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.