The challenges of keeping kids in school.

The challenges of keeping kids in school. Presidents at least as far back as Bill Clinton have madeattendance a priority of their school-reform efforts, in part because ofthe social costs of youngsters not attending. There's a direct linefrom truancy to juvenile crime, gang membership, and drug use, accordingto the U.S. Department of Justice. There's an equally direct linefrom truancy to dropping out of school, and from there to increasedincidences of teen pregnancy, poor health, and dependency on welfare. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The patio of my local coffee bar in Washington, D.C., is as good aplace to think about truancy as any other. A high school with 1,500students is two blocks away; a middle school with 900 students is ablock beyond that. Between 9:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. every school day, two policeofficers in a white Ford van sweep the neighborhood. Armed with a gunand dressed in blue fatigues, a curly-haired officer hops out of thevan, marches through the coffee shop, glances into a shoe store nextdoor, peers down the subway escalator, hikes to a bus stop, and thenretraces her steps to take in a drugstore and a Best Buy. Typically, the two-officer patrol, one of seven full-time truancypatrols in D.C., picks up four or five youngsters at lunchtime andreturns them to their schools. Another four or five "runners"take off, knowing that the officers aren't allowed to give chaseinto the neighborhood's busy streets. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] As the officer makes her way through my Starbucks, some youngstersproduce cell phones with parents on the other end to corroborateexcuses. Others hand over school-issued passes. A few flash identitycards from Maryland schools. The D.C. officers haven't anyauthority over youngsters from across the state line, a mile away; as itturns out, Maryland police haven't much authority, either. By theend of the school year, D.C.'s truancy officers are on familiarterms with a circle of regulars. "You got your hair cut," oneofficer remarked to a girl named Ashley, who produced a pass that gaveno explanation for her absence from school. Next, she checked the ID of a Maryland 9th grader named Clyde, whoexplained that he had missed so much school already it wasn't worthattending for finals. How do you get away with skipping school, I askedthe boy, who wore a Metallica ski cap despite the warm weather. "Ijust do," Clyde said. And what do your parents say, I persisted."They can't force me to go to school," he said. School is the center of social life for most youngsters. It'sthe necessary step to a good job and income, a message these kids havebeen hearing since kindergarten. Taxpayers spend almost $600 billion ayear on public education, an average of more than $10,000 per student. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] So, why are so many kids willing to dodge traffic, hide out in shoestores, and risk apprehension by an armed officer to skip school? Counting Kids States and school districts vary in how they define truancy, whichmeans that nationwide truancy statistics don't exist. In Maryland,a truant is someone who has 18 unexcused absences per semester. InTexas, it's 10 unexcused absences within six months. In Florida,it's 15 in 90 calendar days. Complicating any attempt to compare statistics are divergent statecompulsory-education laws. In D.C., youngsters must attend school untilage 18, in Maryland until age 16, and in Pennsylvania until 17. No Child Left Behind lets states use attendance as an additionalindicator of adequate yearly progress, and 37 states do that. Butattendance is measured differently from truancy: Attendance is a dailyaverage, and a few youngsters with perfect attendance can hide theabsences of those who stay away for days at a time. Attendance tends tohover at about 95 percent in most state reports. Where states do report truancy, the numbers are staggering.California reported that 24 percent of its 6.2 million public schoolchildren, some 1.5 million kids, were truant (missing more than 30minutes of instruction without an excuse at least three times) in2008-09. Wisconsin disclosed that 15.4 percent of its high-schoolstudents were truant (absent without an acceptable excuse for part orall of five or more days during a semester) in 2008-09, including 62percent of its African American students. The New School calculated that 24 percent of New York City's350,000 high schoolers had 38 or more absences in 2007-08 (the reportdidn't distinguish between excused and unexcused absences).Washington, D.C., reported that in 2008-09, 20 percent of its studentswere truant, that is, absent 15 days without an excuse. But the districtalso said that it missed counting about 10 percent of its youngsters, sothe true number could be higher. Even a simple calculation suggests that adds up to a bad deal fortaxpayers. If 20 percent of D.C.'s 46,000 students miss 15 dayseach, that's the equivalent of 766 full school years. The U.S.Census Bureau calculates that the D.C. schools spent an average of$14,594 per pupil in 2007-08. That adds up to $11 million spent by thedistrict on no-shows. California, like six other states, funds its schools based onaverage daily attendance rather than on the once-a-year oronce-a-semester headcount that many states and Washington, D.C, use.Some 16 percent of the Los Angeles Unified School District's272,000 students were truant in 2008-09. That means