Truancy Research Articles

Treating the Context of Truancy

Treating the Context of Truancy

Book Review: Absent with Cause: Lessons of Truancy

Book Review: Absent with Cause: Lessons of Truancy

Project Probe a Student Conducted Study of Truancy: Effect of Involvement on Participants

Project Probe a Student Conducted Study of Truancy: Effect of Involvement on Participants

Hoyem v. Manhattan Beach City School District: School District Liability for Injuries to Truants

Hoyem v. Manhattan Beach City School District: School District Liability for Injuries to Truants

Court ordered monitoring of school desegregation

Luvern L. Cunningham Novice G. Fawcett Professor of Educational Administration Faculty of Educational Administration The Ohio State University Lila N. Carol Director, Coalition of Religious Congregations Columbus, Ohio Sentiments ebb and flow about school desegregation. Few, if any, public policy matters arouse people as much. How, in the face of such opposition, can rights be preserved, the Constitution obeyed? How in a school situation, where the prevailing feelings seem stacked strongly against a court order to desegregate, can the order be enforced? And to what end? Such questions have led federal district courts to establish citizen monitoring committees. There ought to be embedded somewhere in this emerging practice, an elegant theory, an enlightened belief of some sort. And maybe there is. Oversight, auditing, and monitoring are popular terms these days.1 But in school desegregation it seems that the courts simply need help. They need help from citizens whom the court can trust, citizens who will insure that the will of the Court be done, and responsibly so. The court is not an administrative body, at least in most instances. The ordinary tools of the court for enforcement are not enough in school desegregation cases. Police departments can assist with safety matters. Mayors can issue reassuring statements. Truant officers can make sure that children attend school. That is not sufficient. There has to be more. This article is a review and analysis of this most unique new form of citizen involvement in education: court ordered citizens monitoring committees. These new instrumentalities have emerged within the last several years and stand as an example of a new form of participation in local school district policy making and governance. Recent school desegregation cases, those of the past dozen years, have produced concerns on the part of the courts about the role and responsibility of school boards and administrators in the implementation of school desegregation court orders. Thousands of citizen groups have been working in the interest of public and private education in the last half century. The earliest citizens groups actually began at the start of public education in the United States, especially in the urban area. They are hardly a new phenomenon. But the court ordered monitoring mechanism is of recent vintage. In fact, the existence of such bodies is not very well known nor is there any serious evaluation of their contribution to the governance and management of educational institutions. On May 31-June 1, 1977, the Community Relations Service of the United States Department of Justice2 and the College of Education at The Ohio State University sponsored jointly a national conference on court ordered monitoring committees. It was the first meeting of its kind ever held. The conference was attended by members of monitoring committees, superintendents, school board members and other

The Man Nobody Liked: Toward A Social History of the Truant Officer, 1840-1940

flattering. In 1880 a writer in Harper's Magazine expressed a common view: purpose of agent ... is to let loose upon truant scholars and nonattendants legal 'dogs of war,' and woe be to hapless urchin who becomes object of his terrible eye. Petitions, complaints, warrants, and commitments are hurled at his devoted head, until he is thrust headlong into Attendance School-a sort of earthly purgatory. In 1918 supervisor of attendance in Milwaukee complained that his department was the Cinderella of school system-does most of unpleasant work, has no appreciation from anybody, only criticism if something goes wrong. Most people today, when a truancy or attendance officer is mentioned, have only idea that he is a baby-catcher or children's scare; his main occupation is to drag hookey-player, delictum horribili, to school by force. The commonest image of truant officer was that of decrepit tyrant, an archaic 'hookey-cop' with his bogey-man whiskers and a big tin badge on his breast or an asthmatic, broken-down police officer whose arches no longer support him on a beat. Half fearsome, half ridiculous, he was butt of cartoons and jokes (see Plate 1). Edgar Bergen had Charlie McCarthy call truant officer old ramshackle-a talent scout for reform school.'

A School for Truants

A School for Truants

Accelerating the educational progress of intellectually gifted youths1

Abstract Aptitude and achievement tests designed for much older students are invaluable for finding extremely high ability at younger ages. Results of the first two years of the Study of Mathematically and Scientifically Precocious Youth are examined to show that considerable educational acceleration is not only feasible but also desirable for those young people who are eager to move ahead. Skipping school grades, taking college courses part‐time, studying in special courses, and entering college early are inexpensive and supplemental to regular school practices. We do not advocate the usual in‐grade, non‐accelerative “enrichment”; procedures often recommended for intellectually gifted children. An heuristic overview is presented of the main assumptions and findings of the Study thus far.

