Credo

• Children have a right to a meaningful education regardless of their needs.
• Good school attendance goes hand in hand with school achievement.
• Children look to the school for strength, approval and guidance.
• Children with special needs deserve an appropriate education that addresses their individual needs.
• Each child is unique and valuable and worthy of an appropriate education; therefore we must not leave any child behind.
• School attendance workers, social workers, pupil personnel workers, health professionals, and other staff working to improve school attendance deserve current information related to truancy and dropout prevention.
• Truancy and dropout prevention are essential components of a successful education system.

Mission

The International Association for Truancy and Dropout Prevention (IATDP) is an association of educators, government officials and stakeholders whose history of truancy and dropout prevention efforts date back to 1911.

IATDP’s mission is to create a partnership which facilitates the dissemination of information, emerging practices and research designed to support learning and increase high school graduation rates.

The goal of IATDP is to improve the efforts of practitioners to reduce the number of students that elect to dropout of school by sharing our common experiences and intervention strategies.