Truancy Courts Need to Threaten Parents with Legal Action
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder argues that compulsory education laws need teeth, and that truancy courts must be willing to impose consequences on parents who don't send their children to school.
Key Takeaways
- Compulsory means compulsory - If education is legally required, there must be enforcement mechanisms
- Parents are responsible for attendance - Children don't decide to skip school; parents decide whether to send them
- Legal pressure works - In jurisdictions where truancy has real consequences for families, attendance rates improve
Transcript
Truancy courts have to do their part in getting kids to school, right?
Like as educators, we can only teach kids when they show up, right?
We cannot teach kids who are at home.
We can give them points and credit for days they're not in school, but we shouldn't.
I think some places are doing that.
But in order to do everything that we do as educators, we need kids to show up.
And if we have kids who are staying home chronically, right?
Like they're missing over 10% of the school year.
we have to get parents involved and we can't just rely on like voluntary participation at that point.
Like if a kid is chronically missing a large chunk of their education, parents need to be forced to send their kids to school, right?
And I don't like criminalizing things that are not really crimes, but like At some point, not sending your kid to school is a form of neglect, right?
Like if you don't feed your kid, if you don't send them to school, you don't give them the basics that they need, that's neglect.
And educational neglect has lifelong consequences, right?
Like you suffer the rest of your life if you fail to get a good education because your parents didn't make you go to school.
Like that's just one of the obligations of parenting.
And it seems like a lot of truancy courts are not keeping up.
I assume they're still getting the information from schools.
You know, school districts have ways of reporting truant students to truancy court.
But there has to be follow through, right?
Like there has to be pressure on the parent to actually send their kid to school.
And I don't want any parent to actually go to jail over this.
But if it takes threatening people with that to say, hey, look, you get your kid to school or you are going to face legal consequences.
I think that kind of thing is worth it and is necessary in order to safeguard the well-being of students who otherwise might not get to school, might not get an education.
Let me know what you think.