What's Wrong With Perfect Attendance Anyway?

Man coughing and holding up his hands to say no to perfect attendance

My daughter was sitting in the kitchen after school watching a replay of the daily announcements. They post them on the school’s webpage, and sometimes they are very entertaining. Although not always in a good way.

I was prepping dinner, so I was only half listening, but I heard something about a new attendance initiative. We are halfway through the year here (hallelujah!) and an administrator was talking about establishing better attendance habits for the second semester.

Attendance initiatives always get my shackles up, so I asked Kelly to fill me in.

Apparently, the high school is encouraging students to have perfect attendance for the remainder of the school year. And they are incentivizing this ill-advised and often-unattainable goal with some kind of contest (the details of which have not yet been solidified. If you’re curious how a heretofore undeveloped contest is supposed to motivate students, you are not alone. But I suppose the criteria is easy enough to understand. You simply have to come to school every day, regardless of the circumstances to win, be eligible to win some as yet undefined prize(s).)

Now before we go any further, let me just say I know attendance is a contentious topic. I’ve probably already lost readers and some of you are ready to write me off as an indulgent mom raising lazy kids who is responsible for the downfall of society today–the lack of work ethic, the unfilled jobs, the poor labor market. Go ahead, blame them all on me.

Or better yet, just stop reading now. I’m not going to convince you otherwise.

But I’m also not going to keep quiet about something that has bugged me for a long time. School policies like this have serious negative consequences that extend far beyond the high school gates. I don’t care whether or not my kid gets an award. Perfect attendance is not something that we aspire to. But school policies do shape society, often in harmful ways. And it’s time that we recognize that.

Perfect attendance contests set unreasonable expectations, contribute to the unhealthy hustle culture that characterizes success in the U.S., endanger students, faculty and staff with compromised health as well as their families (and we recently learned the community at large), and discriminate against people with physical and mental illnesses. And, if you want to go further, they are classist, racist, and sexist.

A mental health day

Let me start with a little story . . .

The other day there was a post in my Instagram feed from a mom who gave her 6-year old a mental health day. She posted it proudly, thinking that she had done a kind thing for her child who was just having one of those days. The kid did not have a chronic attendance problem and usually loved school. But that morning she (I think it was a she – I can’t find the stupid post now – it was probably taken down because of the amount of hate it inspired) couldn’t stop crying. Admittedly, she was not physically sick. But she didn’t want to go to school. This was completely uncharacteristic behavior, and so mom let her stay home.

Mom tried to figure out if something was going on at school, emailed the teacher, and then cuddled her SIX YEAR OLD, watched movies, and had Chick Fil A. (Maybe it was McDonald’s, but I’d like to imagine it was Chick Fil A.)

The internet was incensed! You’d have thought the mother abandoned her child in a Walmart parking lot or sent her to school with a backpack full of oxygen. Commenters wasted no time in telling her how irresponsible she was and what a bad example she was setting for her child.

Commenters were quick to point out that mom’s decision to keep the child home smacked of privilege. Working class parents could never take a day off work and stay home with their not-sick child, they said. Only some rich, white woman would have this luxury.

The commenter is correct that for many families an unplanned day off school does cause havoc, whether the child is physically sick or not. But there are plenty of privileged families where both parents work outside the home. And there are plenty of working class households where parents work different shifts or where one parents has chosen to stay home. All families must have a contingency plan for dealing with days off from school, and I don’t see how a mental health day would be any more inconvenient on the parents than a physical health day. (More on that in a bit.)

And to argue that only rich, white parents have the luxury of keeping their kids home from school is absurd. When I was teaching we had several families who chose not to send their kids to school because it was easier for them. Parents who did not want to get up early or stand outside in the cold waiting for the school bus or do laundry simply kept their kids at home.

Teachers or rather family members of teachers, were quick to chime in with how irresponsible this mother was. They pointed out the huge number of students who skip school on a regular basis and the increasing problem of absenteeism and truancy. All of these absences result in learning loss, and we can’t forget they also make a teacher’s job much harder the commenters said–all those make-up test, missing assignments, and extra paper work are tough to keep track of.

(I am not belittling the amount of work that teachers have or suggesting it is easy to be a teacher. Teachers are the most incredible professionals I know. They are underpaid and under appreciated, and deserve more respect.)

I admit, it was frustrating to have the same kids miss multiple days of school each week. I had one student who only came to school on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. He liked long weekends. Another student did not come when her mom had to work the day shift because she had to watch her little brother. I taught third grade.

This type of chronic absence is a problem and the commenter is right to be concerned about a negative educational impact. But that was not the case with this particular child. And missing a day here or there, whether for a physical ailment, mental or emotional ailment, death in the family, vacation, or special occasion is not nearly the same thing. And it’s not something to be chastised for.

