Perfect Attendance awards… let’s take a moment to think about these. I know, it feels good to celebrate our students for good behavior and for valuing their education enough to come to school every day. But is that what we’re celebrating? Are students with perfect attendance the ones who value school, or are there other ways they end up with this recognition?

In reality, students have perfect attendance for a variety of reasons:

• They never got sick.
  These students won the genetic lottery and have strong immune systems. If we’re going to celebrate genetically strong immune systems, why don’t we celebrate other genetic traits? How about awards for the tall blonde kids too?
• They came to school when they were sick.
  These students were contagious and still came to school. In reality, we want these kids to stay home. Do we really want to be celebrating questionable decision making that puts classmates and staff at risk?
• They couldn’t stay home because their parents don’t have paid time off.
  These students are sick, but keeping them home costs their family money since their parents don’t have paid time off. These parents also tend to be in lower paying jobs. So what are we celebrating here, poverty?

If we could be 100% sure that perfect attendance meant that a student valued education I’d be all for it – yes, let’s celebrate that! But we can’t be sure, there are too many other things that contribute to perfect attendance – things we don’t necessarily want to celebrate.

So, let’s stop giving perfect attendance awards.

Photo by Andy Simonds, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0