Reducing Truancy and Other School Headaches

Understand the factors that affect truancy rates in the classroom and learn how to prevent it in the future.

We spend $519 billion dollars a year in the USA on public education, yet we are approaching the highest dropout rate in the history of modern education. Among the incarcerated, 75 percent of those in state prisons and 59 percent of those in federal prisons are high school dropouts. High school dropouts are 3.5 times more likely to be incarcerated. Dropouts contribute disproportionately to the unemployment rate. Only 55 percent of young adult dropouts are employed. 74 percent of high school graduates ARE employed. In his experience, Dr. Dallmann-Jones says that schools and their personnel are fairly ignorant about what to do about the growing dropout problem ... now approaching 20%. What CAN schools do? Can teachers make a difference? What is the administrator's role? And the community's role? Dr. Dallmann-Jones will first discuss the hidden but powerful facets of the problems facing education at the student, teacher and school administration levels, and explain how and why we misdiagnose, and how we very often make it worse due to our ignorance, i.e., we pour gasoline on the fire trying to put it out. This then sets up a justification for blaming the at-risk youth for their situation. But the truth is no child ever asked to be placed at-risk. And the very way we define 'at-risk' makes it almost impossible for either the child OR the school to do anything effectively to solve the problem(s). In this topic, you will learn a new and more empowering definition of 'at-risk' and Dr. Dallmann-Jones will share several suggestions for making both a school and a classroom 'dropout proof.'