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.
Read more at BridgeDetroit.