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Writer's pictureJoanne Jacobs

How to get students to show up: Bribery? Tough love?

Paying chronic absentees $50 for each week of perfect attendance -- a desperation move in Oakland high schools -- hasn't made much of a difference, reports Hannah Poukish in the San Francisco Chronicle.


The Equitable Design Project has operated only in the last 10 weeks of the school year, and only offers payments to students with very poor attendance.


Many come from troubled families, said Jenell Marshall, an English teacher at MetWest High School who’s involved in the program. "Of the seven students Marshall helped enroll and guide through the program this year, only three consistently attended," writes Poukish. 


The district has "handed out gift cards, T-shirts and Golden State Warriors tickets" for attendance and given students backpacks and school supplies, she writes. Staffers visit students' homes to encourage attendance. Oakland Unified cut its chronic absentee rates by nearly half to 32 percent, still much higher than the state average, according to this year's data


Cultural norms about attendance school have weakened, write Garion Frankel and Cooper Conway on Fordham's Wonkathon. When the stick doesn't work, they recommend trying "the oldest carrot of all -- bribery."


Rewards for performance tend not to work, they write, but rewards for behavior, such as attendance, do have a modest effect.


Also on Fordham's site, Daniel Buck thinks it takes some stick to reset cultural norms. He advocates tough love. "There is plenty of evidence that fines and other sanctions can also work when combined with effective outreach," he writes.


Schools should set a goal of cutting chronic absenteeism by 50 percent in the next five years, write Hedy Chang, Denise Forte and Nat Malkus on The Hill.


"Before the pandemic, about 15 percent of public school students were chronically absent, meaning they missed 10 percent or more of the school year, or about 18 days," they write. "In 2022, chronic absenteeism rates nearly doubled their pre-pandemic baseline." Rates fell in 2023, but only slightly.


In addition to engaging parents and students, schools need to re-establish old attendance habits, they write. That means "having clear expectations and appropriate responses for families whose students miss too much school." 


Many parents now see school attendance as optional, says school leaders in a new Rand survey, reports Linda Jacobson on The 74. One in four said none of their strategies to address chronic absenteeism is effective.

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superdestroyer
Sep 10

If one wants students to show up and pay attention, then making showing up, participating, and performing a requirement for promotion and graduation. More students will show up and do the work. However, one is going to have to deal with the political fallout of higher failure rates and lower graduation rates.

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Bruce Smith
Bruce Smith
Sep 11
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Too many "students" graduate to nothing; I suggest compulsory education end after ninth grade, after which youth will either apply for apprenticeships towards futures that do attract them, or, if they qualify as students (which means that they will usually have needed to have shown up, participated, and performed), for selective university preparatory school: this usually disrupts the mindless walk from classroom to classroom according to mechanized tolling bells that is typical of traditional American high schools, the least attractive model available in states used to having more specialized upper secondary education on offer, in their competition to attract teens.

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