Absenteeism is expensive in terms of academic achievement, economic loss to school districts, and teacher efficiency. Most importantly, however, truancy is expensive because it is a lost opportunity to rehabilitate a large number of distressed youngsters. A number of studies have demonstrated that schools are not equipped in either organization or effective strategies to work with alienated students. Others have suggested that schools need to develop a system for monitoring and treating truancy. Several generic discipline strategies are available for managing undesired behavior. This study offers a basis for rehabilitating individual truants with a diagnosis-treatment paradigm. The Indiana Student Scale, a self-esteem scale, was generated from semistructured interviews with 55 truant and nontruant students. The scale was then administered to 52 truants and 54 nontruants in three high schools. Statistically significant differences were found between the two groups with respect to self-esteem as well as on each of five subscale dimensions (power, competence, affiliation, physical appearance, virtue). The results suggest that students who are truant have significantly lower overall feelings of self-worth than do nontruants. The next step is to develop explicit treatment programs for rehabilitating the self-esteem of these truant students. A bibliography of three pages is included. (Author/NB)