Truancy: It’s Not About Skipping School

Truancy and related school attendance issues are serious problems nationwide, and are often the result of a punitive school-based paradigm that harms more students than the protocols help. While some school districts and juvenile courts have shifted toward a rehabilitative paradigm and approach truancy with preventive efforts, unfortunately, this is not the norm. This manuscript summarizes and reviews: (1) the prevalence of the problems within schools and juvenile courts; (2) truancy and delinquency’s inter-related risk and protective factors for children and adolescents and the disproportionate impact on some students; and (3) the evidence of what schools and related stakeholders can do to improve student truancy/attendance problem outcomes. The analysis concludes with case examples from two states (Colorado and Ohio) that have taken dichotomous approaches to addressing truancy, and what child and adolescent social workers should do to fix the problems.