the district lost atleast 130,000 student days of funding. State and federal data indicate that truants tend overwhelmingly tobe African American and Hispanic. About as many girls as boys aretruant. Almost half live in single-parent households, and aboutone-third live in poverty. Truancy spikes at about age 15, when mostyoungsters enter 9th grade and the less-supportive atmosphere of highschool. Diane Groomes, an assistant Washington, D.C, chief of police, whoseresponsibilities include the truancy patrol, said she is noticing thattruants are getting younger. This year, her officers picked up more12-year-olds than in the past, and even a growing number of 10- and11-year-olds. Why? "Unfortunately, they're growing upfast," she ventured. What's the Problem? Back at my coffee shop, I fell into conversation with a 10th graderwho said her name was Devora. She had a school pass to keep a medicalappointment, although she seemed to be settling into her patio chair forthe day. Devora had big plans to study political science or philosophyin college, but she admitted she was absent "a lot," and sheput the blame on--how's that?--her high school. "If classes showed more relevance to life--not equations andstuff," she might attend, she said. A chemistry teacher "yellsa lot," she added. A math teacher has "missed more school thanI have. We don't learn anything." An English teacher isassigning "3rd-grade work." Kids "feel trapped in school.The only thing on their mind is they want to get out." [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] I read Devora's indictment to Edward Deci and AnneMa-rieConley, who study achievement motivation--Deci at the University ofRochester and Conley at the University of California, Irvine--and theyknew all about it. Deci, a psychologist, co-authored self-determination theory, whichholds that we're motivated to complete a task when we feelwe're competent to do the work, have autonomy in how we go aboutit, and feel some "relatedness" to the situation; we havefriendly teammates or a supportive boss, for example. For lots of kids,school offers none of that, Deci says, and waves of school reforms areonly making things worse, he adds. "Kids know if they can't do the work. They'reattuned to 'these people are pushing me around.' They know ifteachers are relating to them in a warm kind of way or a demeaning kindof way," Deci told me. Middle schools, desperate to keep order in a hothouse of surginghormones, slap on tighter rules at the very time that kids crave moreindependence. They also tend to be larger and have many more studentsper grade than elementary school (see "The Middle SchoolMess," features, page 40). Kids can have a tough time finding acaring adult or a circle of friends in a big school, and the pressure onteachers to boost achievement may add to that lack of relatedness."When teachers get pressured on accountability, they get moreauthoritarian with kids. What kids need is autonomy and support, notcontrol," Deci said. Conley, an education professor, studies expectancy-value theory,which doesn't contradict Deci but says that we're alsomotivated by what we expect to get out of a task: what do I gain vs.what do I give up by going to class, for example? Most kids see a socialcost in playing hooky: They'd miss being with friends, their peerswould think less of them, or they'd suffer a wound to theirself-image. But the calculation comes out differently for other kids. Going toschool may mean they can't hang out at the mall or use drugs. Theymight miss some serendipitous fun with truant friends or could lose someof their cool, if being truant is cool among their peers. One morning near the end of the school year, I sat in on a stringof meetings between students at Francis Scott Key middle school inSilver Spring, Maryland, and a group of adults--a family-court judge, adistrict attorney, a school social worker--who are part of a truancyproject sponsored by the University of Baltimore School of Law. At one point, the mentors congratulated a chubby 7th grader for hisimproved attendance and asked him to explain his success. The boy saidhis family couldn't afford to pay for cable television any more."I get bored so I do my homework and go to bed" instead ofstaying up late and missing school the next day, he added. What would hedo if the family got cable again, Montgomery County judge Joan Ryonasked, hoping for lightning to strike. "I'd probably do thesame thing again," he said. "Costs really matter," Conley said when I told her thestory. School and homework cost TV time, and that's a price somekids won't pay. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Who's to Blame? While the kids were telling me that truancy is a result ofdysfunction in the schools, adults were telling me that it's theresult of dysfunction in the home. Both are probably right. In late June, I sat in a Montgomery County courtroom, just outsideWashington, D.C., as two criminal misdemeanor cases were called againstthree parents for failing to send their children to school. The firstcase was against 30-year-old Stephanie Terrell and Alexander Norris, whospoke up only to correct the court's misimpression that he hadfathered all eight of Terrell's children or that he lived with thefamily. He did neither. Attendance records showed that Terrell and Norris's oldestchild, a middle schooler, missed 14 percent of his school days inSeptember 2009, 45 percent in October, 50 percent in November, and 71percent in December. Four siblings did no better: two missed