In this paper we study the impact on student absenteeism of a large school-based community crime monitoring program that employed local community members to monitor and report crime on designated city blocks during students' travel to and from school. We find that the program resulted in a 0.78 percentage point reduction in the school-level…

Educators are under increasing pressure to improve the climate and safety in urban schools. Unfortunately, schools have addressed school safety concerns by increasing exclusionary measures such as suspensions and expulsions. Knowing that exclusionary measures can have detrimental effects, state legislatures have called for more proactive…

High rates of truancy at some DC schools are receiving considerable attention. The Family Court cannot realistically be a primary response to the chronic truancy of thousands of chronically truant high-school students, Senior Fellow Akiva Liberman of the Justice Policy Center told the City Council. Liberman commented that family-based…

The Truancy Court Diversion Program (TCDP) is a voluntary program for at risk students and their parents. It combines involvement of a Family Court judge in group and individual sessions with service provision. During the 2011-12 school year, a pilot TCDP was implemented at Kramer Middle School (M.S.) and at Johnson M.S. The program attempts to…

An evaluation of the Truancy Court Diversion Program (TCDP) found that despite significant implementation challenges, parent-child communication and youths' attitudes towards school both improved. A voluntary program for middle school students at risk for chronic truancy, TCDP involves judicially-led sessions that address student attitudes…