Students Who Won’t or Can’t Go to School

2019-10-03T13:26:11-05:00

As the concept of chronic absenteeism gains traction across the country, some people are under the impression that it’s just a politically correct way of saying truancy. However, the two terms describe different aspects of our absenteeism problem and require different approaches to bringing students back to school every day. First, let’s take truancy, a term that generally refers to unexcused absences. In the past, federal law required states to track truancy but left it to states to come up with the definition. With its focus on unexcused absences, truancy naturally leads to a focus on compliance with the rules. Students [...]