half ofNovember, when the family was homeless; a third missed 44 percent; and afourth missed 94 percent because he lacked immunizations. Montgomery County had clearly tried to help. The schools scheduledparent-teacher conferences, home visits and, finally, three TruancyReview Board hearings, where a panel of school and social workers hopedto get Terrell and Norris to sign an attendance contract (the coupleskipped two of the hearings). Social services found the family aseven-bedroom house, and produced a grant to send the children to summercamps so Terrell could attend a job-training program. "She reallydoes want these children to go to school. She's justoverwhelmed," Terrell's lawyer told the judge. Minutes later, the court called the case of Mayra Yesenia Argueta,a worried-looking woman, dressed for work, who explained that she awokeher 14-year-old daughter for school before hurrying off to her job. Thestate's attorney said the girl didn't show up. Judge Stephen Johnson, visibly saddened by the Terrell-Norris case,admonished all three parents on the importance of education for theirkids. "They need it as much as food and clothing," he toldTerrell and Norris, who--oh, the irony--works in an elementary school.But Johnson has few tools to deal with these parents, and he seemed toadmit it. He put Terrell and Norris on probation so the court can monitortheir children's school attenda nce. Court supervision is "abig stick ... that's all it is," he told them. "Do thebest you can," he told Argueta, as he put her case on hold for sixmonths while ordering her to see that her daughter attends summerschool, the same girl who had failed to attend so much of the regularschool year. Truancy laws generally target parents because, the reasoning goes,they have violated the state's attendance laws by not getting theirkids to school. Educational neglect, the legal term in manyjurisdictions, is a misdemeanor that generally carries the threat ofjail time and a fine. But enforcement is typically lax: Washington,D.C., is one of only three or four cities with dedicated truancypatrols. Other jurisdictions depend on beat patrols or the occasionalcitywide sweep. Prosecutions are rare because schools see truancy as anissue for social services rather than the courts. Under Maryland law, police can't pick up truants, even toreturn them to school, because it is the parents who are committing theoffense. Montgomery County counted 5,000 "habitual truants"between 2005 and 2010, but prosecuted the parents of just 55 of them.Sentences are minimal--10 days in jail and a $50 fine in MontgomeryCounty--and penalties are seldom imposed. What judge is going to risksending children into foster care while their mother cools her heels injail? The courts generally deal with the truants themselves only whenchildren who already are under its jurisdiction fail to go to school:Attendance is usually a condition of probation for young offenders. Thecourts also can declare a child to be "in need of supervision"for missing school. But in inner cities, truancy takes a backseat toserious offenses. Some 3,752 juvenile cases were filed in D.C.'sfamily court in 2009, including four rapes and three armed robberies bychildren aged 10 to 12. The 135 child-in-need-of-supervision petitionsseem almost trivial by comparison. A few states that have aggressively enforced truancy laws have cometo regret it. In 1995, Washington State passed a law that, among otherthings, required schools to file court actions when youngsters haveseven unexcused absences in a month or 10 in a year. Students face up toseven days in juvenile hall and parents are subject to fines. The lawoverwhelmed the courts: 15,000 truants went to court in 2005. Lawmakersnow are trying to amend the law to make truancy reporting discretionary. School districts often have elaborate protocols for dealing withtruancy. An automated call system in Fairfax County, Virginia, made625,014 calls to parents about attendance issues between July and May,or almost four per Fairfax student. In D.C., an automated call notifiesparents whose kids were absent that day and, for high schoolers, whichclass periods they missed. A teacher calls or sends a letter after athird unexcused absence. After the fifth absence, the school dispatchesa certified letter asking for a parent conference. After the 10th absence, the school attendance committee is convenedto devise an intervention. After 20 absences, the city'ssocial-service agency is called in and, after 25 absences, the case isreferred to family court. If the truancy patrol picks up a youngster,the process fast-forwards to the 5th day, the certified letter andparent conference. But that all supposes that youngsters don't erase telephonemessages or destroy letters, and that they don't slip out the backdoor of the school after attendance is taken. "It's one thingto say we're getting kids back in school; it's another thingto know they're back in class," said Curtis Wat-kins, thedirector of LifeSTARTS, which works with youngsters in two Washington,D.C., middle schools. His counselors check classrooms three times a dayto be sure that students who are targeted by the program are still inclass. It also supposes that parents want to and can get their children toschool. Hedy Chang, who heads a research project called AttendanceCounts, has calculated that children living in homes without enough foodmissed two days more than better-fed kids, children whose mothers areunemployed missed two more days than those whose moms had