribune Retrieved August 24,

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2007, from the University of Chicago News Service http:// www.topix.net/content/trb/2007/08/freshmen-schooled-onneed-to-attend Epstein, R. (2007, April 8). Comment on “Let’s Abolish High School.” Message posted to EricMacKnight.com. Retrieved on August 26, 2007, from EricMacKnight.com http://www.ericmacknight.com/wordpress/?p=72. Fornwalt, R. J. (1947). Toward an understanding of truancy. The School Review, 55(2), 87-92. Gatto, J. T. (2001). The Underground History of American Education: A Schoolteacher’s Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling. Retrieved August 26, 2007, from http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/ index.htm Henry, K. L. (2007). Who’s skipping school: Characteristics of truants in 8th and 10th Grade. Journal of School Health, 77(1), 29–35. Retrieved August 25, 2007, from the Digital Object Identifier System http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.17461561.2007.00159.x. Hinz, E., Kapp, L. & Snapp, S. (2003). Student attendance and mobility in Minneapolis public schools. The Journal of Negro Education, 72(1), 141-149. Jennings, J. (1927). A study of absences from school in two counties of Tennessee. Peabody Journal of Education, 4(5), 276-293. Johnson, C. (2003, February 24). Kids’ truancy gets parents jailed. St. Petersburg Times. Retrieved August 25, 2007, from http://www.sptimes.com/2003/02/24/Citrus/Kids__ truancy_gets_pa.shtml. Mayor John F. (2007, March 5). Street inducts new parent truant officers. Phila.gov. Retrieved August 25, 2007, from http://ework.phila.gov/philagov/news/prelease.asp?id=296. Minneapolis Public Schools (2005, October 14). Attendance matters!. Retrieved August 26, 2007, from Minneapolis Public Schools http://www.mpls.k12.mn.us/Attendance.html. National Center for School Engagement. (2006). Truancy, dropouts and delinquency: Solutions for policies, practices and partnerships. Retrieved August 24, 2007, from http://www.schoolengagement.org/ TruancypreventionRegistry/Admin/Resources/ Resources/87.pdf Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (n.d.). Facts on truancy. U.S. Department of Justice. Retrieved August 24, 2007, from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention http://www.ojjdp.ncjrs.

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gov/San Diego Public Safety & Neighborhood Services Committee. (2002). 2001 crime report. City of San Diego Police Department. Retrieved August 24, 2007 from the City of San Diego Police Department www.sandiego.gov/ police/pdf/01crimerpt.pdf. Schlesinger, A. M. (1933). The rise of the city, 1878-1898: A history of American life. Volume X. New York: Macmillan. Shannon, J. R., Fridiana, M., Gabrielis, M. & Leonardilla, M. Problems that principals would like to lay before parents. The School Review, 45(5), 364-367. Tyack, D. & Berkowitz, M. (1977). The man nobody liked: Toward a social history of the truant officer, 1840-1940. American Quarterly, 29(1), 31-54. Wolcott, D. (2001). “The cop will get you”: The police and discretionary juvenile justice, 1890-1940. Journal of Social History, 35(2), 349-371.

Suggested Reading Bell, M. (1933). The school and the juvenile court work together. Journal of Educational Sociology, 6(8), 471-482. Carlen, P. (1992). Pindown, truancy, and the interrogation of discipline: A paper about theory, policy, social worker bashing... and hypocrisy. Journal of Law and Society, 19(2), 251-270. DeSocio, J., VanCura, M., Nelson, L., Hewitt, G., Kitzman, H., & Cole, R. (2007). Engaging truant adolescents: Results from a multifaceted intervention pilot. Preventing School Failure, 51(3), 3-9. Retrieved August 25, 2007, from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a ph&AN=24944362&site=ehost-live. Herrera, S. (2006). Working with highly mobile, immigrant students in Houston, TX. National Center for School Engagement. Retrieved August 25, 2007, from National Center for School Engagement http://www.schoolengagement.org/TruancypreventionRegistry/Admin/Resources/ Resources/80.pdf. Lassonde, S. (1996). Learning and earning: Schooling, juvenile employment, and the early life course in late nineteenth-century New Haven. Journal of Social History. 29(4), 839-870. Retrieved September 19, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a 9h&AN=9606200721&site=ehost-live McCray, E. (2006). It’s 10 a.m.: Do you know where your children are? Intervention in School & Clinic, 42(1), 30-33.

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Retrieved August 25, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/ login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=22032014&site=eh ost-live. Mueller, D., Giacomazzi, A., & Stoddard, C. (2006). Dealing with chronic absenteeism and its related consequences: The process and short-term effects of a diversionary juvenile court intervention. Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk, 11(2), 199-219. Retrieved August 25, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a ph&AN=20694853&site=ehost-live. Norton, P.L. (1934). Team work for the wayward child. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 25(3), 434-444.

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Reynolds, D. & Murgatroyd, S. (1974). Being absent from school. British Journal of Law and Society, 1(1), 78-81. Sinha, J., Cnaan, R., & Gelles, R. (2007). Adolescent risk behaviors and religion: Findings from a national study. Journal of Adolescence, 30(2), 231-249. Accessed August 25, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.asp x?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=24457705&site=ehost-live. Zhang, D., Katsiyannis, A., Barrett, D., & Willson, V. (2007). Truancy offenders in the juvenile justice system. Remedial & Special Education, 28(4), 244-256. Retrieved August 25, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?di rect=true&db=aph&AN=25928971&site=ehost-live.

Pratt, J. D. (1983). Law and social control: A study of truancy and school deviance. Journal of Law and Society, 10(2), 223-240.

Essay by Matt Donnelly, Th.M. Matt Donnelly received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science and a Graduate degree in Theology. He is the author of Theodore Roosevelt: Larger than Life, which was included in the New York Public Library’s Books for the Teen Age and the Voice of Youth Advocates’ Nonfiction Honor List. A Massachusetts native and die-hard Boston Red Sox fan, he enjoys reading, writing, computers, sports, and spending time with his wife and two children. He welcomes comments at [email protected].

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