Experts Available to Discuss GPS Puts Truants on Track for Class

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TOPIC:

As reported by the Orange Country Register, the city of Anaheim, California is taking truancy seriously. The Anaheim Union High School District has become the first in California to test GPS technology as a means of ensuring that students come to class.

Seventh- and eighth-graders with four or more unexcused absences during the school year are assigned to carry a hand-held GPS device and check in several times a day. Automated phone calls each morning remind them to come to class, and an adult coach calls them at least three times a week.

The policy has generated some interesting commentary, including these observations in the Washington Post and at MSNBC:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fasterforward/2011/02/should_schools_use_gps_to_trac.html

http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/02/18/6081656-schools-use-gps-to-track-students-who-skip

The MSNBC writer did note that the program was voluntary, as reported by the Register: "Students and their parents volunteer for the monitoring to avoid continuation school or prosecution."

The policy might be controversial, but it's also effective. Other districts which have used it have reported that average attendance among chronically truant students rose from 77 to 95 percent during the program, and some of those gains were maintained.

EXPERTS: ExpertSource can offer several highly qualified experts to comment on this story:

Mr. Peter Gudmundsson, Dropout & Truancy Prevention Network

Peter Gudmundsson founded DTPN to address the staggering problem of truancy and dropouts that plague U.S. schools. DTPN combines geo-location technology with phone-based personal mentors to keep kids in school and on track to graduate. Many of the mentors/coaches are disabled veterans. Troubled youth are more inclined to respect these mentors’ guidance because of their experiences. Gudmundsson was a Marine field artillery and intelligence officer and is a graduate of Harvard business school and Brown University. He services on the board of the Hockaday School and the advisory board of the North Texas Enterprise Center for Medical Technology. He serves as the Honorary Consul for the Republic of Iceland in North Texas.

PR Contact: Jennifer Harrison

Title: Principal

Email: [e-mail]

Telephone: [phone]

Richard Marquez, America Can

Richard Marquez has dedicated his professional life to education. He is a change agent in the education of at-risk and disadvantaged youth. In the past thirty years he has had the opportunity to work in many areas of education. That experience has given him a unique viewpoint as it relates to the total workings of the system and the solutions needed. As a creative and innovative leader, he initiated many changes that are now considered educational norms.

Marquez has served as president and CEO of Texans Can! since March of 2007. Prior to Texans Can! he was a middle-school teacher; principal; area superintendent for Dallas ISD; superintendent for a South Texas school district; special adviser to the Secretary of Education, United States Department of Education and a successful entrepreneur training in school districts across the country. In the U.S. Department of Education Marquez focused on the national dropout problem. He developed the management by objectives process and established the first long range grant to study possible dropout prevention solutions. Until then all dropout study grants were awarded for one year. Marquez also worked on the development of the presidential order opening the office of Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans and served as the Acting Director on an interim bases.

In 2009 Marquez was selected as the first in the field of education to be honored by the Dallas chapter of the Texas Association of Business as a Distinguished Business Leader.

While principal of Sunset High School in Dallas, Marquez and his team were able to increase the graduation rate from less than 40% to over 70%. It was a common sight to see Marquez driving around the neighborhood before school and during the lunch hour in his little red Datsun pick-up truck picking up students and returning them to school. During his leadership the first dual credit course that allowed students to gain college credit while attending high school was begun, an alumni association to raise funds for the school was created and the school store became an entrepreneurial center managing fundraisers and student sales grossing over $175,000 annually. With Marquez’s direction an infant care facility to care for the children of students was opened in a local church through a partnership with the YMCA. Marquez wrote and received a grant to fund a social worker to establish dropout prevention strategies for the first time at the school. Marquez and the school were featured on the Today Show, the Oprah Winfrey Show and other national and local media for the great achievements made increasing the school’s graduation rates.

Marquez earned his M.A. Public School Administration from the University of North Texas and also earned his B.A. in History with a Spanish minor from the University of North Texas. As a former high school dropout, Marquez is able to understand how life’s circumstances can prevent students from finishing their educations in the traditional way.

PR Contact: Cheryl Rios

Title: Vice President

Email: [e-mail]

Telephone: [phone]

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