Education Commons^™

Youths' Perspectives On The Reasons Underlying School Truancy And Opportunities To Improve School Attendance, Lauren Nichol Gase, Amelia Defosset, Raymond Perry, Tony Kuo

The Qualitative Report

School truancy is common in the United States; however, youths’ perspectives on the underlying reasons for and the best ways to curtail this phenomenon are lacking. This project sought to better understand what factors contribute to youths’ decisions to skip classes or ditch full days of school over time and to solicit youths’ recommendations on how to reduce truancy and improve system functioning. We used a community partnered qualitative descriptive approach to conduct in-depth interviews with 39 youths with a history of truancy from South and East Los Angeles. Youths’ experiences and recommendations illustrate the multiple factors that influence school …