In fact, encouraging kids to come to school sick, and elevating attendance over everything else, has serious negative implications.

Perfect attendance is an unreasonable expectation

For many kids, perfect attendance is simply an unattainable goal. Putting such heavy emphasis on this accomplishment sets kids up for failure and only increases stress and exacerbates mental health problems.

Although, to be fair. most of our public education system is based on unreasonable expectations, unattainable goals, and the inevitability of failure, so why should this be any different?

Schools espouse the importance of daily attendance as though this is something kids can control. But that is just not so.

Kids can’t control whether or not they get sick. In fact, the environment in most public high schools today makes it more likely that students will become ill. Both the expectation of perfect attendance (which implies kids should come to school sick) and they insane amount of homework, sports, and extra curricular activities create the perfect storm where kids are spending hours in a germ-infested environment without adequate sleep, hydration, nutrition, or rest. That’s a recipe for disaster.

Just as kids can’t control their own health, they also can’t control their family circumstances. Some kids have sick parents and siblings. Others will suffer deaths in the family. Are students supposed to opt out of mourning because perfect attendance is so important?

Many kids have to work. Or care for young siblings. And while I don’t believe that these are acceptable excuses, they are not the fault of the child. But rather a society that has failed kids and families for generations.

The bottom line is most kids will miss days of school because life happens. Instead of punishing them for being human, we should set reasonable expectations about what regular attendance looks like.

All or nothing policies do nothing to prepare kids for life after high school.

Perfect attendance policies contribute hustle culture.

In the U.S. we pride ourselves on being busy. It’s not enough to live a good life or a happy life. rather you need to have a productive life, a successful, life, a purpose-driven life.

There is the constant expectation of always doing more. Achieving more. I wrote about our obsessions with busyness here.

And perfect attendance policies feed right into this notion. It’s not okay to take a day off, to rest, to decompress. It’s not okay to schedule some downtime for some good old fashioned fun.

Vacation is frowned upon. Family time is devalued. (Never mind that most kids would learn a lot more by traveling with their families than in a classroom.) The only thing that matters is attendance and achievement and perfection.

There are kids on the verge of a nervous breakdown because they got a 101 instead of a 105 on a test.

Perfect attendance endangers the public.

How quickly we’ve forgotten the lessons of 2020! We are [just barely] in a post-pandemic world. COVID-19 is still with us and still killing people (a lot of people in China), but we it will be a for a long time. So I think it is fair to say that we are moving past the pandemic.

Just three years ago a global pandemic shut down our entire economy for months. The world is still not back to normal. We continue to deal with product shortages, supply-chain problems, and rising prices. The mental health toll of isolating for months on end is just now coming to light.

For a number of seasons our government took the draconian action of shuttering businesses and schools. Thousands of people lost their livelihoods. Entire industries were destroyed. The entire purpose of these government shutdowns were to keep people away from one another to stop the spread of disease.

We spent two years admonishing people to stay home when they were sick. This responsible action should have been the one good thing that came out of the pandemic (there actually should have been many others, but this isn’t the place to discuss all the squandered opportunities of massive global shutdowns). How is it that not even three years later they good common-sense science has become a distant memory?

The rapid transmission of communicable diseases is due in large part to the fact that we have conditioned people to power through. Going to work and school sick is worn as a badge of honor. It’s viewed as sign of commitment, rather than the selfish act of the person who thinks their presence is necessary to the functioning of society.

And these stupid perfect attendance awards are at least in part to blame.

Our culture is too caught up in achievement and excellence and always doing more and being better. Apparently, even when we are sick.

Perfect attendance rules show that there is no time illness. Let alone rest or recovery.

As a former teacher and the parent of a child with health issues, I call BS on this ridiculous notion. Kids [and grown-ups] should stay home when they are sick.

It’s not fair to the child, to the teacher, or to any of the other students to send to kids to school sick. Although this practice has also been going on for generations. Trust me, teachers know when you’ve given your child Tylenol to bring down a fever or just didn’t bother to check their temperature at home.

Sending a sick child to school is irresponsible, selfish, and dangerous.

I know it can be tough to find emergency child care options for sick kids. This is a societal problem that needs to be addressed. I am the mom of a sick kid, I struggled with this personally. But sick kids don’t belong in school.

They bring in their germs. The cough and sneeze and wipe snot all over everything. You’d think this would be less of a problem in high school, but have you hung out with a bunch of teenagers recently? Teens are a lot like toddlers in a lot of ways. Those high school restrooms are a breeding ground for the plague.

One sick kid can easily start an outbreak in an entire building. And just becasue we are not talking about COVID, does not mean this isn’t serious. Colds, stomach bigs, the flu–they all quickly move through a school population.

To the average kid this might not be a big deal (other than inspiring nasty communications from the school and the loss of the prestigious perfect attendance award). But for kids already struggling with chronic health conditions, any little illness has the potential for serious health consequences.

