CyberTruancy: Exploring Issues of Attendance in the Online Classroom
Leanna Archambault
Arizona State University
United States
leanna.archambault@asu.edu
Stacy Bender
Minnesota Virtual High School
United States
sbender@emailmtcs.org
Kathryn Kennedy
International Association for K-12 Online Learning
United States
kkennedy@inacol.org
Abstract: Although mandatory attendance is easily determined in a traditional, brick-and-mortar
school, monitoring and enforcing attendance and truancy in an online environment is perplexing.
Despite the challenge, virtual schools have a duty to ensure that students who are enrolled are
actually logging on, completing lessons, and “attending” classes in an online setting. This paper
describes how attendance and truancy laws apply to online students and explores the notion of
cyber-truancy using a policy analysis. Within the context of Minnesota Virtual High School, one of
the first schools to develop online attendance policies, we explore the impact and significance of
enforcing cybertruancy policy.
One of the recent criticisms of the American education system draws a comparison of our schools as
factories in which students are grouped by age. They progress through a series of isolated subjects in a lock-step
fashion (Groff, Smith, & Edmond, 2010). There are a number of inherent problems with this model, including a onesize-fits-all approach to instruction that stifles creativity, individuality, and innovation. This, coupled with an
emphasis on recall of declarative factual knowledge associated with high-stakes standardized testing, is particularly
disconcerting, especially when we consider that the current generation of students will face some of the most
complex and difficult problems the world has ever encountered. One of the mechanisms keeping this antiquated
system in place is the student evaluation process. Outdated measures of student achievement, in particular, seat-time,
or the number of minutes spent in the classroom, continue to perpetuate under-performance among students, who,
unfortunately, are able to graduate as a function of attending and minimally participating in a face-to-face setting.
Within the traditional school model, students are either physically present or absent. Attendance is defined
as physical presence for a predetermined amount of time during which the school holds academic programming.
This becomes a significant issue for schools when students are chronically absent, legally referred to as “truant.”
Truancy occurs when students’ lack of attendance does not fit into the excused categories provided by the laws of
the students’ states of residence. To address this problem, states have written and implemented truancy laws
focusing on traditional, brick-and-mortar schools. It stands to reason that schools should be accountable for public
tax-payer dollars used to finance them. Under the current system, this responsibility ends simply with students being
physically present in a classroom.
While attendance and truancy are not difficult to determine in the face-to-face classroom, the definition of
truancy at an online school is challenging to establish and enforce. However, virtual schools have an equal
responsibility to assure that students are attending to lessons, progressing in their learning and benefitting from
instruction. Especially in the case of public online schools, including cyber-charter schools, state-led virtual schools,
or district-level supplemental online classes, there exists a legal obligation to ensure that funds are being spent
appropriately. With the growing number of students attending virtual schools, using attendance as the primary
measure of achievement must be revisited and redefined in order to determine how to enforce attendance within the
online setting.
This paper offers an examination of current truancy laws and the role that online schools play in the
enforcement of these laws. It explores the concept of “cyber-truancy,” through an analysis of Minnesota truancy
laws and the policies and procedures of Minnesota Virtual High School. The purpose of this analysis is to examine
how truancy laws can and do apply to online students as well as the responsibility of online schools to enforce state
attendance laws, even as they are currently written.
Methodology
Policy analysis requires that a series of systematic steps be followed. This includes detailing a historical
background, presenting a description of the problem requiring the policy and the policy itself, and offering an
analysis of the goals, feasibility, and impact of implementing the policy (Karger & Stoesz, 2009). Policy analysis
involves carefully presenting related data that attempt to clarify a public problem while examining the cause and
effects surrounding the issue, together with considering the impact of various solutions. According to Kraft and
Furlong (2004), “…policy analysis involves both descriptive (empirical) study, which tries to determine the facts of
a given situation, and a normative or value-based assessment of the options” (p. 103). The purpose of this type of
analysis is to better understand a problem, suggest possible solutions, and examine the results of implementation in a
given context. As such, the research questions for the current analysis are as follows:
1. How do the concepts of compulsory attendance and truancy apply to the K-12 online learning
environment? What is cybertruancy?
2. How might attendance and truancy be enforced in a virtual school setting?
Data sources for this analysis were collected from existing literature and related reports, Minnesota Attendance and
Truancy Statutes, Chisago County Truancy Policy, and Minnesota Virtual High School (MVHS) documentation.
