Detroit schools pay students for perfect attendance on certain weeks

The Detroit Public Schools Community District is expanding its program that pays students for perfect attendance.

Middle school students, not just high school students, can earn money this year, Superintendent Nikolai Vitti told Michigan Capitol Confidential in an email.

While the district pays students to attend class in hopes of increasing academic outcomes, it also criticized a law designed to increase student literacy.

Vitti announced the launch of the “Perfect Attendance Pays” program in January 2026, offering high school students $100 gift cards for each five-day period of no absences.

Students could earn up to $1,000 over 10 weeks.

In his email to CapCon, Vitti added that parents of middle school students could receive $50 for each five-day period of perfect attendance.

Vitti noted that the program is paid out of interest generated by district funds waiting to be used for facility projects. No state or federal dollars are used, he said. Also, the payments are not offered for fall or spring count days, which the state government uses to determine how much to send each district.

The initiative has already reduced chronic absenteeism, Vitti said.

“Specifically, high school chronic absenteeism declined by 7 percentage points two years ago when the incentive was first offered and another 2 percentage points last year,” he told CapCon.

Vitti also said the incentive helped the district enter the 90th percentile of all districts for reducing chronic absenteeism since the pandemic, according to the Education Scorecard, compiled by scholars at Harvard, Stanford and other universities. Chronic absenteeism in the district, defined as missing 10% or more of the days in a school year, stood at 54% in April, according to Chalkbeat.

The district has long struggled with academic achievement. Only 14% of its third grade students scored proficient or better on the reading and writing portion of the M-STEP, Michigan’s standardized assessment.

State law, starting with the 2019-20 school year, required districts to retain third grade students who could not read at grade level.

In the 2021-22 school year, only 9% of third grade students read at grade level. That share increased to 12% in the 2022-23 year, where it stayed until it reached 13% in 2024-25.

Even so, the district had opposed the law. As it stated in 2021:

“The district does not believe that a single standardized test score should be the sole determinate of a 3rd grader being retained. Therefore, through the law, we used all available exemptions to prevent that from occurring. Students in third grade were only retained if families and their teachers felt that retention was in the best interest of students. Test scores were not used to make third grade retention final decisions.”

Under the leadership of a Democratic Michigan House, Senate and governor’s office, the state repealed the law, effective March 17, 2024.