My youngest son is one of those kids. Do to a long-ago illness (that he acquired in school), he has a compromised immune system. He is unable to fight minor illnesses the way other kids can. His respiratory system was overtaxed when he was young and it still hasn’t healed properly (6 years later). Your kid might get a cold for a two days. Mine will get a cold, an upper respiratory infection, bronchitis, and strep throat and run a fever for seven days straight.

When I ask you to keep your germs away from my kid, it’s for good reason.

I am not unique. Tons of kids suffer from chronic and acute health conditions that make them more susceptible to serious illness. Or they live with people with serious health conditions. The answer is not to put these kids in a bubble (which I did during COVID). he answer is for the rest of society to step up and be responsible. To show compassion for other people. To stay home when they are sick.

Perfect attendance awards discriminate against people with disabilities

Everyone gets sick from time to time, But some people are more prone to illness. Setting perfect attendance as the standard discriminates against people with mental and physical impairments who will never be able to attain this goal.

The child with leukemia or chronic asthma or long-haul COVID. The child with diabetes, cystic fibrosis, or congenital heart defects. Achieving perfect attendance is akin to flying for these kids. Public celebrations of perfect attendance only serve to make them feel even worse about themselves and their shortcomings. Offering awards for an expectation they cannot physically meet discriminates against them.

At least for the kids with physical disabilities, their illness is easy to see and “prove.’ But the millions of kids who suffer from mental illness are not so lucky.

There’s a lot of talk about destigmatizing mental illness, making it something we can talk about. And you’d think with teenage suicide at an all time high (https://news.ohsu.edu/2022/03/16/ohsu-researchers-find-startling-increase-in-suicide-attempts-by-pre-teen-children-nationwide) you’d think it’s something high schools would finally get serious about.

But as the comments from that Instagram post show, this is not the case. That young child was clearly having some kind of emotional or mental issue on the day she did not go to school. It doesn’t matter if this was a chronic problem–kids stay home for a bout of strep throat even if they don’t have a history of sore throats that requires a tonsillectomy. People can and do become ill for just a day or so.

But mental anguish is dismissed as unimportant. People who cry or show outward signs of stress are considered weak and less than. And this message is reinforced in school from teachers and administrators telling kids to “toughen up” and “get ready for the real world.” One of my daughter’s teachers told the class that the only things they should be doing is “Schoo, study, and sleep,” because he doesn’t have time to deal with absences.

This is an extremely dangerous message to send to a bunch of Type-A, overachieving, perfectionsist juniors stressed about SATs, AP scores, and class rank. The other day my own daughter picked up a stomach big (from her brother, the one who gets everything, who got it in school) and had to miss one day of school because of vomiting. The amount of stress this induced caused me to only half-jokingly suggest she take a bucket with her and go in for the afternoon.

This is not okay.

Every study on productivity and creativity, not to mention well-being, point out that rat is crucial for success.

Perfect Attendance Awards Smack of Privilege

Here we go with that word again . . .

Earlier I mentioned that some of the commenters said the mom who allowed her six year old a mental health day was privileged.

But perfect attendance expectations are no less privileged. They presume not only perfect health, which is much more likely in middle and upper-class communities. Low income kids suffer from higher levels of asthma, — and –. But also parental support, reliable transportation, adequate food, clean clothes, the proper clothes for the weather, reliable child care, a job schedule that does not interfere with school, and access to pads and tampons.

It’s not unusual for older students to be responsible for younger siblings. I’m not getting into a discussion about whether this is right (clearly it is not), because it is a fact. It’s not unusual for older children to miss school to care for younger brothers and sisters.

Similarly sad but true is the fact that many high school students have to work. Not want to work, or need spending money for _ or _. But need to work to feed themselves or their families. And while you’d think employers would be understanding about school schedules, this is not always the case. When forced to choose between school or money, many kids don’t really have a choice at all.

When I was in the classroom I often had kids absent because they didn’t have clean laundry. Or because multiple siblings shared the same pair of shoes. No joke. So they alternated who went to school each day.

During the winter, kids didn’t have proper coats or boots, let alone mittens or hats. On the bitterest of days it was safer to just stay home.

And let’s not forget about periods. This routine bodily function often caused pain and discomfort, and in some cases excessive bleeding that prohibits people from attending work or school. And even if the physical impact isn’t that extreme, we can’t forget the cost.

If you haven’t purchased pads or tampons lately you might know how expensive those necessities are month after month after month. And in some states they are even taxed as “luxury items.” Girls who can’t afford these products may be forced to stay home during their periods.

I could provide a hundred more examples of why a student might have to miss school, examples that often fall disproportionately on the least privileged members of society.

Perfect attendance contests are classist, racist, and sexist.