Taking away social service report from parents who are not involved with their child’s school is one of the ideas on The Worst Parent Engagement Ideas list.

The Hechinger Report describes what happened with a similar experiment in Australia in their post, Skip school and lose welfare? The good and bad of Australia’s tough tactics on truancy.

Here are some excerpts:

To make sure all students stayed enrolled until they were 17, officials put strict penalties in place and a series of supports for truants, such as opportunities to work with social workers. Parents could also be fined up to $11,000. And, as a last resort, parents on welfare could lose their payments if their child was truant.

Attendance did improve in areas where the program was piloted, by about 5 percent. But a 2010 evaluation by the Australian Department of Education found that it decreased after an initial bump and low-income students still had lower attendance than their peers. Critics said that the increases weren’t enough to justify the cost of the program – about $3 million a year for the trial in 44 schools.