The School Attendance Review Boards, better known as SARB, combines community and school resources with coordinated effort to solve the problem of student absenteeism. (Author/RK)

Two case studies are presented in which contingency contracting, a form of behavior modification, was successfully used to increase school attendance. The author delineates four positive aspects of this approach: (1) it is economical; (2) responsibility is placed on the student; (3) parents can be included in the contract, giving them some…

School attendance of elementary students who had previously been chronically absent improved with home contacts by either the principal or a school secretary. (Editor)

Examines the nature and extent of the public school attendance problems in California through studying actual school attendance counts made during the fall of 1979. Principal reasons for student absenteeism are also examined. (Author)

Twenty-six teachers from 10 special teaching units in Southeast England completed a questionnaire indicating that (1) they clearly distinguished between school refusers and truants and (2) teacher ratings of students' self-esteem, stability, attitudes, and other characteristics differed from self-reported ratings of school refusers and truants.…

Describes the implementation of strict attendance policies at Dowling High School (West Des Moines, Iowa), which provide for penalties for missing more than 20 days per year and rewards given by the local business community for perfect attendance. Reports good results. (DMM)

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…

The current article reviews the literature on school refusal behavior. Definitional inconsistencies, the effects of biased assessment processes, and the consequences of the lack of ethnic, racial, and economic diversity in school refusal research samples are highlighted. An increase in the use of low-income, ethnic minority, community samples in…

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…

During the 1985-86 school year, Mt. Diablo High Schools (Concord, California) implemented a new attendance policy requiring that any student with 15 days of absence (including excused) would receive a failing grade. Since then, half of the district's six high schools have adopted alternative attendance programs. In 1990, Northgate and College Park…

Thirty-two chronic truants from a low-income, inner-city area of Philadelphia were given counseling aimed at returning them to regular school attendance. Results show that threat appeal was sufficient to change intention to return to school, but supportive instruction was necessary to change actual school attendance. (Author)

THE FOLLOWING IS THE FULL TEXT OF THIS DOCUMENT: Operation Stay In School is a program that focuses the combined efforts of parents, law enforcement personnel, probation officers, and school district staff on improving school attendance. Under the leadership of Judge Dennis Adams, following extensive study of effective truancy programs throughout…

Strategies for preventing or responding to truancy and dropping out of school are offered in this resource paper. The document's first few pages draw on statistics from around the United States to illustrate the magnitude of the problem in terms of both its scope and its consequences. The paper then turns to its major focus, strategies to increase…

Based on the assumption that truancy is a discrete form of behavior alterable by manipulation, rather than just a symptom of some underlying problem, an experiment among ninth graders investigated the effect of contingency management (using rewards to effect behavior changes) on truancy. Identification of habitual truants to participate in the…

Student absenteeism has been declining in the United States since records were first kept in the late nineteenth century. Even so, some districts, usually urban, have found absentee rates doubling or even tripling over the last ten years. The tendency of teacher absenteeism to rise in districts where student absenteeism has increased sharply…