Truancy Reduction Demonstration Program

In 1998, OJJDP, the Executive Office for Weed and Seed, and the U.S. Department of Education’s Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program initiated a demonstration grant program for truancy reduction.¹³ In developing the structure of their truancy reduction effort, OJJDP and its partnering agencies relied on lessons learned from and key principles of other truancy and risk prevention initiatives that have shown promising results.

A comprehensive, collaborative model that targets the reduction of risk factors associated with incidence of truancy was suggested by the Youth Out of the Education Mainstream (YOEM) Initiative¹⁴ and is further supported in the literature (Catalano et al., 1998; Dryfoos, 1990; Morley and Rossman, 1997; Schorr, 1997). The models that show the most promise, not only of reducing truancy, but also of affecting its risk factors, include several key components:

• Parental involvement.
  
  
• Meaningful sanctions or consequences for truancy.
  
  
• Meaningful incentives for school attendance.
  
  
• Ongoing school-based truancy reduction programs.
  
  
• Involvement of community resources (e.g., law enforcement).

Based on her extensive work with successful prevention models targeting at-risk youth and families across the country, Schorr (1997) concludes such programs must:

• Be comprehensive, flexible, responsive, and persevering.
  
  
• View children in the context of their families.
  
  
• Deal with families as parts of neighborhoods and communities.
  
  
• Have a long-term, preventive orientation and a clear mission and continue to evolve over time.
  
  
• Be well managed by competent and committed individuals with clearly identifiable skills.
  
  
• Have staff who are trained and supported to provide high-quality, responsive services.
  
  
• Operate in settings that encourage practitioners to build strong relationships based on mutual trust and respect.

One of the most important elements of any effective prevention effort is the existence of a collaborative partnership of public agencies, community organizations, and concerned individuals that interact with and provide services to truant youth and their families. OJJDP’s Comprehensive Strategy for Serious, Violent, and Chronic Juvenile Offenders highlights the critical need for this collaboration: “Comprehensive, communitywide prevention requires collaboration and resource sharing. In most communities, barriers must be broken down and collaborative bridges built among and within agencies, organizations, and groups with responsibility for addressing juvenile delinquency” (Howell, 1995:26). For example, schools need to interact more effectively with community organizations (businesses, senior organizations, local government, social services organizations, health agencies, and civic organizations) to achieve their educational goals. Such collaboration needs to exist within the school system as well— among teachers, administrators, teaching assistants, special education teachers, parents, and students (Howell, 1995).

TRDP Demonstration Sites

In 1998, OJJDP solicited applications from communities that were engaged in integrated, communitywide plans to reduce truancy. Applicants were required to outline a comprehensive program that included four major components:

• A continuum of services to support truant youth and their families.
  
  
• System reform and accountability.
  
  
• Data collection (from schools, agencies, courts) and evaluation.
  
  
• A community education and awareness program that addresses the need to prevent truancy and intervene with truant youth.

In 1999, OJJDP awarded funds to eight sites, a mixture of Weed and Seed and non-Weed and Seed sites (one, Georgia, declined to apply for continuation after the first year). The seven remaining sites are diverse in geography, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and community-based leadership. Common to the truant population at all sites is the high representation of minority students and families and of students and families living in poverty.

Sites received either $50,000 or $100,000 per year for 3 years. The disparity in funding was due to the assumption that the Weed and Seed sites (funded at $50,000) would need less money for startup and planning because the program would exist within the local Weed and Seed effort. While the demonstration sites/programs listed below were being chosen, OJJDP selected the Colorado Foundation for Families and Children (CFFC) as the national evaluator of this project.

Department of Health and Human Services/Weed and Seed Office, Contra Costa County, CA. Contra Costa County is building on its Weed and Seed efforts to implement a program targeting ninth grade students with a history of chronic truancy and their families. An onsite probation officer will deliver the intervention by assessing families and youth and referring them to appropriate resources within the school and community.

State Attorney’s Office, Jacksonville, FL. The State Attorney’s Office provides a precourt diversion program for truant youth and their families. The school district refers families to the program when chronic truancy has not been solved by school-based intervention. Following the referral, a hearing is conducted with the parent, youth, school attendance social worker, and volunteer hearing officer. A contract is negotiated that includes plans for reducing truancy and accessing services and community supports. A case manager makes home visits and monitors the family’s compliance with the plan. In the fall of 2000, a school-based component was added to address prevention and early intervention at two elementary schools, where an onsite case manager monitors attendance and provides early outreach.

Clarke County School District (Weed and Seed site), Athens, GA. Clarke County’s Reducing Truancy in Middle Grades program employed a case manager who worked directly with students at two middle schools to identify youth with five or more unexcused absences. The case manager made home visits, called parents, and facilitated parent-teacher conferences to assess the causes of truancy. The case manager provided referrals to community-based resources and some direct services to families. In addition, students and families who did not respond to the program’s case management approach were summoned to appear before an attendance panel. This site declined to apply for continuation after the first year and is no longer participating in TRDP.

