In actuality, the definition of Truancy varies from state to state. For an accurate definition of truancy (which is similar, but still different to absentee-ism), we have to look at the Ohio Revised Code and determine what it says about Truancy. Here, we refer to the definition of truancy according to the Ohio Revised Code section 2151.01 and 2152.02. These define truancy in two different ways: habitual truancy and chronic truancy.

Section 2151.01 states that a habitual truant is “any child of compulsory school age who is absent without legitimate excuse for absence from the public school the child is supposed to attend for five or more consecutive school days, seven or more school days in one school month, or twelve or more school days in a school year.”

Section 2152.02 states that a chronic truant is “any child of compulsory school age who is absent without legitimate excuse for absence from the public school the child is supposed to attend for seven or more consecutive school days, ten or more school days in one school month, or fifteen or more school days in a school year.”

To sum this up, habitual truancy refers to unruly truants, and chronic truancy refers to delinquent truants.

The reason we look at these definitions of truancy, is so that we know what defines truancy according to Ohio law. Unfortunately, this still does not narrow it done appropriately for each school district. Across Ohio, and across the U.S., school districts use different absentee numbers to calculate what constitutes truancy for their district.

• Fact: High school dropouts are twice as likely to be unemployed than are high school graduates.
• Fact: On average, jobs in the United States require a median of 12.5 years of education.
• Fact: For each additional year of secondary education completed, there is a 35% decrease in the probability of welfare dependency.
• Fact: 71% of the United States prison population never finished high school. Many of these dropouts cited falling behind as a result of truancy as the problem.
• Fact: 60% of thefts in Mid-City (San Diego), where juveniles were the known suspects, occurred during school hours.
• Fact: 43% of the burglaries in Mid-City (San Diego), where juveniles were the known suspects, occurred during school hours.

2. The U.S. Department of Education; National Center for Education Statistics, at http://nces.ed.gov .

3. Memphis Shelby Crime Commision; Best Practice Number Eight: Reducing Crime and Supporting Education through a Comprehensive Truancy Reduction Strategy, at http://www.memphiscrime.org/research/bestpractices/bestpractices-8.html 

4. The Ohio Revised Code, gathered from Anderson’s Ohio Online Docs, at http://onlinedocs.andersonpublishing.com/ 

5. Garry, Eileen M., (1996, October). Juvenile Justice Bulletin, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

6. Guare, Rita E. and Cooper, Bruce S. (2003). Truancy Revisted: Students as School Consumers, Lanham, Maryland:The Scarecrow Press, Inc.

7. Reed, Ken (1999). Truancy and Schools, New York:Routledge.

8. Walls, Charles, (2003). New Approaches to Truancy Prevention in Urban Schools, ERIC Digest, Washington D.C.:Department of Education.