TRUANT OFFICERS. A couple years ago, I was talking to a teacher who had spent many years teaching in an inner city school (not in New York). She said that an overlooked problem is absenteeism. Often when a kid gets to, say, eighth grade, he or she will have missed the equivalent of two years of school, and so it should not be surprising that they are not at grade level. And of course, the time they do spend in school is fragmented time.
I had not thought of this. I had last encountered truant officers as figures in comic strips when I was a boy. They were needed in the distant past apparently, but now??
I had not until yesterday noticed any discussion in the news of absenteeism as a problem.