University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI. The University of Hawaii is building on a previous program to prevent truancy in the Wai’anae area. Attendance officers in two elementary schools work to provide early outreach to young students and their families when absences become chronic. Community resources are used to address the issues that may prevent youth from attending school regularly. In addition, the schools work with the Honolulu police department to provide Saturday truancy workshops for youth with chronic truancy problems and their families.

Suffolk County Probation Department (Weed and Seed site), Yaphank, NY. Suffolk County’s South Country Truancy Reduction Program, which builds on community policing efforts, targets elementary and middle school students who have illegal absences. A probation officer monitors attendance in collaboration with school personnel, facilitates access to school and community-based services needed by the student and family to establish regular school attendance, and observes attendance and other school-based indicators to ensure that the student’s attendance and engagement at school are improving. A similar model is in existence at the local high school.

Mayor’s Anti-Gang Office (Weed and Seed site), Houston, TX. The Mayor’s Anti-Gang Office placed an experienced case manager in one high school to identify students with chronic truancy patterns. Through home visits and school-based supports, students and their families are provided with services, support, and resources to address truancy. The program also works with community police officers, who provide a “knock and talk” service for youth and their families when truancy continues to be an issue. The officers assess family functioning and deliver information about the law and truancy outcomes; they also issue the official summons to court for a truancy petition.

King County Superior Court, Seattle, WA. After a truancy petition is filed, families have the option of attending an evening workshop, participating in a community truancy board hearing, or proceeding to court on the charges. The workshop includes education about truancy law and outcomes and facilitates planning between the parent and youth for addressing the cause of truancy. Community truancy boards composed of local community members hear the case, develop a plan for use with the youth and family, and monitor compliance with the stipulated agreement. In the fall of 2000, a school-based component was added to address prevention and early intervention.

Safe Streets Campaign (Weed and Seed site), Tacoma, WA. The Tacoma truancy project is based in one middle school where an onsite coordinator monitors attendance and connects youth and their families with community resources to address the underlying causes of truancy. This program works in tandem with law enforcement officials and a truancy center, to which truant youth are delivered and then assessed after pickup by community police officers.

The National Evaluation

The goal of the evaluation of TRDP is to describe the process by which interagency community-based coalitions develop, implement, and sustain effective truancy reduction efforts. Sites work with the national evaluator to accomplish the goals of the evaluation. By design, these efforts are intended to build on the community’s strengths: its service organizations, social support agencies, businesses, parents, youth, and religious organizations. In addition, programs should enhance the awareness of the community, policymakers, and stakeholders that truancy prevention and reduction are necessary components of systemic support to keep youth in school and out of the juvenile justice system.

The evaluation has two main components: determining whether the programs reduce truancy and describing the role and processes of the community-based collaboratives driving the local programs. The collaboratives’ processes also are being evaluated to help other sites in their implementation plans.

The design for program evaluation is multimodal. As sites implement their programs and begin to serve students and families, numeric and descriptive data are collected. Indicators for success evaluated across all sites include school attendance, school discipline, and academic achievement. Each site has been empowered to further tailor its individual evaluation to track additional outcomes that may be of local interest. For example, some sites are questioning participating students and families about their awareness of existing public outreach efforts to determine the efforts’ efficacy in reaching the target audience.

A survey was administered early in program implementation to assess the type of information and level of detail that would be available from individual sites. This survey directly informed the empirical data collection strategy planned. Individual-level, schoolwide, and communitywide data on the following elements were requested:

• Individual-level: Demographics of the targeted students and their families and targeted students’ school attendance, academic achievement, discipline incidents, and so forth.
  
  
• Schoolwide: Special education rates, data regarding free and reduced-price lunches, school completion/promotion rates, attendance rates, discipline statistics (e.g., suspension, expulsion, office referrals), academic achievement information, and dropout rates.
  
  
• Communitywide: Truancy petitions filed and cases heard (including breakdown by age, ethnicity, gender, and grade level of truant youth), daytime crime data (including arrests, gang activity, and commitments of youth to secure detention facilities), probation and diversion data, comparable data from a control group (i.e., another school), and other data involving issues such as substance abuse, child welfare, and mental health.

All sites may not have all of the data available; however, most key correlates and indicators are available to inform the evaluation.

Program Context

To date, contextual data describing the schools and communities in which the programs are situated indicate that primary correlates with truancy and school disengagement include poverty, low academic achievement, high mobility (e.g., moving from home to home, school to school), high rates of school discipline, and overrepresentation of special education eligibility.

Of the data elements requested, only attendance rates, eligibility for free and reduced-price lunches, and special education rates were reported reliably. These data are provided in figure 1. Because school districts and States vary in the way such data are collected and counted, the consistency in measures across sites is not yet clear.

