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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
Time: 2:19 am
Time: 2:19 am
Results for truancy (u.s.)
1 results foundAuthor: Cahill, Meagan Title: Interim Report on the Truancy Court Diversion Program in the District of Columbia, 2011–12 Summary: The Truancy Court Diversion Program (TCDP) is a voluntary program for at risk students and their parents. It combines involvement of a Family Court judge in group and individual sessions with service provision. During the 2011-12 school year, a pilot TCDP was implemented at Kramer Middle School (M.S.) and at Johnson M.S. The program attempts to simultaneously address participants’ motivations and attitudes, as well as barriers to attendance. Attitudes are addressed by the involvement of judges in the program, whose role includes meeting with individual families, and via the program’s curriculum. The curriculum is intended to promote the personal responsibility of students and parents; increase parents’ level of positive involvement with their children and the school; improve attitudes toward school achievement, graduation, and career aspirations; and improve parent-child communication. Barriers to attendance are addressed through family needs assessments, case management, and service referrals provided by a community collaborative and coordinated though a meeting with the judge and program team. The approach of the program is to address the “whole child.” This interim report is focused on implementation. The report reviews the logic and design of the program, implementation successes and challenges, and makes recommendations to enhance the program and its implementation. A final report will also examine the services delivered through the program. Key findings from the pilot TCDP include implementation challenges as well as some encouraging findings. Implementation findings include: • Successful program implementation requires a strong partnership between the courts and schools. • The current pilot encountered challenges concerning recruitment and program participation. • A limiting factor to integrated service provision in the current pilot was the lack of regular team meetings to assess family needs and services as well as academic progress, or a strong structure for regular information-sharing. Despite such implementation issues, the program seems to have improved attitudes and school aspirations of students, as well as parent-child communication, for those students and parents who participated regularly. The program also was successful in reaching needy families with services. This interim report is not able to speak to the program’s success in improving attendance. Based on our study of the program’s implementation in this pilot, we recommend the following modifications to strengthen the program: • Use prior year’s school attendance as eligibility criteria. • Formalize additional program eligibility criteria. • Strengthen the use of incentives and consequences to improve program attendance. • Provide increased training for all partners, especially judges new to the program. • Allow sufficient time for planning, recruitment, and intake prior to beginning weekly program sessions. • Hold regular team meetings. Several additional modifications would be needed in order to expand the program designed to address truancy more broadly, rather than just the truancy of a few individual students. Because each TCDP is inherently limited to 10 to 15 participating students per school per semester, expansion to address considerably more students involves expansion to more schools. To achieve consistent implementation across multiple schools would require: • More formalization of the program, including eligibility and recruitment criteria, program curriculum, procedures for the judge-family individual meetings, and incentives and consequences for program attendance. • Dedicated resources, including a formal program director. • Additional support from both the school and the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS). In conclusion, the TCDP seems to hold promise for positive intervention in the lives of students at risk for chronic truancy and their parents, and improving their school attendance and academic performance. However, the pilot suggests that program implementation could be considerably improved, and that structural changes would be necessary for the TCDP to have the potential to impact the truancy of a more substantial number of students. Details: Washington, DC: Urban Institute, District of Columbia Crime Policy Institute, 2012. 33p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed October 5, 2012 at: http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/412664-Interim-Report-on-the-Truancy-Court-Diversion-Program.pdf Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/412664-Interim-Report-on-the-Truancy-Court-Diversion-Program.pdf Shelf Number: 126561 Keywords: At-risk YouthProblem Solving CourtsSchool AttendanceTruancy (U.S.) |