8-22-12: Reducing Truancy With Rewards

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Truancy-0822.mp3

This conversation originally aired on February 27, 2012.

Kids who miss a lot of school are on track for much bigger problems.  They’re more likely to drop out, and even if they finish school, less likely to find a good job.  Chronic truancy is also linked to social isolation and committing crimes.  And so, many school systems in Maryland are finding different ways to address and fix chronic truancy.

Four Maryland counties on the lower Eastern Shore as well as Harford and Prince George’s Counties have turned to the Truancy Reduction Pilot Program (TRPP)–a court-based program focused on rehabilitation instead of punishment.

We speak about TRPP with Robert Laird, a Juvenile and Domestic Relations Master for the Somerset County Circuit Court of Maryland who has handled hundreds of TRPP cases and co-authored an article about the program in the Maryland Bar Journal.

A year ago, Sheilah spoke with NPR reporter Claudio Sanchez and Baltimore City School Support Networks Officer Jonathan Brice about Baltimore City’s dropout rate and the efforts to prevent dropouts. Listen to the interview here.

See the 2008 report by the Maryland Judiciary on the effectiveness of TRPP here.

Maryland Morning would like to thank WESM 91.3 and its general manager Stephen Williams for taping Mr. Laird in their studios.