A survey distributed to families and collected by Family Friendly Schools, supports the organization’s position that students do better when their parents are involved their education. The results of the survey concluded with four main points, one of them being student attendance is better when parents are engaged in school activities and function, which results in the student being more connected to the school and school community. The author offered a range of suggestions to reach challenging families and students.
Dembo, G. , & Gulledge, L. (2009).Truancy intervention programs: challenges and innovations to implementation.
Criminal Justice Policy Review, 20(4), 437-456. The authors analyze the importance of criminologist studying troubled youth who have high truancy rates. Truant students’ defiant behavior has historically cost taxpayers and society a tremendous amount of money as these individuals enter the legal system. The authors feel students with high truancy rates can be rehabilitated starting as early as middle school with the assistance of school interventions.The article recognizes many truant students share common problems: a problematic family history, parents or guardians with substance abuse problems or criminal pasts themselves, and low school achievement mostly due to poor attendance.
Interventions started at an early age in schools, offering counseling and involving parents, can prevent dismal futures for truant students. Enea, V. , & Dafinoiu, I. (2009). Motivational/solution focused intervention for reducing school truancy among adolescent.
Journal of Cognitive and Behavioral Psychotherapies, 9(2), 185-198.The results of a study done in Romania support the importance of providing truant students with the emotional and parental support needed to decrease student truancy. Findings of the study includes, punishment alone does not decrease truancy but counseling and parental involvement, as well as teaching coping skills improve student participation in school. Gottfried, M. (2010).
Evaluating the relationship between student attendance and achievement in urban elementary and middle schools. American Educational Research Journal, 41(2), 434-465.Conducting research on attendance and student achievement in an urban school setting, the author concludes that students who attend school regularly experience greater achievement in school, thus encouraging students and their families to send the students to school. When absentee rates started to grow for students, school interventions helped the families of the students’ to continue attending school, thus continuing students to increase their academic skills. Gottfried, M. (2009).
Excused versus unexcused: how student absences in elementary school affect student achievement.Educational Evaluation & Policy Analysis, 31(4), 392-415. Analyzing the results of said study, elementary school students reading levels and math levels were higher for students who had excused absences compared to students who had unexcused absences. Excused absences included illnesses and doctors’ visits and were fewer than students with unexcused absences. Unexcused absences included but were not limited to students who did not feel like going to school; parents who did not feel like arguing with their children making them go to school.
Absenteeism results in lower academic achievement. Hallfors, V, & Luitani, C. (2002). Truancy, grade point average, and sexual activity: a meta-analysis of risk indicators for youth substance use. Journal of School Health, 72(5), 205-211. A qualitative survey given to students in high school found students with a high number of absences directly correlated with other risky behaviors such as drug and alcohol use, hanging out with deviant peers, and engaging in sexual activity, thus resulting in low academic performance, low grade point average and no connectedness to the school.
When two or more of the aforementioned risky behaviors were engaged in, it was commonly reported by the students that many of them used drugs, possibly leading the student down the path to addiction. Truancy was an indicator of a students’ low grade point average. The information obtained from the survey were good indicators of how successful the student would be after high school, as well as an indicator of the student’s work ethic.
