The Early Truancy Prevention Project (ETPP)

The Early Truancy Prevention Project is an innovative intervention program designed to prevent elementary school truancy and later school dropout. The intervention model emphasizes the important role of teachers as change agents to address early attendance problems and emerging truancy. Specifically, the goals of this pilot project are: 1) to facilitate positive, trusting, and collaborative home-school relations and to promote a positive teacher-child relationship; 2) to provide teachers with timely information about a student's attendance pattern; and 3) to train and supervise teachers in the implementation of individualized attendance interventions to improve student attendance and prevent emerging truancy among elementary school students. As this is a pilot study, another important goal is to obtain teacher and administrator feedback to improve and refine all aspects of the project.