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Illinois School Board Journal
September/October 2002
Truancy, delinquency, prison:
Can schools break this cycle?
by Ginger Wheeler
Ginger Wheeler is a free-lance writer from Glen Ellyn, Illinois, whose work has appeared in national magazines, local newspapers and on the World Wide Web.
Of two-plus million public school children in Illinois, more than 47,000 are chronic truants.
A chronic truant is a child, under age 16, who misses 10 percent (18 or more days) of school in a 180-day school year. The percentage is small, maybe one child per classroom. But these troubled youth are a serious problem for society. They tend to drop out of school, are unable to find good-paying jobs, and are more likely to end up in an Illinois youth home or prison, where they cost taxpayers up to $50,000 per year and fail to meet their full potential as contributing members of society.
Are we ready to give up on these kids? And if not, what can be done?
Identifying at-risk children early in their educational careers seems to be one way schools can alter the trend toward dropping out. And truancy is a good predictor that a student will become one of Illinois' 35,000 high school dropouts, and subsequently a drag on society. One California researcher labeled truancy the "gateway to crime."
In juvenile justice circles, truancy is known as a "status offense." That means it would not be an offense at all, if the child were an adult. Other status offenses include underage drinking and running away from home.
Delinquency occurs when a juvenile does something that would be a crime no matter what age: illegal drug use or possession, robbery, murder.
Robbie*, a 14-year-old eighth grader at a Chicago suburban school, lived with his mother, an immigrant with low English proficiency who worked two jobs to make ends meet. Because Robbie's mom started work before 8 a.m., Robbie had to get himself up for school every morning. That often did not happen. School officials intervened, and Robbie's mother agreed to drive him to school, dropping him off before 7:30 am.
Robbie was caught lighting paper napkins on fire with matches in the schoolyard before school started and was expelled. Robbie's mother missed work due to the meetings and court dates she had to attend on Robbie's behalf. She lost her job, had to move out of her apartment and now lives in her car. Social workers and psychologists who were working with Robbie have lost track of him.
A complex social issue
Most people in the juvenile justice world recognize that truants are likely to end up in trouble with the law and enter the juvenile justice system. But they also know that truancy is a symptom of deeper problems. What those problems are and who is responsible for fixing them is a complex social issue.
Who's at fault? Parents? Teachers? Administrators? Drug dealers? Politicians? Society?
A project undertaken by an Illinois university to discover the reasons for truancy, and then develop possible solutions, failed after various governmental agencies offered only limited support and cooperation. The researchers, who wish to remain anonymous, said they encountered roadblocks every step of the way during their study.
Because juvenile records are sealed, the researchers had difficulty accessing the names and addresses of potential research subjects. And, when they did find truants to include in the study, the subjects were sometimes fearful of providing truthful answers. They knew they were breaking laws. Some didn't speak English. The researchers also discovered a lack of reliable information about the nature of truancy in big states, or systemic solutions to turn truants into students.
Researchers may have trouble studying the issue of truancy to determine reasons, but juvenile justice officials are full of anecdotal information and plenty of examples.
The causes of truancy are as varied as the children who are truant. According to John Bentley, director for DuPage County Probation and Court Services, "If there are 30 truants, then there are 30 solutions."
In some cases, Bentley said, parents are the cause. In others, the kid is the problem. Truancy runs across all socio-economic, class, culture, race, age and gender lines.
Reasons are as varied as drug and alcohol addiction by parents (or the kids), homelessness, or parents wanting older children to stay home and care for younger ones. Some kids have to work to help make ends meet. Others have been removed from their homes because of abuse, neglect or other reasons, and lose time and focus on their education. Low academic performance also leads to truancy and dropouts.
Sandy*, 5, was removed from her drug-addicted, prostitute mother and adopted by a small town family. She was treated for a sexually transmitted disease. At 15, the adoptive parents returned her to DCFS, saying she was disrupting their home life. Sandy was moved from her small-town high school, where she was a popular, B-student, to a foster care placement in another town. She lost a year of schooling in the transition between foster care placements around the state.
Sandy has a high IQ. She spent years in counseling due to her inauspicious beginnings, and knew how to talk to social workers, psychologists, judges and others. She said what they wanted to hear. She was finally placed with a Peoria family, who felt that Sandy just needed a roof over her head until this savvy teen would be an adult. She attended a large, public high school, but the social pressures of being an "outcast" were too much for Sandy. She skipped school, was arrested for shoplifting and finally ended up in a group home. Her Peoria foster mother suspected Sandy was manic-depressive, but there was no official diagnosis. By the time she turned 18, this ward of the state was pregnant. She never completed high school.
