How to Understand Truancy

What is Truancy?

An unexcused absence from school is considered truancy.
States enact school attendance laws which determine:
- the age at which a child is required to begin attending school,
- the age at which a child may legally drop out of school, and
- the number of unexcused absences which render a student legally truant.
Under many state’s laws, youth missing more than 10 days of school are required to repeat the school year.
While truancy is a major problem across the country, few states do much to proactively prevent it and little to re-engage youth who have been truant.

Truancy is a status offense, an act that is an offense solely because of the age of the offender; the same conduct by an adult person would not be an offense or justify the involvement of law enforcement and the courts.
Status offenses like truancy, including running away from home, failure to obey parents and curfew violations, are generally understood to reflect family problems of the youth involved.
Federal law prohibits incarcerating youth charged with status offenses.
In some states, when youth violate probation orders requiring their attendance at school, judges will order youth to be incarcerated.
Some states also prosecute parents for failure to ensure their children’s attendance in school.

Police are most effective in reducing truancy when they recognize that truancy is not a crime so much as it is a symptom of a child’s troubled educational or social adjustment to school for educational or social reasons.
Police participation in comprehensive community responses are most effective when police:
- Communicate with schools and parents,
- Do not criminalize truancy,
- Intervene immediately upon seeing youth under the age of 12 being truant,
- Work with schools to promote re-engagement of youth.

Police departments that proactively approach truancy often find an immediate decrease in delinquency rates in their jurisdictions during school hours.
Truancy by youth under the age of 12 has been identified as the best predictor of a youth’s involvement in delinquency.
Truancy has also been established by several studies as a predictive risk factor for substance abuse, teen pregnancy, social isolation and the number one reason for dropping out of school.
Truants have low self-esteem and are more sensitive to rejection or criticism than non-truants; as a result they are often more vulnerable to their peers and to adults who may pressure them to become involved in behaviors that undermine their chances for success and increase encounters with police.

The current understanding of truancy has come a long way from how Mark Twain characterized it in Huckleberry Finn: a joyous rebellion against authority and responsibility. Today, truancy of youth under 14 is viewed less as a manifestation of a youth’s failure to do well in school as a school’s failure to meet a student’s needs.
Common causes include:
- Learning disabilities that are either undiagnosed or inadequately dealt with,
- Victimization by school bullies, teachers, school staff,
- Fear of school,
- Family chaos, as well as abuse and neglect, obligations to care for parents or younger siblings,
- Mental health issues, such as post-traumatic stress disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which provoke punishment from schools instead of treatment, and often lead youth to leave school.
Schools’ failure to provide timely notice to parents of student absences is another factor: school systems vary widely in policies and procedures for notifying parents of absences: some systems inform parents after one day’s absence; others wait 30 to 40 days.