Facts about school truancy:
1. Kids do not learn while truant.
If sick, they might be able to do some schoolwork as homework -- and they often want to as such defines a role that they want. This said, truancy is not the result of having IV tubes being connected to one's veins.
2. Truants are trouble. They are often doing petty crime such as shoplifting -- and they might 'graduate' to drug dealing.
Really, truancy is a mistake; it is boring. Daytime television is not made for school-age kids except for early-elementary education.
3. Truants become dropouts. Employers might willingly hire high-school kids to do retail or restaurant work, but they do not want dropouts who typically have hostility to authority and little tolerance for hardship. If someone can't deal with the soft bureaucracy of a school, then how can one deal with the harsher authoritarianism of the typical business?
I have seen the pattern as a sub in a school with some rough kids. If I see a large number of absences I get scared... potential dropouts are not good students. Maybe some districts concentrate potential dropouts in junior high and high school in certain hourly paths (1st hour English, second hour math, third gym, fourth civics, fifth an elective of some kid, sixth remedial reading) with the better students in different hourly tracks, one of the courses not being remedial reading. The more truancy a kid does, the more he falls behind.
...I do not know whose responsibility it is to tell kids that they are going to school and that they are going to buckle down and do what may seem difficult and unpleasant. California has some sharp cultural divides between people who value formal education as liberation and those who do not care. "Tiger Mom" may not be the most enjoyable situation possible, but at least with her one will get the sort of education that allows one to hold the sort of job that allows one to remain in the parts of California that people want to live in.
The American economy is as unforgiving as it has ever been, and in the absence of any chance of a social revolution or technological innovations that make life easy, we must all adapt.
What's the point of forcing kids to go to school if they aren't getting anything out of it? Truants are likely dropouts whether they show up to class or not. Truancy is just a symptom of a much larger problem. Instead of punishing their parents maybe we should be thinking of other programs to help these kids out. Whether that be vocational school or whatever I think there are more effective solutions in the most circumstances.