Cultural, social, physical and mental health issues can be blamed for truancy. Some truants are just petulant youth who refuse to go to school, Bentley said. They enter through the front door of the building and skip out the back, as soon as Dad drives off.
Some educators and parents blame the truancy increase on the decline of vocational education. Some truants are not good students and are failing to keep up with their peers academically. "Not all kids are on the college track," said the parent of a grown child who learned construction through vocational education in the '70s.
The state is revamping vocational education as Career and Technical Education (CTE). The theory is that in our market-driven, technological society, all children need to learn how the system works, how to think and how to learn, not just how to work with their hands, said Diana Robinson, a state board administrator working on the project. "It is dooming (children) to a life of economic failure to just work with their hands."
Robinson said the decline of vocational education can be traced to a decline in funding for the programs, because they are expensive. Think of the auto and machine shops and beauty schools that used to be a part of large, public high schools. As funding dried up, so did enrollments. Couple that with a historical labeling of vocational education as a "dumping ground." "Kids don't want to be labeled as dummies or gear-heads," she said.
So, the truant and the expelled -- the so-called "difficult" children -- are not in school. Where are they? Often, police determine that answer.
The system takes over
A child charged with criminal activity -- a delinquent -- becomes involved with the juvenile justice system. Probation officers, lawyers, judges and social workers take over.
Typically when students run afoul of the law, schools don't want them around anymore. School safety is a huge concern these days, and kids who may be troublemakers are not welcome.
Expulsion has increased in Illinois by 150 percent since 1989. Suspensions are up by 45 percent. Arrest for violent crime leads to automatic expulsion in Chicago public schools. Schools look at "difficult" kids as the juvenile justice system's problem, say some officials.
But judges, probation officers, social workers and others working in the juvenile justice system increasingly look toward schools to help solve some of these problems. Sheer numbers are overwhelming the system.
Tricia*, a 15-year-old, was jailed for disobeying a judge's order to attend school. Tricia said she was afraid to go to school and refused, preferring to go to the county detention center, where she was housed with juveniles who had committed serious crimes. A wealthy benefactor saw Tricia's story in the newspaper and paid for her to attend a private school. Tricia's former public school then initiated a program to make kids aware of the effects of bullying.
Prison building and prison populations are booming, even in the face of declining crime rates of the last decade. Stiffer penalties for drug offenses and political worries of being "soft on crime" have fueled the growth. Another concern is the disproportionate number of minority youth who have had their cases transferred to adult court, where punishments are more severe and social services are fewer.
Nineteen new prisons were built in Illinois between 1981 and 2002, with room for about 32,000 inmates. These prisons have become the lifeblood of some downstate communities with little other means of economic support.
And more and more people are filling them up. Newsweek reported that the U.S. prison population is topping 2 million. In Illinois, nearly 43,000 people are behind bars, overcrowding the facilities and straining the resources of the Illinois Department of Corrections. Prisoners are disproportionately poor, undereducated, learning disabled and minorities. Some say prisons have become the new mental health facilities.
Consider these shocking statistics:
What should society do about this, if anything? Are these numbers acceptable in the name of public safety? If high school dropouts are so disproportionately likely to end up in prison, are prisons becoming the "summer school" of mainstream public education?
What type of involvement should public schools embrace to ensure that "no child is left behind," as President George W. Bush has insisted?
More than 12,000 Illinois juveniles experienced detention -- a kinder, gentler way to say "jail" -- at the hands of the justice system in 1999. The figure had declined from only five years prior due to juvenile justice system reforms begun in the mid-'90s. But, detention has at least doubled since 1981, split evenly between Cook County and the rest of the state. Illinois has beds for 1,512 juveniles, and currently houses approximately 1,800 juveniles, meaning facilities are overcrowded.
Among all prisoners, there is a 40-percent recidivism rate, demonstrating rehabilitative efforts are failing for almost half of the inmates. Critics of the system say the focus isn't on "rehabilitation" anymore, just punishment. After doing time, "un-rehabilitated" inmates are released back into the same communities they came from, further weakening the social fabric of their (in most cases) poor communities -- a vicious cycle.
Most adjudicated youth spend less than a week in detention these days. It is suspected that most need help with addiction, mental health issues and learning disabilities.
Searching for a solution
Is a solution at hand? Hundreds of people involved with Illinois' juvenile justice system have been meeting annually in Oak Brook, Illinois, for a two-day symposium sponsored by the Illinois Probation and Court Services Association and the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The Casey Foundation, an organization started by Jim Casey, one of the founders of United Parcel Service, focuses on the plight of the poor and looks for solutions to end poverty for families.
