Teachers do ask after children who were there Tuesday but left Wednesday. Sounding the alarm is the task of people charged with that responsibility (principals, superintendents) or their designated 'drivers'. All too often the authorities (courts, social services, police) pass the buck around and the plight of the kid is lost in the bureaucratic paper chase. The penultimate responsibility for the child rests with the parents (unless orders from the state dictate otherwise).


Missing children:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/missingchildren/

That is an excellent view of the situation and one might expect the figures to be ten times that across the board in the US given that the US has ten times the population Canada does.

No matter how ya slice it, it's a helluva problem.