When students are chronically truant from school, missing long stretches at a time, it seems like a tragically natural progression to -- at some point -- simply not return. Truancy is a well-established risk factor for school dropout, which is a very serious and all too common problem. Each year, approximately five out of every 100 high school students (five percent) drop out of school. Over the last decade, between 347,000 and 544,000 tenth- through twelfth-grade students left school each year without successfully completing a high school program. However, a substantially higher proportion of students quit school for some period of time during their educational careers. For example, one longitudinal study found that 21 percent of students who were in eighth grade in 1988 had dropped out at some point between eighth grade and high school graduation, even though only 12 percent of them had actually failed to graduate by 1994. It is difficult to draw a clear line between chronic or extended truancy and periodic school dropout. In fact, truants are the young people most likely to drop out of school. According to Guillermo Montes and Christine Lehmann from the Children's Institute in Rochester, N.Y.:

"Dropping out is better conceptualized as an evolving process rather than an event. It is a process that starts prior to the child entering school. Along the way the process manifests itself in a variety of forms. Truancy, disciplinary problems, and failing grades in high schools are late manifestations of the process and immediate markers of dropping out behavior, while behavior problems and low school achievement are midcourse markers that provide additional time for prevention and intervention strategies to work."

School dropouts have significantly fewer job prospects, make lower salaries, and are more often unemployed than youth who stay in school. In 1999, just over 14 percent of workers who had dropped out of school were poverty-stricken as compared with six percent of workers who had completed high school. The following are some powerful measures of the social and financial impact of truancy and the dropouts that result:

• Less educated workforce

• Business loss because of youth who "hang out" and/or shoplift during the day

• Higher daytime crime rates (in some cases)

• Cost of social services for families of children who are habitually truant

• Loss of federal and state education funding for schools

From:

Baker, M. L., Sigmon, J. N., & Nugent, M. E. (September 2001). Truancy reduction: Keeping students in school. Juvenile Justice Bulletin. Washington, DC: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Available on-line at: http://www.ncjrs.gov/html/ojjdp/jjbul2001_9_1/contents.html.

Kaufman, P., Alt, M. N., & Chapman, C. (November 2001). Dropout rates in the United States: 2000. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics. Available on-line at: http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2002/droppub_2001/.