As an early activity in the evaluation, sites were asked to complete a logic model for their programs, identifying the targeted strengths and needs of the students, families, schools, and community. Sites used the model to frame the flow of needs assessment, program strategies, measurable milestones, and ultimate results. “Youth to be in school and succeeding” was unanimously identified as the expected result of the sites’ truancy programs. Each site used the same logic model template to frame its assessment and plan. Because each site serves a different community and different target population, the strengths, needs, strategies, and milestones may differ from site to site. Figure 2 summarizes the commonalities found across sites.

The Community-Based Collaboratives

The evaluation of community-based collaborative groups depends on multiple methods to gather information: a survey entitled Working Together: A Profile of Collaboration (Omni Institute, 1992), one-on-one telephone interviews, onsite group interviews, and site-based observations. The information collected during the first year is considered a baseline and will help evaluators understand the context in which each program exists.

Working Together measures the perceptions of group members in five key areas: context, structure, membership, process, and results. Survey results are intended to be used as a springboard for action planning. Evaluators administer the instrument annually and inform each site of the results on a yearly basis. During the first year that Working Together was administered, evaluators received 82 completed surveys (about 11 surveys from each of the 7 participating sites). Representatives from law enforcement, courts, schools, mental health agencies, and community-based organizations completed the surveys. Figure 3 shows that, on average, sites rated their performance and success in each area fairly high, with some differences.

Telephone interviews, which will be held annually, were conducted with participants from six sites in the first year.¹⁵ A total of 24 interviews—approximately 4 per site—were completed with representatives from law enforcement, schools, courts, and community-based organizations who were active in the community-based groups. The interviews assessed participants’ awareness of the local causes and correlates of truancy, their perceptions of the presence of needed partners in the collaborative task force, the state of interagency collaboration, and the need for policy change.

Interviewees all indicated their communities had been working on truancy issues for at least 2 years. As they reported, the causes of truancy, in general, fell into four broad categories: family factors, school factors, economic influences, and student variables.

Interview respondents were asked to identify who should be the collaborative’s key members (see figure 4). The majority identified law enforcement, youth services, juvenile justice agencies, schools, social services, and community-based organizations as important key members. Although very few mentioned parents, youth, the faith community, businesses, and social organizations, these individuals and organizations are also key members of truancy collaboratives.

Respondents were then asked if all needed partners identified above were at the table. The majority indicated that all necessary stakeholders were present (see figure 5); some realized they were missing important members of the community—typically identified were the faith and business communities.

Onsite interviews, which will be held annually, suggested that many of the collaboratives were unclear about their group vision or mission and hence about their goals and necessary steps to achieve goals.

Site-based observations are still being compiled, as some sites were not operational at the time this Bulletin was written. In addition, the operational sites did not always understand the purpose of requests for site visits during which “typical” activities would be observed. Hence, these data are still being collected in some cases.

Specific issues regarding jurisdiction, funding, and the sharing of information about youth and families are problematic for certain agencies and need to be dealt with from the start to enhance implementation of the program and the ongoing health of the coalition. As part of the planning process, collaboratives should identify the roles, responsibilities, and understandings among cooperating agencies and formalize agreements by using a memorandum of understanding. In addition, the collaboratives require continuing education and need to be made aware of the importance of involving the community at large—particularly parents, youth, the faith community, and local businesses. Parents and youth are required to be involved, and the faith and local business communities are key for volunteer, financial, and in-kind support through services. CFFC (as national evaluator) offers facilitation and action planning services to collaboratives. Such activities can greatly benefit these and future projects that are seated within a collaborative and multiagency setting; sites will be encouraged to use this service in the future.

Overall Assessment

TRDP’s first year has yielded a strong base of information to direct the program’s further development. Almost all of the participating sites need much more time, support, and training than anticipated to facilitate a successful start, both in program implementation and development and in maintenance of the community-based collaboratives directing the program.

Access to data, particularly across system lines (e.g., schools, courts, law enforcement), continues to require evaluation staff assistance in a variety of ways. To ensure that the data collected are consistent across sites and that they reflect the context in which the program exists, ongoing contact is crucial—especially site-based support on at least a semiannual basis. The national evaluators can facilitate information sharing and formalized agreements that might not otherwise occur so readily.

In addition, implementing culturally appropriate practices and obtaining family involvement continue to be troublesome for the sites. OJJDP has encouraged sites to use resources that can assist in developing strategies for improving practices in these areas.

Early in the project, the evaluation revealed commonalities in structure and planning processes among the seven participating programs, such as the existence of an extensive startup period and a strong community collaborative. After examining initial outcome data, evaluators will make available implications for best practices in the fall of 2001. Evaluators are tracking outcome data that focus on five target areas: student demographics, family demographics, a needs assessment, a service plan, and quarterly outcomes. Specific outcomes being measured include improvement in attendance and academics and reductions in office referrals, suspensions, expulsions, and involvement with the juvenile justice department.

It is expected that the lessons learned from the diverse TRDP programs about establishing and maintaining effective community-based leadership and interventions will guide future work by OJJDP and communities to prevent truancy.

Truancy Reduction: Keeping Students in School	Juvenile Justice Bulletin • September 2001