Truancy

Causes and Effects

Research has demonstrated that truancy is a reliable predictor of delinquency, gang involvement, substance abuse, and teen pregnancy. Further, insofar as many truants become dropouts, it also correlates with unemployment, low salary, imprisonment, and welfare.

Truancy affects communities by expending resources and time of family courts as well as juvenile justice systems, along with dealing with the rise in [Page 840]associated crimes. In addition, there can be a loss of state and federal education funding due to high absenteeism. This, in turn, could create either a rise in local property taxes or a reduction of educational resources, thereby impacting all students. Finally, insofar as truancy is correlated with unemployment and underemployment, it can have long-term effects for communities through lost tax revenues and expenditures on public assistance. Accordingly, it is in the interest of communities to reduce the rate of truancy.

The first set of factors correlated with truancy consists of student characteristics. Truant children tend to have low self-esteem and lack social competence. Further, drug and alcohol abuse, mental health issues, or poor physical health contribute to truancy. The second set of factors relate to families. These factors include lack of parental supervision, poverty, alcohol and drug abuse, domestic violence, and indifferent attitudes toward education. The third set of factors concern economic matters, such as parents having multiple jobs, students having to work to help support themselves and their families, the lack of affordable transportation and child care, single-parent households, and high mobility rates. The fourth set of factors includes school-based issues, such as perceived uncaring attitudes of teachers and administrators, school size, falling behind in schoolwork, boring and irrelevant curriculum, and bullying.

The legal definition of truancy varies from one state to the next. However, all definitions are connected with compulsory education laws that require children, generally between the age of 7 and 18 years, to continuously attend school. In general, school boards and educational officials have the authority to determine whether absences are excused. Even so, the number of unexcused absences required to make cases for truancy is set by state officials.

Approaches to Truancy

Jurisdictions also differ in their approach to truancy. Most states deal with truancy either through school-based intervention programs or via the mechanism of state law enforcement. In the court system, truancy is classified as a status offense because it would not be a violation if committed by an adult. Consequently, children can be categorized as status offenders in one state but be left alone by the legal systems of other jurisdictions.

The juvenile justice system, according to many scholars, is the least effective means of addressing truancy. The current emphasis on punishment in that system, rather than addressing the complexity of truancy, criminalizes truants. As such, children in the juvenile justice system tend to receive less rehabilitation and are more likely to become recidivists. Moreover, the adversarial nature of the juvenile justice system impedes its effectiveness in truancy cases. To this end, there is a tendency for parents and children to be set in opposition to one another, escalating rather than getting at the root of the problem.

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