Baltimore Experiments with Truancy Program

Baltimore Experiments with Truancy Program

The Dutch Origin of Play Hookey

THE ORIGIN of the Americanism play hook(e)y'skip school' is seldom recorded in dictionaries, be they etymological dictionaries or lexicons of slang, colloquialisms, or phrases. Those that give a possible source for the expression usually suggest that it comes from hook (it) 'escape, run away, make off' or from the transitive usage of the verb hook 'steal.' For a time in the nineteenth century, Webster's dictionaries (1878, 1885, and 1891) associated hooky with hockey. Another usage, hooky 'full of hooks,' is also given in Webster's dictionaries after 1843. In the sense of 'truancy,' however, it is clearly recognized as an Americanism in the dictionaries of Bartlett, Craigie and Hulbert, and Mathews.2 Bartlett correctly states that play hookey is a term used among school-boys, chiefly in the State of New York, dating its appearance about 1848. Bartlett's first specific citation is the use by Mark Twain in Tom Sawyer (p. 100): He moped to school gloomy and sad, and took his flogging, along with Joe Harper, for playing hookey the day before.3 Craigie and Hulbert cite an earlier usage by Mark Twain in Sketches, New and Old, quoting from Story of the Good Little Boy who would not play hookey, even when his sober judgment told him it was the most profitable thing he could do.4 Craigie and Hulbert also add a quotation from Edward Eggleston's Hoosier School-Boy, written in 1883: They remembered that the geography lesson was a hard one, and so they played 'hooky.' 5 Although both Tom Sawyer and The Hoosier School-Boy have midwestern settings, Mark Twain settled down in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1871 and Eggleston was in

Hidden Delinquency and Social Status

Utilizing self-reported data, this article is concerned with a number of basic issues relative to social status and delinquency. Its findings were these: (1) respondents, overall, reported a large number of undetected violations; (2) the number of violations differed little from one status level to another (although there was a tendency for upper-status respondents to be less delinquent); but (3) there were distinct differences between status levels with respect to kinds of delinquency. Middle-status respondents reported having committed the most serious and destructive kinds of acts, while low-status respondents were more inclined to smoke regularly, skip school, fight and use narcotics. The latter differences held up among incarcerated offenders as well as among those who were not officially defined as delinquent. A vailable data regarding the relationship of social status to delinquency are limited and contradictory. On one hand, almost all official statistics report the incidence of delinquency to be concentrated most heavily among lower-status juveniles.1 The evidence has been sufficiently persuasive as to lead to a large body of theory designed to explain it: Merton,2 Cohen,3 Cloward and Ohlin,4 Miller,5 and others. Yet, there have always been those who argue that the supporting evidence is nothing more than a statistical artifact. Warner and Lunt,6 Porterfield,7 Barron8 and Kvaraceus9 have all concluded that the reason some juveniles are officially charged while others are not is a function of social status. But is their conclusion based on fact or what Cohen calls egalitarian proclivities and sentimental humanitarian-

Today's Millstone

We may well be disturbed by John Donne's trenchant statement that no man is an island unto himself but is responsible for what goes on in his community. The bell of juvenile delinquency is now tolling for us; nor can we muffle it by contributing to the support of youth study clinics or by shifting our responsibility back to the schools and truant officers, who shift theirs back to the parents. Fundamentally, we are not satisfied with the argument that this is too big, too ramifying a problem for us to tackle, involving, on the one hand, civil liberties—freedom of the press and TV—and on the other, however little we like to admit it, the very structure of our industrial system—progress through automation, the problem of mounting unemployment and mounting costs, and the rights of labor unions. At the bottom of our hearts we know that the bell tolls

Truants from Life. The Rehabilitation of Emotionally Disturbed Children.Bruno Bettelheim

<i>Truants from Life. The Rehabilitation of Emotionally Disturbed Children.</i>Bruno Bettelheim

Review of Truants from life: The rehabilitation of emotionally disturbed children.

Review of Truants from life: The rehabilitation of emotionally disturbed children.

Truants from Life: The Rehabilitation of Emotionally Disturbed Children.

Truants from Life: The Rehabilitation of Emotionally Disturbed Children.

The Truancy of Calidore

The Truancy of Calidore

Afternoon of a Truant

Afternoon of a Truant

Toward an Understanding of Truancy

THE average teacher's philosophy on truancy is a paradox. It is at once both definite and vague. It is definite with regard to the legal aspect but vague so far as understanding the factors that cause truancy is concerned. Reports from school and juvenile authorities and from lawenforcement officials show that truancy is increasing everywhere. However, there is no corresponding increase in a realistic understanding of the problem. With respect to causative factors, some teachers show complete disinterest and indifference. This negative attitude is perfectly understandable for three reasons. First, largely because of tradition, truancy is regarded as a legal matter -something for the school's attendance bureau or truant officer to

Truancy as a symptom

Truancy as a symptom

The Nature and Implications of Truancy from the Standpoint of the Schools

The Nature and Implications of Truancy from the Standpoint of the Schools