Cyber-Truancy: Addressing Issues of Attendance in the Digital Age

Although mandatory attendance is easily determined in a traditional, brick-and-mortar school, monitoring and enforcing attendance and truancy in an online environment is less obvious. Despite this challenge, virtual schools, especially those that are publicly funded, have a requirement to ensure that students who are enrolled are actually logging on, completing lessons, and ''attending" classes in an online setting. This article describes how attendance and truancy laws apply to online students and explores the notion of cyber-truancy. 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 cyber-truancy policy.