Program Goals
The goals of the Check & Connect Plus Truancy Board (C&C+TB) program are to improve school attendance and renew progress toward graduation.
Target Population
The program targets students who have been referred to a community truancy board or have had a petition filed in juvenile court due to continued unexcused absences, despite the school’s effort to provide a series of interventions.
Program Components
Eligible students have the option to come before the community truancy board and have a “stay” placed on their juvenile court petition. The truancy board (5 to 10 members, including school administrators, volunteers from social service agencies and local businesses, and a juvenile court probation counselor) seeks to collaboratively engage truant youth and their families in accessing a variety of school, court, and local community resources to improve school attendance, promote school attachment, and enhance academic achievement. Program participants and their families meet with the school-based, community truancy board individually to discuss truancy laws and legal consequences of continued truant behavior, to identify obstacles to attendance, and to collaboratively develop a formal agreement outlining the specific steps to be taken by the student and family to improve attendance.
The court probation counselor serves as a truancy specialist and mentors the student in a one-on-one relationship using the Check & Connect (C&C) program model. C&C has two primary components: the Check component and the Connect component. In the “Check” component, truancy specialists use school data to monitor student attendance (e.g., absences, tardies, skips), social–behavioral performance (e.g., referrals, suspensions, detentions), and academic performance (e.g., grades, credits earned). In the Connect component, truancy specialists share checked data with students, reinforce the salience of education, and facilitate personalized interventions to boost engagement (Guryan et al. 2017; Heppen et al. 2017). Truancy specialists use information about the student’s school engagement level and family circumstances and available school, community, and court resources to tailor the ways in which they intervene with students. Truancy specialists also connect with families of students, through home visits or over the phone, to serve as liaisons between home and school and to partner with parents to increase student engagement (Guryan et al. 2017; Heppen et al. 2017).
Truancy specialists meet with students individually, formally (scheduled) and informally (unscheduled), starting in ninth grade and until graduation. Type and frequency of contact, however, vary based on the student’s risk level. An initial assessment of student risk level, conducted at the time of the truancy board meeting, is used to classify a student as low, intermediate, or high risk. Assessment data is collected through an initial interview and a youth-completed instrument assessing risks and needs on six scales: aggression–defiance, depression–anxiety, substance abuse, peer deviance, family environment, and school engagement. All students participate in an initial meeting with the truancy specialist. Low- and intermediate-risk students have this meeting within 2 weeks and 1 week of the board’s meeting, respectively, whereas high-risk students have this meeting within 1 to 2 days of the board’s meeting. All students also receive brief, daily, informal contacts, initiated by the truancy specialist, during lunch or in between classes. Furthermore, truancy specialists engage students in 1-hour, formal check-ins: monthly for low-risk students and biweekly for intermediate- and high-risk students. Intermediate- and high-risk students also receive supplemental weekly phone contacts and home visits, with high- risk students receiving such contacts more frequently. Contact schedule is subject to change on an ongoing basis.
Each truancy specialist carries a caseload of several students, has an office in each school within which they work, and travels between schools to meet with students.
Key Personnel
Truancy specialists are probation counselors from the county juvenile court contracted to provide a range of case management services to youth. Essential qualifications include familiarity with and access to school, community, and court resources. Furthermore, the C&C program emphasizes the following essential qualifications: a willingness to persist, a belief that all students have abilities, willingness to work closely with families and school staff, and advocacy and communication skills, including the ability to negotiate, compromise, and confront conflict constructively (Sinclair et al. 1998).
Program Theory
The work of the community truancy board is guided by a restorative-justice theoretical framework, which views crime as a violation of people and relationships and aims to bring those affected by the crime (i.e., victim, person committing the offense, and other community stakeholders) together to encourage accountability of the person committing the offense and agree on a plan to repair harms (Developmental Services Group, Inc. 2010; Wilson et al. 2017). Studies of the effectiveness of restorative justice programs and practices for youth delinquency show promising findings for both those committing the offense and victims (Rodriguez 2007; Wilson et al. 2017).
The emphasis on collaboration across community truancy boards, students, parents, schools, and juvenile courts is also consistent with Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological model of human development and Stokol’s (1996) social–ecological theory, which emphasize the interplay of personal attributes, social contexts, and environmental conditions in influencing individual behavior.
C&C is centered on student engagement, referring to a student’s level of active participation in school and related activities (Finlay 2006; Fredricks et al. 2004). Student engagement, which is viewed as a multidimensional construct involving behavioral (e.g., attendance, participation in classroom discussion), affective (sense of belonging, connectedness to school), and cognitive (perceived relevance of schoolwork, self-regulation toward goals) engagement (Heppen et al. 2017), has been linked to positive school-related outcomes, including improved academic achievement and reduced absenteeism and dropout (Anderson et al. 2004; Finlay 2006; Fredricks et al. 2004). Furthermore, C&C’s use of a nurturing and supportive relationship with an adult to improve engagement outcomes for youth is consistent with the model of youth mentoring that theorizes that support and role modeling provided within mentoring relationships can strengthen youth academic and behavioral outcomes (Rhodes et al. 2006).
Additional Information
This program is modeled on the Check & Connect program, the review of which can be found here: https://crimesolutions.ojp.gov/ratedprograms/574. The primary difference is that this program includes the above described truancy board component.