jobs, childrenwhose mothers had less than a high-school education missed 1.5 moredays, and those whose mothers are in poor health missed two days more. Chang's research was on kindergartners, but it would also seemto apply to older children. At the Francis Scott Key middle schoolmeeting, the mentors told a 7th grader who had been tardy 58 times inthree months that her attendance hadn't improved enough for her tograduate from the program and receive the promised reward, an MP3player. The girl shrank sullenly into her hooded sweatshirt and saidshe'd been "too tired" to come to school one day theprevious week because she had had to watch a three-year-old niece who"screamed all night long." On other weeks, the girl had explained that another family hadmoved into the house and disrupted things, that she was tired becauseboys came around to visit her at night, and that her mother takesmedication for a chronic illness and can't awaken herself to getthe girl off to school. Truancy is never the problem, school staffers, social workers,prosecutors, and police officers told me over and over. Truancy is thesymptom. Promising Efforts When Mel Riddile took over as principal of Fairfax County's J.E. B. Stuart High School in 1997, he said, average daily attendance forthe year was 89 percent, which means there were 19 absences per student.Within three years, Riddile says, average daily attendance was up to 96percent. There were some easy victories: early on, Riddile linked acomputer to Stuart's phone system, which made autodial wake-upcalls to youngsters with the worst attendance records. One youngsterthanked him, Riddile said: No one had ever cared whether he came toschool. But mostly, cutting truancy was a hard slog. Some Stuart parentsfrom Central America and the Middle East weren't interested inhaving their daughters complete school. Teacher absenteeism was high,Riddile said, which seemed to some kids to validate their own absences(the daily absentee rate for teachers nationwide is about 5 percent,according to some studies, compared to about 1.7 percent forprivate-sector workers). Riddile, now associate director of the National Association ofSecondary School Principals, held parent conferences aimed at forging"partnerships" with families. He referred 70 youngsters tocourt for child-in-need-of-supervision hearings: That was enough to joltall but 12 into coming to school. And to avoid diffusing staff energy,he kept his focus on just two or three outcomes. They're reflectedin the name Riddile chose for his reform efforts: RAGS, for Reading PlusAttendance Means Better Grades and a Safer School. The challenge is even harder in tumultuous inner-city schools,although no-excuses charters seem to be making headway. KIPP DC saysthat from 3 to 8 percent of the students in the five grade schools thatit operated last year had 15 or more unexcused absences, the D.C.definition of truancy. KIPP operated just one high school, and itenrolled only 9th graders, which likely skewed the truancy rate downwardcompared to the city's district schools. But KIPP also takes atough stand. Parents and students sign an attendance contract during alengthy home visit. Kids can be dropped from the rolls after 20unexcused absences, and a handful have been, says Irene Holtzman, thedirector of accountability, although the school is "still willingto have a conversation" with youngsters who pile up more absences. Sick days require a doctor's note at KIPP. Social workersprovide wake-up calls, go-to-bed calls, and bus passes, if necessary, aswell as the occasional McDonald's lunch as a reward for goodattendance. "It's helpful to frame expectations upfront," Holtzman adds. What to Do? A generation of school reforms has aimed at making school a placethat youngsters should want to be. Districts are slowly breaking upmegaschools and weeding out teachers--hopefully the yellers and thosemissing in action that Devora complains about. They're addingdual-enrollment programs that allow high-school youngsters to take somecollege classes. A few are setting graduation requirements that arebased on learning rather than "seat time," and that could moveyoungsters through high school more quickly. Fairfax County, like manydistricts, no longer flunks a youngster for missing class if heotherwise earns a passing grade. But critics also say that the No Child Left Behind focus on testinghas narrowed and standardized curricula, and discouraged teachers fromexperimenting with lesson plans that do more than get kids past a test.Deci proposes a vast reform of all this reform in an effort to motivatekids. Abandon standardized testing and curricula to give teachers andstudents more autonomy, he says. Create more small schools whereyoungsters can develop relationships with teachers and peers.Individualize instruction so it accommodates youngsters who are behindand challenges those who want to race ahead. Conley proposes finding out what kids feel they give up by being inschool. "We can't just tell them to go to school; we have toincrease the costs of not going to school," she says. Those costs already seem extraordinarily high to taxpayers,employers, the police, the schools, social workers, college admissionsofficers, and most parents. Truancy seems a dumb choice and a lousybargain to us. Still, on a spring afternoon at Starbucks, teenagedcustomers were sitting with me in the sun. June Kronholz is a former foreign correspondent, bureau chief andeducation reporter for the Wall Street Journal. She lives in Washington,D.C.