Getting Teenagers Back to School

Rethinking New York States Reponse to Chronic Absence.

Nearly 40 percent of New York City high school students—about 124,000 teenagers—missed 20 or more days of school in the 2008–2009 school year.1 This policy brief looks at one response to the statewide problem of chronic school absence: reporting parents to the child protective system, which handles allegations of child abuse and neglect. Under New York State law, a parent or guardian who fails to ensure that his or her child attends school regularly can be found to have neglected the child. Although the term “educational neglect” is often associated with young children, more than 60 percent of the state’s educational-neglect allegations concern teenagers, particularly 15- and 16-year-olds (see Figure 1).

The child protective system is not well equipped to help teenagers improve their school attendance. Nonetheless, educational-neglect reports involving teens consume a large portion of the child protective system’s resources and are diverting the system’s attention from children with more serious safety and neglect issues. The most common responses to teenage chronic absence around the country are punitive, contrary to what adolescent development and school engagement research tell us about what motivates teens to go to school. This policy brief summarizes analyses that staff from the Vera Institute of Justice conducted

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This is a Vera Institute of Justice Policy Brief. Tom