Defining Cybertruancy
With the expansion of virtual and online education opportunities for both elementary and secondary
students, the issue of monitoring and enforcing attendance becomes problematic. This is because the traditional
definition of truancy in a brick-and-mortar school (a certain number of unexcused absences over a given period of
time) does not easily translate to the online environment. Within traditional schools, attendance equates to
physically sitting in a seat in the classroom for a predetermined number of minutes or seat-time.
Attempting to track seat-time in the online environment is problematic, and many states have moved more
toward completion or competency-based progress as a method for measuring student progress in virtual school
settings (Sturgis & Patrick, 2010). A competency-based approach means that students must demonstrate mastery of
specific skills to progress to higher-level work and earn credits toward high school graduation. Progress toward
meeting predetermined criteria, as established by multiple measures, rather than an arbitrary number of minutes
spent sitting in a classroom, determines when students complete a class and fulfills the requirements necessary for
graduation (Sturgis & Patrick, 2010). However, this progress must be carefully monitored to ensure that students
are, in fact, moving forward and mastering the necessary skills. This requires a carefully coordinated plan with
ongoing formative assessment that drives instruction.
With advances in K-12 online curricula and instruction, the possibility for individualized instruction based
on mastery is increasingly feasible. In the online environment, students are not bound by traditional age-groupings
that may or may not correlate with their skill levels in particular content areas. However, despite the growing
popularity of online education, one of the challenges has been to ensure that students are, in fact, “attending” and
receiving instruction as well as progressing in their studies. How is compulsory attendance monitored in the online
classroom? How does a virtual school determine when a student has a problem with excessive absenteeism, and
more importantly, what do they do when this is the case? Although online education has been in existence for a
relatively short amount of time, recent advancement shows enrollment in K-12 online learning continuing to grow at
an exponential rate throughout the United States (Watson et al., 2011). Given the nature of this advancement,
attendance and truancy in the online environment, or cyber-truancy, needs to be examined.
To explore the implications of cyber-truancy in context, it is helpful to understand how this policy has been
implemented in a specific context. One of the first virtual schools in the nation to attempt to address this issue is
Minnesota Virtual High School. MVHS is a fully online virtual school that offers classes to middle and high school
students throughout the state, serving approximately 1,350 students. Students can take single classes to supplement
their traditional, face-to-face schools, or they can choose to go to MVHS full time. If they choose full time, upon
graduation, students receive a diploma from the accredited public charter school, Minnesota Transitions Charter
School, which sponsors MVHS.
Minnesota’s Online Learning Law
Minnesota’s state law pertaining to online education provides per pupil state funding to follow the students
from their traditional schools to the online setting (Minnesota Statute 124D.095). As a result, an online school is a
public school, and its students then are subject to state attendance and truancy laws. As with many issues related to
education, laws and definitions regarding truancy differ in each state. In Minnesota, Statutes 120A.22 and 260A
require that, once students enroll in school or by age seven, they must attend school every hour of every school day
through the age of 18 unless or until they are formally withdrawn with parental consent after age 16. The law grants
schools the ability to define what is considered an excused or unexcused absence. The difficulty lies in being able to
apply an outdated compulsory attendance law to an online environment. What must be challenged is the utility of
current education policy mandating physical presence when instructional models, including fully online, hybrid, and
blended formats, no longer require that teachers and students be in the same physical space at the same time in order
for learning to occur.
MVHS uses a competency-based calculation to determine what attendance means in the online classroom.
Funding is not based on the number of hours that a student “sits” in the online classroom; rather, it is based on
course completion and credits earned by the students. Because students can work at any time of day/night from any
place, the only common denominator among them is progress completion. What takes one student to complete in
one hour may take another student three hours. However, the required number of assignments to be completed in a
specific course remains constant for all students in that course. While the path students take to that completion will
likely differ, the anticipated outcome is the same.
Based on this outcome, MVHS school officials determine the required percentage of increase in each class
per week toward full completion. Most students take a minimum of five classes each semester. School officials
divided the total percentage of completion needed to earn credit by the number of weeks in a semester and
multiplied it by five classes. This equates to a 25% increase needed (cumulatively considering all classes) per week
for attendance. After deliberation and consideration, MVHS administration collectively determined that each 5%
increase amounted to one school day based on a five-day school week as is found in traditional schools. For
example, if a student fails to make 10% progress in a particular week, that student would be considered absent for
two days (Table 1).
