Long-Term Effects of Truancy Diversion on School Attendance: a Quasi-Experimental Study with Linked Administrative Data.

Over 60% of US school districts implement court diversion programs to address chronic unexcused absenteeism, yet the effectiveness of these programs is not known. We evaluated whether the Truancy Intervention Program (TIP) improved the school attendance of students in grades 7-10 in a metropolitan county in the Midwestern USA. Similar to most truancy court diversion programs, TIP consisted of three increasingly intrusive steps: (1) a parent meeting, (2) a hearing to develop an attendance contract, and (3) a petition to juvenile court.