Punishing Truants Won’t Correct Problem : Returning students should be welcomed, not penalized. They are often absent with good reason. Their achievements are more important than their presence.

As a classroom teacher, I empathize with the desperation behind proposals such as one pending before the Los Angeles City Council to criminalize truancy.

I know that truant students disrupt the continuity of instruction and make teaching more difficult when they do show up. Failing students who miss an arbitrary number of class periods is a policy at many schools. Punishing parents with fines and court appearances is the next logical step in an escalating war against students who don’t attend their classes.

Nevertheless, I oppose it.

Punishment would be meaningless to the marginal ones who have already skipped too many days or fallen too far behind to pass. The courts may succeed in forcing absentees back into classes that they are sure to fail, but such punitive tactics won’t improve education. Only substantive change that takes into account the difficulties today’s students face, and makes it possible for them to succeed, will.

Our schools are overcrowded and understaffed, often lacking the most rudimentary books and materials, with a curriculum divided into unrelated fragments, in defiance of all modern educational research.

The solution to our attendance problems cannot be as simple as the penitentiary model: credit granted for “time served.” Perhaps state funding should be based on students’ achievement rather than their physical presence.

Why pretend that all teachers, all classes, team sports and even fund-raising rallies are equally educational for all students? Without that pretense, we can have flexible scheduling, so the teacher and small groups of students can engage in deeper levels of thinking and interaction than would ever be possible in a full classroom. That is what we have done in the experimental Community Based Learning Program for secondary students, in which I teach.

I believe that education should be student-centered, designed around the learning styles, interests and needs of the individual. Students who learn best by reading and research need large blocks of time in the library. Those who learn by doing need time, space and materials to design and produce projects that help them understand the curriculum. Many students need small-group instruction that cannot be provided in the traditional 35-student, 45-minute class period.

Teaching in an interdisciplinary pilot program, one of several programs in my school, I have learned to give up many traditional controls. Our students are not required to be inside the classroom all the time. Sometimes they work outside, at libraries and various other sites. They do their work because it is important to them and essential to the program--their research is reproduced and used for instruction.

Certainly there are classes that no one should miss, and students make tremendous efforts to get to the important ones. They are here when they need to be: for directed lessons, for tutoring and when project groups meet. Thursdays the entire class meets for three hours. When we need them all together at other times, we let them know in advance.

To be sure, a few take advantage, and we fight truancy with various strategies from wake-up calls to parent conferences to peer pressure.

But what about those who can’t make it to school? Some students have to stay home to baby-sit, translate or watch the house. Health appointments can be made only during the school day. Sometimes the students don’t have proper clothes or bus fare. Often they are sick.

Instead of pushing these young people out, we have set up a system that works for everyone, regardless of individual circumstances. Returning students are welcomed, not penalized.

We realize that students who are actively engaged in their own learning don’t miss school unless they have to, and that students can learn wherever they are. Background information and lecture notes are printed and copied. Written reports are required at the end of group discussions for all students to refer to. “Alternative” assignments are available for those who have missed lectures, field trips or presentations. We mail or deliver work to students’ homes and tutor them on our own time. Independent studies are designed for students who must be out of school for extended periods. Because every student’s work is important, we insist they finish everything. It is never too late.

Students invariably respond to our refusal to let anyone slip through the cracks by becoming more confident and respectful of the educational process and working harder. In the past five years, all of our seniors have graduated and more than 80% of them have gone on to higher education.

This is why I oppose any policy that penalizes students without taking their individual circumstances into account. Experience has taught me that when the schools really work with their students, the students will overcome tremendous obstacles to participate in school.