Star Editorial Board Report: Truancy
April 22-25, 2007
It began with a question: How many students were actually attending school in Indianapolis and the state of Indiana? While schools reported near-perfect attendance rates to state education officials, none of the data seemed to match up with their annual performance reports, many of which showed chronic absences large portions of their student populations
From there, I began
crunching the numbers, gaining more insight into the funny business that was
going on with attendance data. And as I progressed, I began crafting together a
plan for the series. As part
of this, the decision was made to go with an online package of audio clips in
order to protect the identity of children charged in juvenile court with
truancy.
This resulted in a four-day
series that made
readers
realize that when it came to school attendance, too
many children were skipping days at a time, contributing to the dropout crisis
affecting the state.
Editorials in the series
Too many empty
seats in classrooms
Many cases, many causes: Motives for skipping school vary [April 25]
We can stem truancy with community effort [April 25]
