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Toni Callas is a freelance writer based in New Jersey.
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Getting a handle on truancy takes more than getting tough
Experts urge a collaborative approach; city works to combine supports for families with new threats of jail time
by Toni Callas
When parents in Jacksonville, Fla. were asked whether they knew their child’s chronic truancy could land them in jail, most said they knew the rules.
It’s the reason many said they were motivated to get their child into the classroom at almost any cost.
Philadelphia educators and Mayor John Street are hoping they will get the same response from parents as new measures, including a tougher threat of incarceration, are put in place to combat an epidemic of truancy.
But as Shelley Grant, coordinator of Jacksonville’s Truancy Arbitration Program (TAP) explained, the tough stuff is the last resort, and can’t be the centerpiece of a truancy strategy.
“It’s not something we do often,” said Grant, who runs what experts call one of the nation’s better anti-truancy campaigns. “The fact that it’s out there encourages – for lack of a better word – some parents to be cooperative with us. However, our program does not focus on that component. We don’t want to arrest parents.”
In fact, only about 200 parents have been arrested in the 12 years since TAP started in the 125,000-student district. Currently, the program services about 2,000 Jacksonville parents, bringing families together with schools, community and social agencies to help them figure out and deal with the root causes of truancy.
“For many of our families, truancy is a sign of crisis,” said Grant. “So it’s important to refer them to the agencies for the help they need.”
Jacksonville has effectively focused on the parents of younger truant children. Statistics show that the district’s truancy rate for elementary and middle school students declined between 1996 and 2002, the last year for which they’re publicly reported, but did not decline for high school.
Philadelphia is already spending millions on truancy prevention, including truancy courts. But Augustine Keirans of Philadelphia Safe and Sound, which runs parts of the mayor’s expanded initiative, said that the resources still don’t meet the need.
The landmark dropout study released by Project U-Turn (see "Report offers detailed analysis of out-of-school youth") last October showed that between 2000 and 2005, 30,000 students left school before graduation, and cited truancy as a major predictor of dropping out. Each day, 18 percent of public school students – nearly one in five – are absent from school without an excuse, according to the mayor’s office.
Shortly after the study’s release, Mayor Street announced a $3 million effort to hire more Parent Truant Officers (PTOs) and summoned 6,000 parents of chronically truant students to Temple University’s Liacouras Center for a dressing down.
Threatened with sanctions, about 4,000 parents showed up. City and school officials told them they could be jailed if their children continued to miss school. At a second-chance meeting in February, about 360 students and their parents participated in a half-day workshop that directed them to agencies for help. Families that attended either session had their truancy offenses expunged. While critics called the city’s tactics heavy-handed, leading truancy expert Jay Smink, the executive director of the National Dropout Prevention Center at Clemson University, said getting tough with parents can be effective but must be used along with essential non-judicial interventions.
“Those kinds (Philadelphia’s brand) of programs work to a degree,” Smink said. “But you really need to get at the heart of the reason for the truancy, and that’s where the other programs come in. You need to get to the cause for why the kid is out of school and hanging at the mall or wherever.” He said that there needs to be more efficient collaboration among students, parents, law enforcement, the community, and social service agencies.
Jacqueline Barnett, the city’s secretary of education, said the city is working to get youth and families the help they need. Additional Parent Truant Officers will be placed in every school, working 20-25 hours a week for $9 an hour, getting names of families from schools, visiting homes, and finding out why the child has been absent. They will also make referrals to community organizations that can get them help, she said.
“If it’s a matter of bullying, we’ll get them into conflict resolution,” said Barnett. “If it’s a matter of a young parent who is overwhelmed, we’ll get them parenting classes. Sometimes it’s a matter of just not having enough tokens to get the subway or not having a doctor’s note.”
Philadelphia Safe and Sound will operate the expanded Parent Truant Officer program, which was originally launched by the School District in 2002. District data showed that the program did result in a decrease in unexcused absences in District schools when first implemented.
Keirans said that 150 new PTOs are being assigned by March, another 150 in April, and another 100 in May.
Smink also cited some effective strategies that Philadelphia doesn’t plan to adopt. For instance, Jacksonville starts with the parents of children as young as age six; research shows that between the grades one and seven, parental behavior is a major cause of truancy.
“One of the things that we know from research is that failure to attend school is a pattern that develops pretty early and continues through the life-cycle of the school experience,” Smink said. “If you look at graduates versus dropouts and their attendance patterns – the problems start as early as grade one.”
Jacksonville’s Grant said the early interventions help to get children involved in school.
“Because once they hit middle school and they’ve failed a few courses, you’ve pretty much lost them,” she said, “But in elementary school, these kids still want to go to school and we want to help them continue the pattern.”
TAP also has a unique relationship with law enforcement. The sheriff’s departments that pick up students take them to truancy centers where officers try to find out why the child is not in school. Unlike Philadelphia’s truancy centers, students are held – even overnight – until a parent arrives to take them home. Philadelphia students in fifth grade and higher finish out their instructional day at a truancy center and are allowed to go home if a parent does not pick them up. Right now, there are no plans to change that practice.
Because the majority of truancy occurs in the middle and high schools, Barnett said, Philadelphia’s new initiatives focus on older children and their parents, but services are available to all students.
Some programs – such as a Saturday initiative geared specifically to truants and their parents – do incorporate younger children. SMART, or the Saturday Morning Alternative Reach and Teach program, features workshops on character development, conflict resolution, decision-making despite peer pressure, and family relationships, and is open to students from kindergarten on up.