Show up, get paid: Detroit schools offer big bucks to combat truancy

High school students in Detroit could soon be up to $1,000 richer just by attending school, something the law says they are supposed to do anyway.

This month, Detroit Public Schools launched a new initiative called Perfect Attendance Pays in an effort to reduce chronic absenteeism, the Detroit Free Press reported.

High school students who attend all of their classes during a two-week period can receive a $200 gift card. The district has designated five such two-week periods between now and late March, meaning that students with perfect attendance during the periods can receive up to $1,000.

Last year, fully 66% of district students were considered chronically absent. In other words, they missed at least 18 days of the 180-day school year. Michigan law requires kids ages 6 to 16 to attend school "during the entire school year," or their parent or guardian could be charged with a misdemeanor.

Superintendent Nikolai Vitti is "excited" about the program that will hopefully encourage more students to comply with that law.

"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," he said.

In 2023-24, less than 12% of third-grade students in Detroit Public Schools were considered proficient in reading.

Dr. Tonya Norwood, a retired principal, also supports the program because she believes it will help students who serve as the main caretakers of their family. "I think a lot of people don’t understand, a lot of our kids support their families," she told FOX 2.

"Oftentimes our students go to jobs. So now they’re spending six or seven hours at jobs and then they come home after that, now they have to cook for their siblings," she continued.

Raymond Kennedy, a senior at Davis Aerospace Technical High School, believes the program will work as intended. "It will get a lot of people to come to school," he told the Free Press.

Kennedy also suggested that students who have transportation issues could use the money to take a rideshare to school. "I know some middle school and grade school parents have trouble getting them to school or from school, so I know if you use the gift card for an Uber or a Lyft, you’ll be able to have a guaranteed ride for your kids to school," he said, though the program appears to apply only to high school students.

According to Norwood, the initiative does not pay students to attend school. "I think people are thinking, 'Oh, we’re trying to pay students to come to school,' and that’s not the case," she claimed, though if she explained her reasoning, FOX 2 did not include it either during the news broadcast or in its article Thursday.

'Incentives do not necessarily address the contextual factors that are demotivating.'

Thus far, the program seems to have had some success. At a school board meeting on Tuesday, Vitti reported that 1,800 more district high school students had perfect attendance since Christmas break this year than at the same time period last year.

"Right now, the incentive is working," he claimed, according to Chalkbeat, though the inaugural two-week period does not end until Friday.

Despite the enthusiasm, other districts across the country have offered similar external motivations to entice kids to attend school — with mixed results. Even a 2021 study in Detroit revealed that such incentives have "a small effect, if any" on attendance and could even be counterproductive.

"Incentives do not necessarily address the contextual factors that are demotivating," the report from the Detroit Partnership for Education Equity and Research said.

Vitti told Chalkbeat that interest accrued from school funds is financing the Perfect Attendance Pays program.

"As we wait to complete projects, that money is in the bank. It creates interest. It gives us a lot of flexibility."

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!