Evaluation of a Truancy Reduction Program in Nashville, Tennessee, 1998-2000

The Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency in Nashville, Tennessee, received a National Institute of Justice grant to study the effectiveness of Nashville's Juvenile Court Truancy Reduction Program (TRP). The goals of the TRP were to increase attendance and to get children safely to and from school. While habitual truancy, also referred to as chronic absenteeism, was legally defined under the Juvenile Offender Act of the State of Tennessee as five or more aggregate, unexcused absences in the course of a school year, the TRP operationally defined students at risk of truancy as those who had three unexcused absences in a school year. The intent of TRP was to intervene before the student was adjudicated habitually truant, so once a student had a third unexcused absence, the child was placed on the TRP caseload. TRP staff would then intervene with a variety of services, including home visits, community advisory boards, a suspension school, and a summer program. The evaluation study was designed to test the following hypotheses: (1) students who participated in TRP would increase their attendance rates, and (2) students who participated in TRP and other community services that were part of the Public Housing Drug Elimination Program network would increase their attendance rates at higher rates than students who participated in TRP alone. The targeted population for this study consisted of child and youth residents from five of the six public housing communities that participated in TRP. These communities also represented the public housing communities with the highest crime rates in Nashville, and included five of the eight total family public housing developments there. All kindergarten through 8th-grade students from the targeted communities who began participating in TRP during the 1998-1999 or 1999-2000 school years were included in the study. The TRP served over 400 kindergarten through 8th-grade students during the two school years included in this study. Students who had all of the required data elements were included in the analyses. Required data elements included TRP entry date and school entry and exit dates. Students also had to have begun TRP during the study period. Variables include students' grade, gender, race, age, school enrollment date, TRP program entry date, bus eligibility, other program participation, attendance records for every school day during the two years of the study, and aggregated counts of attendance and truant behavior.

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