Detroit Public Schools Will Pay Students Cash to Show Up to Class, Again

Detroit Public Schools Community District is once again paying students taxpayer-backed cash incentives simply for showing up to school, expanding a program that critics say is a symptom of how far basic expectations have fallen in America’s failing urban school systems.

The district announced this month that its “Perfect Attendance Pays” initiative will return for the 2026-27 school year and expand beyond high schoolers for the first time. High school students can earn $100 a week for perfect attendance, while middle schoolers in grades six through eight will now be eligible for $50 a week.

The incentive periods run in cycles concentrated in the winter months, historically the toughest stretch for keeping students in classrooms. Students who attend every hour of every class, Monday through Friday, qualify for that week’s payout. Miss a single unexcused period and the money disappears for that cycle.

Superintendent Nikolai Vitti’s district is putting real money behind the strategy. Approximately $13.9 million of the district’s $1.1 billion budget has been earmarked for attendance incentives and related efforts to curb chronic absenteeism, according to district figures.

The scale of the underlying problem explains why officials feel compelled to pay students to do what was once simply expected of them. Detroit recorded a staggering 60.9 percent chronic absenteeism rate for the 2024-25 school year, meaning well over half the district’s students missed 10 percent or more of the school calendar.

To put that in perspective, researchers at Wayne State University’s Detroit Partnership for Education Equity and Research define chronic absenteeism as missing 18 or more days in a standard 180-day school year. By that measure, a majority of Detroit students are functionally absent from the classroom for weeks at a time.

This is now the second full year of the program, and the first year offers a preview of what taxpayers can expect going forward. Roughly 12,800 high school students, or nearly 84 percent of the district’s high schoolers, received at least one $100 gift card during the January through March window.

District officials tout that number as a success story, and Vitti has credited the program with helping reduce high school chronic absenteeism by roughly 10 percentage points this year. Whether that improvement will hold once the financial incentive disappears each spring remains an open question.

Skeptics, including some parents, are less convinced that cash payments address the root of the problem. Detroit parent Danny Foster told local reporters that simply paying kids to walk through the door accomplishes little if it is not paired with a genuine push to improve academic outcomes once they are inside.

That concern cuts to the heart of a broader debate over how American public education has drifted from accountability toward incentive schemes. A generation ago, the expectation was straightforward: parents got their kids to school because it was their responsibility, not because a check was waiting at the end of the week.

Detroit’s approach did not emerge in a vacuum. Reporting has noted that other struggling urban districts across the country have taken similarly unconventional steps to reel students back into classrooms following the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic, from free transit passes to gas cards for carpooling parents.

District leadership is not stopping at cash payments. Detroit officials are exploring additional financial incentives for the families of kindergarten through second grade students in the district’s highest-poverty neighborhoods, along with bike giveaways to help students get to school in the first place.

A new $500,000 rideshare pilot program is also launching this fall, providing subsidized trips to roughly 150 students at several district high schools. A separate $1 million state grant will keep city bus rides free for all Detroit K-12 students, adding yet another layer of public subsidy aimed at getting kids through the schoolhouse door.

Supporters argue the spending is justified because attendance is one of the strongest predictors of academic performance. The district says students who miss 18 or fewer days a year are three to five times more likely to perform at or above grade level and be considered college ready.

Even so, taxpayers footing the bill for a $1.1 billion budget might reasonably ask why a district needs to bribe teenagers with Visa gift cards to attend classes that are, by law, free and mandatory. It is a question that goes to the heart of accountability in one of the nation’s most troubled school systems.

Detroit’s chronic absenteeism crisis long predates this program and reflects decades of underlying dysfunction, including generational poverty, unreliable transportation, and a public school system that has struggled for years to retain both students and families who have other options.