Abstract

We examined the effect on attendance of a truancy court-diversion program for elementary students. Truancy court-diversion programs represent a shift from a law-and-order approach toward a public health model to address school absenteeism. Instead of directly referring parents of truant elementary students to child protection services or juvenile court, most court-diversion programs educate parents about the importance of school attendance and create an attendance contract that includes social service referrals. Despite being widely implemented, truancy court-diversion models have not been rigorously evaluated. Using 10 years of administrative data from multiple state and local agencies from Minnesota, we constructed a counterfactual of students from schools that did not implement truancy court-diversion. We used difference-in-differences methods to test whether parent education and attendance contracts improved attendance relative to direct referral to child protection services or court. We failed to reject the null hypothesis of no program effect. Most truancy program evaluations use a pre- and post-mean comparison, but our analysis suggested that the magnitude of the bias in such studies is substantial because absenteeism showed a pattern of regression to the mean.

摘要

我们研究了针对小学生的逃学法庭转移计划对出勤的影响。逃学法庭分流计划代表了从法律治安到公共卫生模式的转变，以解决学校旷工的问题。大多数法院转移计划不是直接向逃学的小学生的父母介绍儿童保护服务或少年法庭，而是教育父母有关学校出勤的重要性，并创建包括社会服务介绍的出勤合同。尽管逃避法庭转移模型得到了广泛实施，但尚未对其进行严格评估。利用来自明尼苏达州多个州和地方机构的10年行政数据，我们构造了来自未实施逃学法院转学的学校的学生的事实。我们使用差异方法测试相对于直接转介给儿童保护服务或法院的父母教育和出勤合同是否提高了出勤率。我们未能拒绝没有程序效果的零假设。大多数逃学计划评估都使用均值前和均值后的比较，但我们的分析表明，此类研究中的偏差幅度很大，因为旷工显示出均值回归的模式。