The Detroit school district is employing some new methods in its fight to improve attendance, including paying students up to $1,000 each for perfect attendance and holding back students with extremely high rates of chronic absenteeism.
The new initiatives will add to work the district has had in place for years, much of it centering around attendance agents whose job is to improve attendance, connect with families of absent students, and provide resources families need to prevent absenteeism. That work has led to decreases in the rate of chronic absenteeism.
Incentives and negative consequences for repeated absences aren’t particularly new, though there is mixed research about their effectiveness and some experts worry that they potentially ignore the often insurmountable at-home challenges, much of it related to poverty, that prevents students from coming to school regularly.
Students are considered chronically absent in Michigan if they miss 10%, or 18 days, in a typical 180-day school year. In the Detroit Public Schools Community District, 66% of students were chronically absent in the 2023-24 school year, down from nearly 80% at the height of the pandemic in the 2021-22 school year.
The still high rates impact efforts to improve academic performance in the district, leaves absent students far behind, and affects learning for all students.
Here is what the district is doing:
- The district launched “Perfect Attendance Pays” this month, allowing high school students to receive a $200 gift card for each two-week period in which they have perfect attendance. The first two-week period began Monday and runs through Jan. 17. The final two-week period runs from March 10-21. Students who have perfect attendance in each of the five periods will earn up to $1,000 in gift cards. Students must be in class for every hour of the day in order to have perfect attendance.
- The district previously announced a new grade promotion policy. Students in grades K-8 who miss 45 or more days over the course of the school year may be required to repeat the grade. High school students who miss 23 or more days of a single course in a semester will need to retake the course or enroll in credit recovery.
Schools for years have provided incentives throughout the year to promote attendance, particularly on the two important days in the year when student enrollment counts are used to determine how much state aid districts will receive. In the Oakland Unified school district in California, students who were severely chronically absent were paid $50 each Friday if they attended school each day that week. That program differs from what Detroit is doing because it was targeted only at students who were struggling to attend school.
Also, state law allows students who are persistently absent from school to face penalties through the county court system. Parents also can face charges, and those who receive public assistance can have that money revoked if their children aren’t attending school.
In both instances, the district cited the need to improve attendance as part of the reasoning for the two initiatives.
“Consistent attendance is an essential part of students’ success, and we know that when District students miss less than 18 days of school in our District, they are 3 to 5 times more likely to be at and above grade level in reading and math and to be college ready as defined by the SAT,” Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said in a letter to families.
Angelique Peterson-Mayberry, president of the Detroit school board, told the audience at a December meeting that students who end up being held back won’t be surprised because they will be communicated with throughout the process about their risk.
“This is not meant to be punitive. However, we are trying to foster accountability and enforce a set of excellence and standards with our young scholars,” Peterson-Mayberry said. “We know that there are extenuating circumstances, and so those will be dealt with on a case by case basis, but we have to make sure people understand the importance of being in school every day.”
Read the full story on Chalkbeat Detroit.
