December 6th, 2010

Going Punitive: Does it Improve Attendance?

We’re often asked do punitive measures improve school attendance?

The Vera Institute took a look at the situation in New York state, where a child’s truancy can lead to educational neglect charges against the parents. The report, Getting Teenager Back to School: Rethinking New York State’s Response to Chronic Absence, found that these neglect charges were gumming up the child welfare system without demonstrating any results.

According to the report:  

The child protective system is not well equipped to help teenagers improve their school attendance. Nonetheless, educational-neglect reports involving teens consume a large portion of the child protective system’s resources and are diverting the system’s attention from children with more serious safety and neglect issues. The most common responses to teenage chronic absence around the country are punitive, contrary to what adolescent development and school engagement research tell us about what motivates teens to go to school.

The report further points out that the ultimate penalty in a neglect case is moving the student into foster care. But foster children typically have high rates of chronic absence.

In an Associated Press story about the report, a spokesman for New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he was not ready to “take parents off the hook for their children’s behavior.

 “The mayor’s office believes that reports of educational neglect in children over 12 years of age can lead to underlying issues of abuse and neglect for both the student in question and for his or her younger siblings.”

Our view is that there is a place for punitive measures for parents and students in the attendance continuum, but only after many, many positive interventions. That includes:

• broad strokes emphasizing to students and parents just how important attending school is to academic achievement
• incentives that reward students for coming to school and improving their attendance
• regular outreach and communications with parents when absences occur
• intervention from health and social services providers when necessary

 Only after all these efforts fail should the case go to the courts.

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