Perfect Attendance Awards

Near the beginning of March, I was pleased to see an email from our school district that the “perfect attendance” awards were to be suspended as of March 1st due to COVID-19. This was, of course, just a few weeks before the next email from the school district, saying that school was closing indefinitely due to the spread of the virus. I penned an email to the school district, asking them to consider permanently suspending the awards,, going forward. Instead of sending that email though, I decided to write about it publicly, and the impact that awards like this have on the children in our public school systems.

Perfect attendance awards are given to children who do not miss a day of school (mind you, most school districts allow for doctor’s appointments or an adjustment of braces / orthodontia as long as it’s not the majority of a full day). These awards mean nothing for any academic purposes, yet for many children (and their parents!), the desire to receive one of these paper certificates at the end of the school year enforces problematic and harmful behavior.

Perfect attendance awards insinuate that parents don't know best when their children should be absent from school. Perfect attendance awards also serve to punish the kiddos for whom their absence isn't their fault, doing or choice. It also says an awful lot about how our schools value (or rather, devalue) those with illness or disability, those with complicated home lives, those children who have chronic illness or "bad days" or days where they need some time at home for mental health reasons.

Very rarely are children in control of whether they go to school or not, and could be due to a temporary lack of transportation, family emergency, chronically ill parents, criminal acts or incarceration, or mental health needs.

We personally allow our children to stay home ANY day they don't feel up to the requirements they are held to at school... and when they need a mental health day, we call them in as such. Instead of lying and saying they are sick (so they would count as approved absences), we state they are gone for a mental health day, or for family travel. We'll take all the truancy letters the district wants to send out if we can model leadership for honesty around our children’s school attendance.

Side note: this same topic of perfect attendance spills into the workplace as well. As I recovered from my broken leg the first few months of 2020 (recovery is still ongoing), I worked from home. I had previously been in a myriad of leadership situations where I participated remotely and virtually, however this was the first time for my team to be present in one space collectively, and me in a completely different space. I began to observe in a different way, from a distance, the quality of the work produced by the team, and in doing so realized there was very little correlation between the ‘perfect attendance’ of the team and the corresponding high value of completed work. In some cases, it was actually the opposite. Those who were judged as non-compliant (came in a few hours late, or worked from home in the afternoon) were pushing out the best work, or the most creative work, or the work that spoke best to the mission of the organization. (I do need to mention here that the organization is very flexible with expectations of a work day, so there was nothing out of sorts with those decisions by some of the team)  In contrast, those who came in early, dutifully took their prescribed lunch hour and stayed until the proper end of the day did not automatically produce more work, or better outcomes simply because they checked all of the boxes for what was expected for their workday.

At the school our daughter attends, as well as other nearby school districts, we have one week called #BeKind, where the administration and students prioritize kindness as a virtue. It was born out of the tragic loss of the child of one of our local educators and it's quite lovely to see diverse school populations across many various districts come together to celebrate and perpetuate kindness. T-shirts are worn with the hashtag printed on the front, special assemblies are held where anti-bullying speakers come to tell inspirational stories, and every day of the week brings a unique focus for the school atmosphere and vibe. It's striking me that perhaps, we should take on more of that attitude, prioritizing a soft skill set that is imperative for humanity, and make a bigger deal out of the participation on that upleveling, instead of focusing on whether bums were in seats.

As we figure out what a new normal is for our world following COVID-19, including how this will change our education system, I hope that for the sake of our kiddos in public schools, we turn the temporary pause on perfect attendance awards into a permanent sunsetting, and work instead to focus on and instill other virtues and traits in the generation we are tasked with raising.

Not all education or teaching happens inside the confines of the school building and we need to - as a broader education system - start equally prioritizing alternate options for learning, rethink the focus on perfect attendance AND place new priority on rewarding actual beneficial behaviors, like empathy, kindness, integrity, leadership and human decency.

What does the current situation of education look like in your house these days?