Chronic absenteeism and truancy have been linked to a variety of undesirable outcomes for students including increased risk of dropout, lower test scores, lower educational and social engagement, juvenile delinquency, and substance abuse. One controversial response to truancy is the use of exclusionary discipline, such as out-of-school suspensions…

In this article, school disciplinary exclusions in high schools in Ghana are highlighted to explore alternatives to school exclusions. The 2017 budget and the preceding budgets of the Republic of Ghana clearly indicate that the bulk of the nation's expenditure is spent on education. Part of the 2017 budget is especially targeted at making the…

Mounting evidence indicates that students of color are more likely than their white peers to receive exclusionary discipline (out-of-school suspensions and expulsions), but alleviating these disparities requires an understanding of what drives them. In this study, we use seven years of student- and infraction-level data from every public school in…

Supposedly designed to improve student attendance, the aggressive truancy policing in Los Angeles (LA) has discouraged students from going to class and often pushes them to drop out and into harm's way. Truancy tickets play a role in the school-to-prison pipeline. Students are being brought up in an environment that is a pre-prisoning of youth. LA…

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) reauthorization requires State Education Agencies to establish a school choice policy for students attending a persistently dangerous school as defined by the state. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) stipulates that a school can be deemed unsafe as a whole entity or for an individual student who is the…

The purpose of this handbook is to stimulate thought, planning, and action. Although few of the alternatives outlined here are "canned" techniques that can be readily applied, the experiences and techniques reported should stimulate the thinking of school officials and citizens so that efforts can be initiated to develop and put into…

THE FOLLOWING IS THE FULL TEXT OF THIS DOCUMENT: Truancy sweeps, a cooperative effort of the high school district, Santa Maria Police Department, and Santa Barbara Sheriff's Department, gave us a valuable insight. The sweeps, unannounced to the public but coordinated by high school assistant principals and law enforcement agencies, were part of a…

This survey of Montgomery County (Maryland) Public Schools was done to answer the following four questions about student discipline: (1) To what extent is student discipline perceived to be a problem? (2) What are the perceived causes of student behavioral and discipline problems? (3) How are the schools planning and administering discipline? and…

Cases related to school policies that mandate or lead to automatic grade and/or credit reduction are reviewed in this study. Standard legal research methods were used to analyze 14 appellate and state court cases, which were categorized according to the type of sanction invoked: student suspension for violation of a disciplinary rule; automatic…

The courts have come to play an increasingly important role in educational policy making and the administrative management of our public schools. This is especially apparent in the context of school discipline where numerous and varied controversies have been translated into legal disputes over the past three decades, many of which have ultimately…

This report focuses on underschooling in the State of New York. The study provides statistics on dropouts, examines students' reasons for leaving school, and analyzes the school histories of dropouts with respect to patterns of disruption, truancy, and academic failure. Suggestions of school administrators and dropouts on how students might be…