Giving attendance real incentives

Getting up to go to class is hard enough for most people, let alone a second-semester senior. Each morning requires a complex calculation in which sleep and some sort of educational value are pitted against each other in fierce competition. For me, class holds a perfect 19-0 record over sleep this semester -- its best start in program history.

There has to be some motivational factor there.

Perhaps, as those who earn a living in College Hall would suggest, that motivation comes from satisfaction derived through the opportunity to learn from some of the best minds in the world. More realistically, the bigger force at work here is coming from the Franklin Building; from the kind people who collect tuition checks and, in the process, give all students reason to think "I paid for it; I might as well go."

Think about how that decision would change in the absence of those motivating factors.

Welcome to the life of a high school student.

When the setting shifts from the leafy grandeur of higher education to the basic, drab world of compulsory secondary school, so too does the mindset of the students. Lacking incentive, be it a push from a parent or desire to perform, high schoolers give up early on attending school as the days go by and, eventually, altogether.

This is a growing problem in public schools across the country, and the data are particularly stark here in West Philadelphia. At University City High School on 36th Street, just 72 percent of students are in class on a given day, according to data from a consortium of Penn researchers called West Philly Data. West Philadelphia High reports a similar 73 percent attendance rate. Both of these are well below the city average of 86 percent and trail the Pennsylvania standard of more than 90 percent.

Disparaging numbers such as these in other parts of the country provoked school administrators -- whose budgets are often tied to average daily attendance -- to take somewhat unusual steps to get kids back in school.

The New York Times described some of these initiatives in a page-one story on Sunday carrying the headline, "And for perfect attendance Johnny gets ... a car."

That is no exaggeration.

Programs from Massachusetts to Florida have sprung up offering students prizes and sometimes cash for coming to school. The Times described a high school in Chelsea, Mass., that offered students $25 for every quarter they had perfect attendance.

And while this may, at first glance, seem as though schools are "bribing" students -- as one administrator noted -- it is providing the kind of incentive that had been lacking in the past. For the schools that employed such rewards for attendance, more students filed into classrooms and truancy dropped significantly. The higher number of children in school also brought in more funding for the districts -- often thousands of dollars.

Despite the results, programs that reward students -- or parents, as in the case with one school district in Chicago that gave away a year's supply of groceries -- still tread on thin moral ground for sending the message that school is somewhere you are "paid" to be rather than somewhere you go to learn.

Is that really all that bad, though?

Graduate students at most schools receive an education and a stipend for their work in research or teaching. Undergraduates with notable credentials or demonstrable need are granted scholarships to study.

Where secondary schools are missing the point is not on the concept of rewarding students for stellar attendance, but rather they are missing the prize. Giving away an iPod is hokey. Giving away a chance to continue education for those who show they are committed is highly laudable.

The reward for perfect attendance ought to be a college scholarship. School districts and ultimately state legislatures should stop toying with the idea of dangling a sugar-coated carrot and make this bold pledge: Any student with perfect attendance -- and reasonable grades, of course -- shall receive a full-ride to the state's flagship university. Many states already offer similar scholarships to their top students, but these rewards often ignore those who may not have outstanding grades but nonetheless put in their best effort.

Sometimes commitment and work ethic are more important than raw results.

There may be few incentives more attractive to the millions of students in this country who cannot afford college than a chance to improve their lives forever through education. It could go a long way in getting some of those students at University City High -- 82 percent of whom come from low-income families -- back in the classroom.

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