Eight recommendations for reducing truancy organized around three themes: school-wide improvement, linking truancy to classroom learning, and special attention to high full-day absentees¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 3 claims (3 for) · 1 study (1 associational), q2 · 0 of 1 report an effect size · 3 claims rest on one study

Description¶

The brief distills its case studies and analyses into three themes and eight recommendations for high schools. It states that "there are three central themes that underlie effective school approaches": truancy reduction requires school-wide improvement; truancy is an academic problem and solutions must be linked to the classroom and learning; and schools must pay special attention to students with high full-day absences. Recommendations span information systems, personalized instructional environments, early identification, parent partnership, reintegration plans, discipline that minimizes lost class time, elementary-high school communication, and mental health and social service gaps.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• School-wide buy-in: the brief warns that just adding special truancy programs is not effective unless all adults agree that improving attendance is central to the day-to-day mission of the school

Constraints¶

• The brief presents 1996 data and states it cannot evaluate the new truancy initiatives then being launched

Target Learners¶

• ninth grade high school students in urban public schools

Target Learning Goals¶

• student engagement and school attendance
• academic recovery for truant students

Claims¶

• Schools vary widely in attendance and cutting; in the ten worst-attendance schools the average ninth grader is an extreme truant in at least one major subject by second semester [+W]
• CPS has two distinct truancy problems—full-day absenteeism and class cutting—and about 40 percent of extreme truancy occurs through class cutting [+W]
• By spring of ninth grade, 64 percent of CPS ninth graders missed two or more weeks of instruction in at least one major subject [+W]

Related Strategies¶

• Provide special instruction for individual difficulties without full-day withdrawal from the regular classroom

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Roderick, M., Arney, M., Axelman, M., DaCosta, K., Steiger, C., Stone, S., Villarreal-Sosa, L., & Waxman, E. (1997). Habits Hard to Break: A New Look at Truancy in Chicago's Public High Schools. Student Life in High Schools Project, School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago. https://consortium.uchicago.edu/publications/habits-hard-break-new-look-truancy-chicagos-public-high-schools