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Saving Money, Saving Youth: The Financial Impact of Keeping Kids in School, Third Edition

NCJ Number
211499
Date Published
October 2003
Length
23 pages
Annotation
This report presents a cost-benefit analysis of three truancy reduction programs in Colorado.
Abstract
Research has demonstrated that truancy and chronic absence, even in early grades, is a strong predictor of a host of bad outcomes for children and youth, including involvement in delinquency and later adult crime. The three programs under review, the Adams County Truancy Reduction Project, the Denver Truancy Reduction Demonstration Project, and Pueblo’s Project Respect, share similarities in terms of their approach to truancy reduction: all three programs focus on strengthening and advocating for the family. Rather than taking a punitive approach, these programs focus on truancy as a family problem and offer intensive family case management services that rely on frequent use of referrals to outside agencies. Following a review of the current research regarding the causes and consequences of truancy, the report describes the three truancy programs and presents the approach to analyzing the costs and benefits of the programs. The analysis relies on assessing the costs and benefits of three approaches to dealing with truancy: (1) doing nothing; (2) taking a court-centered approach; and (3) using the family case management approach. The analysis concludes that the societal and economic costs of truancy far outstrip the costs interred by the truancy prevention programs. Overall, both the court and the case management approaches are economically valuable and, in fact, any truancy reduction program showing even minor success would be economically valuable. Tables, references