Klobuchar moves to make truancy federal priority

Mounds View, MN -- Senator Amy Klobuchar wants to see the federal government help educators across the nation rein in truant students. To that effect she's introducing what she calls the "Student Attendance Success Act."

"Truancy is often referred to as the 'Kindergarten of Crime' because it's an early risk factor for many other kinds of trouble including criminal behavior," Sen. Klobuchar told a group of statewide education leaders in Mounds View Thursday.

The bill, if enacted, would provide targeted federal grants to districts that have a track record of high truancy rates especially in the middle school years. District accepting the aid would be required to work with local community groups and social service agencies to reverse that trend.

The Act would also establish a universal definition of "truancy" so that comparing districts with a national average would be meaningful.

"No Child Left Behind mandated school report their truancies," Klobuchar commented, "But the definition of truancy can vary greatly from state to state and school to school, so the data was essentially useless."

The bill would define truancy for elementary students as being absent three days without an excuse. For middle school and high school students it would be a tougher bar, being gone for three entire days or just three class periods during those days without a valid excuse.

In Minnesota last year school district reported 39,539 students as "habitual truants" according to the Minnesota Department of Education. State law defines habitual truants as elementary students absent without excuse for seven entire days, or older students absent without excuse for all or parts of seven days.

Klobuchar said in her eight years as Hennepin County Attorney she worked with school districts seeking alternatives to prosecution for wayward students and developing incentives for returning to the classroom. She recalled being surprised when she arrived in Washington in 2007 and found nobody working on the truancy issue.

"I found that truancy and drop-out situations are often mischaracterized in federal policy and that truancy is addressed mainly as a high school problem," Klobuchar remarked, "But the research shows and my own experience as county attorney shows that truancy problems typically develop in the lower grades, especially middle school, roughly grades 5 through 9."

In the Minneapolis Public Schools the problem is treated as a family responsibility for children under the age of 12. In other words, parents can fall under suspicion of "educational neglect" if their children have too many unexcused absences.

Agencies that deal with truant students say getting the courts involved is typically a last resort, and that often younger students skipping school or reporting late are facing issues at home including poverty and outright homelessness.

Students age 12 and older are treated handled as more traditional truancy cases, with referral for juvenile prosecution as possibility. There are many steps short of that, in which the school system works with the child and the parents.

Klobuchar said she intends to have her anti-truancy legislation become part of a reformed version of the No Child Left Behind law, which is up for reauthorization. Senator Kay Hagan, a North Carolina Democrat, is her cosponsor on the bill.

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