Truancy: Epidemic or Controllable Rebellion?

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Truancy: Epidemic or Controllable Rebellion? Audience: Parents, police officers and the students. Introduction In recent discussions of juvenile delinquency, a controversial issue has been whether students being arrested or penalized for truancy is successful or not. On one hand police and other authoritative figures argues that this is a great way to make them an example for other kids to not follow their path. On the other hand, many contends that this will not affect the students and the issue will keep reoccurring. Explaining What Truancy is Truancy has often been defined as “a student having excessive unexcused absences.” According to truancyprevention.org, the definition of truancy may vary across different states and school districts, but the general working definition of a truant student is five or more absences that are unexcused within a month or ten within a year. For clarification, unexcused absences are defined as a student missing majority of hours or periods in a school day or may fail to meet their school district's excused absence requirements. Within this working definition, local school districts and individual schools have substantial discretion to determine what is considered an excused absence. It is difficult to differentiate what qualifies as being truant and how to control the issue due to: lack of a clear definition of truancy; lack of control groups; lack of larger numbers of students examined; lack of a reexamination on the execution of truant students after interventions. Truant Students and Why They Are Absent Three categories for characteristics related to truancy are provided in current media: personal, family, and school. Personal traits. In case studies that have critiqued truant... ... middle of paper ... ...ool Attendance Among Chronic Truant Students. Campbell Library. Retrieved April 3, 2014, from http://campbellcollaboration.org/lib/project/118/ Nesmith, A. (n.d.). Engaging Families to Prevent Chronic Truancy. SOPHIA. Retrieved April 3, 2014, from http://sophia.stkate.edu/msw_papers/278/ Petzko, V. N. (2011).The relationship of characteristics of large, metropolitan high schools to school attendance rates. Retrieved April 3, 2014, from http:www.worldcat.org/title/relationship-of-characteristics-of-large-metropolitan-high-schools-to- school-attendance-rates/oclc/27959857 Truancy. (2013, December 19). Attendance Improvement (CA Dept of Education). Retrieved April 3, 2014, from http://www.cde.ca.gov/ls/ai/tr/ Truancy Definition, Facts and Laws. (n.d.).Truancy Prevention TruancyPreventionorg RSS. Retrieved April 4, 2014, from http://www.truancyprevention.org/

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