Calls for increased monitoring and evaluation of education policies and practices have not, so far, included widespread and consistent assessments of the inclusiveness of education settings. Measuring inclusion in education has proven to be a challenging exercise, due not only to the complexity and different uses of the concept, but also to its…

Since the Common School era, states have maintained truancy laws to ensure that students attend school. However, we know little about the severity of these laws and their relationship to student outcomes, particularly absenteeism. In this study, we survey state education statutes to document the severity of truancy policies. We estimate the…

Background: National ranking from the triennial Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA) often serves as a barometer of national performance and human capital. Though excessive student- and school-level covariates (n > 700) may prove intractable for traditional least-squares estimate procedures, shrinkage methods may be more…

There is no shortage of definitions for truancy. One state may house many different definitions and there are a variety of challenges arising from this fact. One of the most important to researchers, policy-makers and educators alike, is that because of the lack of uniformity and consistency, it is difficult to compile and ascertain the totality…

This brief maps the national attendance gap--the who, what, when, where and why of absenteeism--using research drawn from national sources as well as attendance data gathered across states from students taking the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Health emerges again and again, both as a challenge and as a solution to improving…

Maryland recently raised its compulsory school attendance age from 16 to 18 in two stages: from 16 to 17 at the beginning of the 2014-15 school year and from 17 to 18 at the beginning of the 2016-17 school year (Maryland Senate Bill 362, 2012). The Maryland State Department of Education, a member of Regional Educational Laboratory Mid-Atlantic's…

Maryland raised its compulsory school attendance age from 16 to 18 in two stages: from 16 to 17 at the beginning of the 2014/15 school year and from 17 to 18 at the beginning of the 2016/17 school year (Maryland Senate Bill 362, 2012). The Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) sought technical assistance from the Regional Educational…

The main objective of this systematic review was to examine the effects of interventions on school attendance to inform policy, practice, and research. The questions guiding this study were: (1) Do truancy programs with a goal of increasing student attendance for truant youth affect school attendance behaviors of elementary and secondary students…

Migration flows are profoundly changing the composition of classrooms. Results from the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) reveal that in 2015, almost one in four 15-year-old students in OECD countries reported that they were either foreign-born or had at least one foreign-born parent. Between 2003 and 2015, the share of…

This study addressed the problem of poor attendance adversely affecting grades and learning. Current school policies do not address problematic attendance for all school-aged children, perpetuating trends of academic failure. The research objective was to determine if unexcused absences had a greater negative impact on a high-stakes test compared…

In recent years, the local school leadership in a suburban southern U.S. high school adopted innovative academic intervention programs to assist underperforming students but did not develop formal methods to evaluate program effectiveness. This gap in the professional practice continued with the inception of mandatory tutoring (MT), an…

In recent years, various governments and education agencies have developed stricter policies to reduce truancy levels, mainly based on the argument that truancy is associated with risk behaviour, crime and substance abuse. In this article, we use a large, 28-nation comparative survey among 14 year olds to detect general patterns in consequences…

The purpose of this article is to discuss the Japanese educational system and how the transformed society influenced the appearance of school counselors in the educational setting. In addition, a comparison of issues that influenced the emergence of these professionals to those in the United States is provided. Finally, a discussion is included…

Truancy has been identified as one of the top 10 educational problems in the United States and is considered an important predictor of later delinquent behavior. The purpose of this study was to track youth initially referred to the juvenile justice system because of truancy. Data were provided by the South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice…

This study describes the truancy and disciplinary problems of high school bullying victims in the USA. Analyses are based on data from the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002, a nationally representative sample of 10th graders (students aged 14-15) in the USA. Being bullied is found to be positively associated with increased risk of being…