Truancy has been linked to serious immediate and far-reaching consequences for youth, families, and schools and communities. Do truancy programs aimed at increasing student attendance work? The findings from a systematic review suggest that school attendance improves by almost a full school week when programs targeting attendance behaviors are implemented.
A Campbell systematic review shows that programs aimed at increasing student attendance for chronic truant students have a positive effect. The programs studied and included in the review improved attendance by an average of 4.69 days, almost a full school week. No differences were found between school-, court-, or community-based programs or between different modalities of programs. The duration of the intervention also did not demonstrate any association with effect size. The findings from this review also point to gaps in the evidence base, such as lack of inclusion of minority students and a lack of reporting and statistical analysis of demographic variables, particularly race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status (SES). Given that race and SES have been linked to absenteeism, the absence of this data was surprising.
The review team was led by Brandy R Maynard, a director of the Dropout Prevention Institute at The Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk and the recipient of the 2011 MCPER Postdoctoral Fellowship on Reading Disabilities and Response to Intervention.