Perspective
We Will Pay High School Students To Go To School. And We Will Like It.
To solve high school truancy, don’t suspend kids; compensate them.
When I read that my old high school in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, suspended half of its student population for excessive absences—defined as roughly a week's worth of unexcused truancy over the last quarter—my first thought was, Only half?
School absence was a huge problem when I was a student there in the mid-90s. Not going to class was arguably a class of its own, and one that many of my peers mastered. (No comment on whether I was part of the problem.)