At this Illinois Juvenile Detention Symposium II, judges, lawyers, social workers, probation officers and other juvenile justice professionals explore strategies to reduce juvenile detention and study the results of the Casey Foundation's Juvenile Detention Alternative Initiative.
Lisa Jacobs, the juvenile justice administrator for Illinois' Department of Human Services' Juvenile Justice Commission, said some counties in Illinois threaten to, and do, lock up truants, against federal guidelines. Jacobs said 305 admissions to detention in 2001 violated state regulations and put Illinois in jeopardy of forfeiting $750,000 in federal funds that would be used for transportation, programs and salaries for people to assist troubled children.
She added the relationship between Illinois' juvenile justice system and education is complex, but her department is working with Regional Offices of Education and the relationship has been positive.
However, Jacobs said, "Illinois, in the national context, is a leader on the forefront" in regard to detention alternatives. "We're looking at detention alternatives on a comprehensive, county-by-county basis. We're coming together as a state to explore a multi-layered solution."
The thinking goes that detaining children is not effective, unless they pose a danger to themselves or others. In the lock-up, vulnerable children are exposed to violent criminals, don't receive the kind of education and services they need, become labeled in their communities, and effectively continue a cycle of neglect and despair. Could they be better served in school?
Indeed, representatives from ROEs attended the Oak Brook symposium to learn about the juvenile justice system and hear juvenile justice workers plead for cooperation from the schools to help.
But help takes money. What is the juvenile justice position on education funding in Illinois? Many of those interviewed were unfamiliar with the funding issues facing the education community in Illinois. Last year, the state legislature boosted the annual foundation level by $135 to $4,560 per student, and increased the number of schools receiving poverty grants, exceeding recommendations by the Education Funding Advisory Board.
Help to increase school attendance must be a concerted effort, according to Annie E. Casey researchers. One state board of education administrator said: "Each department must get out of their silo" to effect systemic change in the way we deal with troubled children.
"All budgets are sacred cows," said yet another high-ranking law enforcement official. "If you're talking about taking money away from one pork barrel and funneling it into another, you've got a lot of resistance to that."
Sheila Radford Hill, division administrator for the Alternative Learning Partnerships Division of the Illinois State Board of Education, recently worked to help pass S.B.1096, the Alternative Learning Opportunities Act, which allocated about $3 million to school districts to design flexible, innovative programs for kids who are experiencing academic failure. The money also can be used to expand existing programs.
Opposition to that legislation came from an unlikely "silo": special education. The fear was that kids with special needs would be incorrectly placed into these programs.
The hope is that new programs can be developed to intrigue troubled kids enough to stay in school, get their degrees and become productive members of society. However, when you divide $3 million by 47,000, you get $64 -- hardly a panacea to solve the complex social, economic and physical problems of the state's truant population.
By comparison, Illinois is spending upward of $30-$50 million through courts, police, corrections and the department of public aid for delinquency prevention. Even so, presenters at the Oakbrook symposium repeatedly echoed the theme that for every child served by their program, two weren't who needed the service.
Making the effort
Julie, a social worker in LaSalle, drives 30 miles out of her way each morning to rouse and drive a sleepy seventh grader to school each morning -- a trip that takes 10 minutes. "If I didn't do this, he wouldn't go to school," she said. His working-class parents "don't really have the time, energy or the means to get him to and from school each day, if he misses his 7 a.m. bus."
Heroic efforts such as Julie's may help like finding a needle in the haystack, but for the masses, most think it will take a concerted effort by governmental bodies.
"To think a judge is going to make kids go to school is just folly," said Michael Mahoney, chair of the Illinois' Juvenile Justice Commission. "Some very creative things are being done between school districts, school boards and communities."
Charles Fasano of the John Howard Association, a watchdog group for jails and prisons in Illinois, says the extra efforts to find solutions do pay off.
"The educational programs for the kids in juvenile detention -- the kids who are delinquents -- are fabulous," he said. "They're jumping up a grade level in six weeks. It's a great investment."
The Oak Brook symposium helps judges and educators learn ideas that might help solve some truancy problems.
Radford Hill said each community should, and does, develop programs to meet their own needs. Evening reporting centers, parent education classes, art programs and one-on-one mentoring are examples of programs that are working. A catch-22 though: One art program experienced declining enrollments after a newspaper article published a story on the program's success with "troubled" kids. It seems the kids were appalled that they had been labeled, and in such a public way.
