While the traditional definition of truancy tends to emphasize the unexcused nature of a student's full-day absence from school, both excused absences as well as absences from particular classes are also important components of a more modern understanding of the truancy problem. Consider the following student:

Jonathan had always been a good student who enjoyed school and got along well with his peers and teachers. When he was diagnosed with asthma in the first grade, it was quickly brought under control and did not interfere with his school attendance or performance; however, shortly after he started third grade, Jonathan's teacher and friends noticed that he was wheezing and coughing much more regularly than ever before. He also seemed very tired during the day, and he began to miss school for long stretches of time due to his illness. Jonathan's grades started to decline, as did his once-positive attitude toward school.

Jonathan began to experience both trouble during the school day and extended absences from school due to uncontrolled asthma. While his absences were all excused, that did not prevent his academic performance from slipping nor his once-positive attitude toward school from becoming more and more negative. Now consider the following examples of unexcused absences:

Ella was bounced around from relative to relative after her mother lost custody, but none of them worked out. When her father gained custody, her situation failed to improve since he was struggling with drugs and debt. To buy her school uniform and other necessities, Ella began selling drugs the summer before she enrolled in high school. While her attendance in eighth grade was often spotty, it worsened throughout ninth grade. At the beginning of the year, she spent much of her time in the social worker's office. By the end of the semester, she had missed 27 out of 90 days. Ella then missed more than half of her second semester of ninth grade.

Jake was looking forward to high school. He enjoyed learning and was excited to play on the school football team. His parents valued education and encouraged him to do well, but Jake found that high school was more difficult than he had anticipated. When he met a couple of guys who were into skipping classes to read comic books in the cafeteria, Jake started to join them. He found his math class, which took place right after lunch, to be particularly difficult. So, he would simply read comics in the cafeteria until math was over. Despite missing only two full days of school during his first semester of ninth grade, he was absent from math class 20 times.

Ella's truancy is clearly based on missing full days of school due to problems at home, while Jake displayed truant behavior in only one class because he began to experience difficulties with that particular subject. While Ella will clearly require a significant amount of aid from various services if she is to surmount her very serious problems, Jake's situation will also require attention and intervention if he is to get back onto a positive path and have a successful school experience.

These are only a few examples of how truancy might play out, but they do reveal how it can stem from very different causes and manifest in a variety of ways. In a report examining truancy in Chicago's public high schools, students were characterized in the following ways:

• Moderate truants if they missed 11-20 classes or full days each semester (2-4 weeks)

• Extreme truants if they missed 21 or more classes or full days each semester (more than 4 weeks)

  * Please note that there is no standard level of absenteeism that constitutes truancy. Instead, the definition varies from state to state, and even from district to district and school to school. This is just an example of one possible definition.

These definitions focus only on the number of absences; they do not differentiate between class-cutting and full-day absences, nor do they require a student's absence to be unexcused to be considered truant behavior. By defining truancy broadly and focusing on the more general issue of school attendance, educators can gain a more accurate sense of which students are experiencing some sort of barrier to learning.

From:

Habits hard to break: A new look at truancy in Chicago's public schools. (1997). Chicago: University of Chicago, School of Social Service Administration.