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Buffalo Law Review

First Page

1149

Document Type

Article

Abstract

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, school absences have skyrocketed. While racially minoritized, disabled, and low-income students have historically been, and remain, most likely to experience absence, white and affluent students’ rates of attendance have also declined. To respond to this new universality of student absenteeism, some policymakers have begun to seek alternatives to what we term “the truancy paradigm.”

We define the truancy paradigm as the range of coercive and often punitive interventions deployed by states and school districts to enforce compulsory attendance statutes. This paradigm, we argue, wrongly assumes (a) that strict enforcement of compulsory attendance laws is always in the students’ best interest; (b) that absent students are willfully disobeying the state and their parents; (c) that student absences fit neatly into an excused/unexcused binary (and that this binary is a useful policy tool); (d) that parents have complete and consistent control over their children’s actions; and (e) that a regime of punishment is not only an effective way to keep kids in school, but that its usefulness also outweighs the real harm it does to the same students and communities it claims to help—specifically, Black, Latine, and Indigenous students, as well as students with disabilities.

In response to both the COVID-19 absenteeism crisis and the failures of the truancy paradigm, some states and school districts have looked to a chronic absenteeism framework as an alternative. Rather than focus solely on whether an absence is excused, chronic absenteeism acknowledges the harm caused whenever a student misses school for any reason. The framework eschews shame and coercion in favor of proactive strategies to make schools more inviting and inclusive. Policymakers can, if they choose, implement these strategies selectively rather than entirely dispose with existing compulsory-attendance enforcement tools. Ultimately, we conclude that the chronic absenteeism framework has the potential to meaningfully address the racial and socioeconomic inequality that has long characterized state responses to absences and keep young people safer, more autonomous, and more likely to come to— and stay in—school.

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