ROEs, on a county-by-county basis, are usually charged with tracking truants and encouraging them to attend school. They can and do hire truant officers to herd wayward kids into school.
DuPage County, with 850 chronic truants, has developed Project VISA, a program with five case managers, said Joe Radis who heads the project for the DuPage County ROE.
"Case managers contact the family, the kids, the schools and investigate what can be done to facilitate getting (the kids) back into school," Radis said.
"We are looking at how we identify kids who need different learning approaches," Diana Robinson said, adding that the board is also exploring how to work across the system.
Chicago is being held up as a model for other parts of the nation for reducing detention among juvenile delinquents, without seeing recidivism rates or crime rates increase. "It's not pleasant for (juveniles) to get locked up," Mahoney explained. "Sometimes they get hurt."
A Chicago public school third grade teacher from one of the worst neighborhoods spends her days with 23 African-American children, 90 percent of whom are poor. During the course of her school year, four students will leave, to be replaced by four others. Attendance among all of her students is spotty at best. "I have two kids that I know something is wrong with ... something isn't clicking. But the school social workers sent them back to me ...," she trailed off.
In the 1960's musical "West Side Story," teen-age gang members lament their fate in the song, "Gee, Officer Krupke."
"Dear kindly Sgt. Krupke, you've got to understand,
"It's just our bringing up-key, that gets us out of hand.
"Our mothers all are junkies, our fathers all are drunks.
"Golly, Moses, naturally we're punks.
"We never had the love that every child ought to get
"We ain't no delinquents, we're misunderstood
"Deep down inside us there is good. (There is good)
"There is good, there is good, there is untapped good
"Look inside, the worst of us is good."
Throughout the song, the teens shuffle one of their own through the system from the officer on the beat to a judge, who sends him to an analyst, who sends him to a social worker, who sends him back to the judge to be sent to jail.
Does this still have to be the only alternative for underprivileged youth? For Illinois public schools, it takes money and trained people to identify, diagnose, treat and solve the complex social and health problems that send kids spiraling into the juvenile justice system.
Is it cheaper just to let those kids drift off ... truant first, delinquent later? If adequate funding and programs can't be found, no one may be able to predict the long-term cost to Illinois society that 47,000 truants and 35,000 dropouts could yield.
References
ABC News Report, January 31, 2001
Associated Press. "Drug Law Disproportionately Affects Minorities, Study Says," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 26, 2001
Associated Press. "Number of Illinois School Expulsions Has Risen," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 22, 1999
Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/)
Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, statistics on mental illness
Chambers, Aaron. "Innocence Lost," Illinois Law Bulletin
Chambers, Aaron. "It's a Crime," Illinois Issues, May 2001
Chapman, Steve. "Despite what you hear, the kids are all right," Chicago Tribune, December 21, 2000
Clarke, Elizabeth. "Voice of the People: Programs for ‘difficult' kids," Chicago Tribune, November 21, 2000
Coin, Angela. "Chicago Schools Turn Back on Juveniles," Chicago Tribune, March 7, 2001
Dell'Angela, Tracy. "Probation Officer Works School Beat," Chicago Tribune, June 7, 2001
Drizin, Steven A. "Superpredators or just naughty?" Chicago Tribune, January 19, 2001
Fiscal Focus Quarterly, Office of the Illinois Comptroller, April 2001
Heinzman, David. "Town put dreams in Prisons," Chicago Tribune, March 20, 2001
Illinois State Board of Education Web site
"Jailed truant to attend private school," Chicago Sun-Times, January 19, 2001
Juvenile Justice News, newsletter from the Juvenile Justice Initiative, March 2001
Moore, Joan. "Bearing the Burden: How Incarceration Weakens Inner-City Communities," University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
National Adult Literacy Survey by the Correctional Education Association (Internet source)
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Web site
Przybylski, Roger. "Breaking the Cycle of Juvenile Violence," The Compiler, Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority, Fall 1997
"Report on the placement and care of children in substitute care and the Juvenile Court System," Illinois PTA, 1999
Rust, Bill. "Juvenile Jailhouse Rocked," Annie E. Casey Foundation newsletter, Advocasey, Fall/Winter 1999
"Status of Juvenile Justice Efforts," Illinois Department of Human Services
Stroger, John. Chicago Tribune, February 9, 2001
"The Prison Parody," Newsweek, November 13, 2000
U.S. Surgeon General's Office, report on mental health, January 17, 2001
Wallace, Diana. "How Courts Deal with the Mentally Ill," Arlington Heights Daily Herald, March 7, 2001