This practical guide covers best practices in truancy at the community, school, and student/family levels of interventions, providing an essential everyday reference guide to research-based programs and truancy program implementation.

"For students to be successful in school, they first have to be in school." With that simple statement, Jessica Sprick and Randy Sprick launch a compelling case for prioritizing student attendance. This comprehensive guide provides school and district-level administrators and teams with the background information, strategies, and tools needed to implement a multitiered approach to improving attendance and preventing chronic absence. The authors use the results of their work in schools throughout the United States to dispel the myth that educators have little control over student attendance and provide success stories from elementary and secondary schools that have reversed longstanding patterns of absenteeism. Citing extensive research, Sprick and Sprick share details about the shocking prevalence of chronic absence in U.S. schools and its effects on students, teachers, families, and the school community. They explain how to replace punitive approaches to absenteeism with effective methods that begin with universal supports and continue through Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions for students with more persistent problems. Specifically, they explain how to Build an effective school team to address absenteeism . Create systems to collect accurate data and set priorities. Develop an attendance initiative that generates student enthusiasm as well as staff, parent, and community support. Design and implement strategies that are tailored to specific schoolwide concerns and demographics that reach all students. Equipped with the information and tools presented in this book, educators can ensure wise use of staff and other resources—and create a culture of attendance that is the foundation of successful schools. This book is a copublication of ASCD and Ancora Publishing.

This book helps educators produce assessments of their schools' drug and violence prevention programs. It contains over 30 separate resources that can be adapted to specific evaluations (e.g., sample youth and adult participant feedback sheets, sample classroom observation sheets and teacher implementation logs, sample en-route participant feedback, sample teacher surveys of curriculum content, data summary logs, sample student risk surveys, and sample parent consent forms). There are also guidelines, glossaries, and advice on online funding. The 12 chapters are: (1) "Getting Started: Establishing Your Work Group"; (2) "Writing Goals and Objectives"; (3) "Program Review, Selection, and Implementation"; (4) "Creating Homegrown Programs: Elements of Effective Prevention"; (5)"Additional Data Collection: Preparing for Assessment of Program Effectiveness"; (6) "Self-Report Questionnaires and Focus Groups: Collecting Information From Students"; (7) "Cost and Time Effectiveness"; (8) "Experimental Design: The Basics"; (9) "Experimental Designs for Different Program Types"; (10) "Crunching Your Numbers and Organizing Your Data"; (11) "Public Presentation of Your Results"; and (12) "Troubleshooting Your Results." (Contains 29 references.) (SM)