How Many Students Are Truant, Suspended, or Expelled?
Kidsdata.org Now Offers Local Data

Now available on kidsdata.org: Statewide, county, and school district-level data on truancy, suspensions, and expulsions - offered as both numbers and rates/percents.

• Truant Students  
• Expulsions from School
• Suspensions from School
• Blog Post: What These New Data Don’t Tell Us

One in Four California Students Is Truant

• In 2009, more than 1.5 million of California’s K-12 students were truant, having missed more than 30 minutes of instruction three or more times without an excuse. Find local truancy data >> 
• The percentage of truant students in California hovered between 23% and 26% from 2005-2009. See the trend >>
  

Suspensions Far More Common than Expulsions

• From 2005-2009 in California, there were approximately 12-13 suspensions per 100 K-12 students annually, ranging from a low of 738,845 suspensions in 2005 to a high of 824,231 in 2008. Find local data on suspensions >>
• Roughly 21,000 California K-12 students (0.3%) were expelled from school annually in 2005-2009, with the exception of 2007, when 28,000 students (0.5%) were expelled. Find local data on expulsions >>

Perspective on These Data

• Why This Issue Matters to the Well Being of Children
  
  
• Related Research and Resources

Recently Passed Legislation:

• SB  1317 (Leno) – Parent Responsibility for Student’s Truancy
• SB 1357 (Alquist/ Steinberg) – Collecting Pupil Attendance Data
• SB 651 (Romero/Steinberg) – Annual Report on Dropouts (includes reporting requirements on suspensions and expulsions)

Tools to Help Make Your Case for Kids in California
As a foundation devoted to raising the visibility of issues facing children in California, we want to connect you to the data and information you need:

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Take the data with you by downloading graphs into Word or PowerPoint, or embedding them on your website; you’ll find links to these and other offerings at the top of each indicator page.