Table 1: Example of Student Progress Conversion to Number of Absences
Week 1 % of Work
Week 1 Days Absent/
Completion
Potentially Truant
Student A
5%
4 days
Student B
10%
3 days
Student C
25%
0 days
Aligning student progress toward course completion with a number of days based on a predetermined
expectation provides virtual schools a way to calculate attendance. While this formula may not work for other online
programs, the policy necessitates computing a specific amount of progress to a “school day.” In doing so, existing
attendance and truancy laws that do not directly speak to online learning processes become applicable. Translating
and defining truancy vocabulary words (attendance, unexcused absence, excused absence, etc.) for the online
environment in a way that county officials can easily interpret would allow virtual schools the ability to use and
enforce existing compulsory attendance statutes.
In enforcing the truancy statutes, each of the 87 counties in Minnesota differs in its method and approach.
While some counties place students on probation, others provide social services in order to assist students in
reestablishing acceptable attendance. Despite the variation, the responsibility for the initial reporting of truant
students falls on the schools. Once students accrue seven unexcused absences or more, schools must file truancy
petitions in the students’ counties of residence. Through this filing, schools, county representatives, and families of
truant students become connected in an effort to support improved attendance, interpreted in the online setting as
student progress and performance.
Monitoring, encouraging, and enforcing attendance is a key responsibility of school personnel (Sheldon,
2007) to ensure not only that students are in fact receiving instruction but also that taxpayer funds are being well
spent. However, without updated policy that pertains directly to the online environment, virtual schools are left to
interpret existing attendance laws, many of which originated in the later part of the 19 th century. The concept of
attendance in K-12 online education needs to be redesigned to meet the needs of a growing number of online
students. Until this can be instituted, virtual schools would benefit from establishing procedures for enforcing
existing truancy statutes. Because these laws differs among states, it is essential that online schools investigate the
statutes in their states and construct an attendance policy that is understandable to school personnel and families, as
well as social workers, probation officers, and judges.
In the case of MVHS, enforcing mandatory attendance required coming together to establish a common
understanding of what it meant to attend in an online setting, including developing definitions of attendance,
unexcused absences, and excused absences. While this presented a challenge at first, it was decided that progress on
instructional activities toward course completion could be converted using an agreed-upon formula. Once this was
established, tracking and enforcing attendance became straightforward, and MVHS was able to use a consistent
interpretation of existing attendance laws that were originally intended for use in traditional, brick-and-mortar
settings. This is important because it allowed the virtual school to implement enforcement of chronic, unexcused
absences, in addition to offering better understanding of the benefits of addressing cyber-truancy. Often, this meant
getting social service personnel involved with students and their families, which allowed the virtual school to work
together with the state to determine and address the underlying cause of the truancy. Even in counties with a more
punitive approach, this structure provided students and families with incentive to continue to make progress with
their schooling while avoiding negative repercussions.
While it may seem like a difficult task, enforcement of truancy statutes is mandated by state law and is not
voluntary; it is imperative, especially for cyber charter and state-sponsored virtual schools who receive public
funding. With significant documented issues of student drop out and attrition rates in addition to lack of
achievement in online settings (Hawkins & Barbour, 2010; Miron & Urshel, 2012; Rice, 2006; Smith, Clark, &
Blomeyer, 2005), virtual schools need to take an active role in overseeing students’ progress. If progression in
school activities is not occurring, it is incumbent upon the virtual school to investigate the situation, determine what
level of intervention should be made, and evaluate the outcome. In some cases, this could include utilizing existing
state attendance and truancy laws to access social services. For other students, for whom online education is not a
good fit, they should be counseled into more traditional settings.
In order for online schools to assert and maintain a credible presence as a viable form of schooling, they
must adhere to the state and federal statutes governing educational practices. In the same way that virtual schools are
mandated to comply with federal No Child Left Behind policy, they must also be held accountable for state
attendance and truancy statutes. With the growth of online education across the nation, states have a duty to write
policies that define and govern attendance and truancy in the online environment. This may involve equating
progress within a course to a given number of school days until attendance laws can be revisited to include language
specific to online education.
At the same time, virtual schools would benefit from establishing procedures that enact cyber-truancy
policies. This may include communicating with students and parents about absences and truant behavior, intervening
for students in an effort to alleviate the causes of the truancy, and filing truancy petitions when necessary. The
purpose of doing so is to intervene when a student may be struggling so that action can be taken and assistance can
be immediately provided where necessary. Without careful monitoring and enforcement, students who are not
visible in the online environment run the risk of falling through the cracks. At a time when students, many of whom
are already at-risk, have turned to online education as an alternative to a traditional setting, schools must pay
particular attention to attendance as measured by performance.
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