Detroits largest school district is now dangling cash rewards and gift cards in front of studentsand even parentsto coax children into showing up for class.
According to the Gateway Pundit, Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD) has been paying students up to $1,000 for perfect attendance and is now broadening the program to include middle schoolers after officials claimed it helped reduce chronic absenteeism. The Perfect Attendance Pays initiative, now in its second year, focuses on the winter stretch from Jan. 5 to March 20, a period when attendance has historically sagged across the district.
DPSCD is continuing the Perfect Attendance Pays initiative for the 202627 school year for high school students and expanding it to include middle school students, a district spokesperson told Fox News Digital Friday. At the middle school level, parents of eligible students with perfect attendance during each five-day cycle will receive a $50 gift card.
District officials insist that taxpayers are not directly footing the bill for these payouts, a claim clearly meant to blunt criticism from residents already weary of bloated education budgets and poor results. The incentive is funded through interest generated through district funds awaiting to be used for facility projects. Federal and state revenue is not used to fund the incentive, nor is the incentive offered on fall or spring count days, the spokesperson added.
The backdrop is grim: Detroit Public Schools has been ravaged by the nationwide absenteeism crisis, posting a staggering 60.9% chronic absentee rate for the 202425 school year. Rather than restoring discipline, academic rigor, and parental responsibility, the district has chosen to treat basic attendance as a behavior that must be purchased, not expected.
This is wrong on so many levels, and it raises fundamental questions about what public education has become in Americas cities. People who skip school are only hurting themselves, yet the system now effectively rewards the bare minimum while taxpayers continue to underwrite free schools that were created for students benefit, not as cash machines for showing up.
No one deserves to be paid to learn at a free school that was made for their benefit, and conservatives are right to ask how far this experiment in bribing students will go before leaders return to the traditional values of personal responsibility, family involvement, and genuine academic standards.
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