Detention, foster care considered for truants

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Rep. Bunde can be forgiven for trying to "crack down" on truant kids. I, for one, appreciate that he's trying to take this on.
I used to work in "dropout prevention." Mainly, we were trying after-school tutoring. I quickly learned that dropout risk had little to do with homework help, but it had everything to do with truancy. No big surprise there: dropping out is just permanent truancy, after all.
Truancy and dropping out had much more to do with the quality of parenting, income level, and reading ability. Naturally, a dropout prevention - or truancy prevention - program can't do anything about the first two factors, and schools are absolutely busting their figurative butts teaching kids to read.
In my experience, and the experience of others, truants and dropouts come from families with one or more of the following characteristics: single-parent, low-income, addiction or mental health disorder, low literacy, lots of kids, low parenting quality.
Naturally, kids from homes with one, or even all, of these factors aren't doomed to dropout. But they are at the highest risk. And if you meet a truant or dropout, and ask them about their home life, you'll hear the factors I listed above.
One of the reasons I'm so fascinated by the social effects of addiction is because it is the "X" factor in any attempt to solve a social problem; no matter how well funded, designed, intended, and staffed a program is, addiction will let the air out of the tires.
And before anyone calls for my head on a platter because I'm dragging single moms through the mud, hold on. I know there are sober, hard working, literate, effective single moms out there. If their children are truant and dropout, I'm sure they are at wits end. But ask those women about the men in their lives, or the home where they came from, and chances are excellent that you will find addiction somewhere.