After two years of trying to incentivize students to return to school, many districts are finally demonstrating success by deploying innovative strategies. Never mind sending home notifications to parents letting them know how many days their child has missed. And forget truant officers. They’re useless when parents don’t answer the door.
A few creative superintendents, however, have emerged as national leaders in motivating students to attend school in 2024. Superintendent Gedda Outabed of LAUSD, for example, says her district has closed the chronic absenteeism gap by 0.01 standard deviations (the district interim goal) by simply offering free Skittles, Sour Patch Kids, and Hot Tamales to kids who show up for at least an hour.
Superintendent Abby Sentz in Broward County, Florida, has also seen remarkable progress in getting students back to school. Her secret? Rewarding attendance with opportunities to miss class. Each day of attendance earns students points that they can use for a variety of rewards, including customizing their virtual avatars to play their favorite video game during history class. As they accumulate more points, awards also include (excused absence) field trips to Disney World, SeaWorld, and Universal Studios. Perfect attendance gets students enough points to take off the month of May.
What superintendents were most excited about trying in the coming months, though, is a new “No Attendance Points System,” where students earn points simply by thinking about attending school. It’s a new twist on the old approach that’s sure to lead to decked-out avatars, lots of hair-raising roller coaster rides, and a wonderfully steep drop in absenteeism.
