Detroit students are getting another reason to make it to class every day, and this one comes with a payday.
Detroit Public Schools Community District is expanding its “Perfect Attendance Pays” initiative for the 2026-27 school year, offering high school students $100 per week and middle school students $50 per week for flawless attendance during designated periods.
The expansion follows a high school rollout that produced measurable movement in one of the district’s biggest challenges. During the 2025-26 program, approximately 12,800 high school students received at least one gift card. According to district data provided by Superintendent Nikolai Vitti, chronic absenteeism among high school students dropped 10 percentage points, falling from 64 percent to 54 percent.
Now DPSCD is bringing middle schoolers into the mix.
There are some important rules behind the money. The program does not operate throughout the entire 180-day school year. The incentives have traditionally been concentrated into weekly cycles from January through March, a stretch when Detroit’s winter weather and seasonal illnesses can make getting students into classrooms especially difficult.
The standard for collecting is also strict. Students must attend every hour of every class period from Monday through Friday to qualify for that week’s payout. An unexcused absence or skipped class means losing eligibility for that particular week.
Detroit is putting serious resources behind the strategy. Approximately $13.9 million of the district’s $1.1 billion budget has been allocated toward attendance incentives and efforts aimed at reducing chronic absenteeism.
Paying students to attend school is certain to generate conversation about whether financial incentives should be necessary in the first place. DPSCD is working from the results it has already seen. With chronic absenteeism dropping substantially during the previous rollout, the district is expanding the experiment and putting more money directly within reach of students who consistently show up.
For Detroit, perfect attendance is no longer just something that looks good on a report card. During the program’s incentive window, it can put cash in a student’s pocket.