Thousands of K12 students in Detroit consistently miss days of school. Chronic absenteeism is defined as missing at least 10% of school days—or 18 in a 180-day academic year. In Detroit, chronic absenteeism rose during the COVID-19 pandemic and remains a persistent challenge.
To encourage attendance, the Detroit Public Schools Community District is getting creative. This past year, Michigan’s largest school district awarded US$200 gift cards to nearly 5,000 high schoolers for attending all their classes during a two-week period, and Superintendent Nikolai Vitti also floated the idea of providing bikes to help students get to class. Some district students lack access to reliable transportation.
To understand the consequences of kids regularly missing school, The Conversation U.S. spoke with Sarah Lenhoff, associate professor of education at Wayne State University and director of the Detroit Partnership for Education Equity & Research, an education-focused research collaborative, and Jeremy Singer, an assistant professor of education at Wayne State University. Lenhoff and Singer wrote a book published in March about the socioeconomic drivers of chronic absenteeism in K12 schools and how policymakers and communities, not just educators, can help.
Read more at The Conversation.
