School Adds Incentives to Boost Attendance

By Rachel Byrd, Daily Press, Victorville, Calif.

Jan. 26–APPLE VALLEY — After adding incentives for students to show up to school every day, Apple Valley Middle School attendance has improved sharply and grades are also on the rise.

Students are being lured to go to school and to make up absences — with a chance to win a computer if they have perfect attendance.

In June, Desert Community Bank will raffle off a computer and a printer to a sixth-grader and a seventhgrader with perfect attendance, and

a laptop and a printer to an eighth -grader, said Beverly Williams, DCB marketing specialist.

To have perfect attendance, even excused absences such as illnesses must be made up with Saturday and vacation sessions, s a i d P r i n c i p a l Daryl Bell.

Twenty percent of the students currently have perfect attendance, Bell said, an impressive increase from only two students who had perfect attendance last year.

Attendance clerk Mari Miller, who asked the bank for this contribution after she heard of a similar program at a Lake Havasu school, said that students are eager for their chance to win a computer.

"The incentive is there — they want these computers," Miller said. "I have kids coming in all the time, saying ‘check my attendance record.’ "

In April, the school star ted holding intersessions, which run for a week during fall, spring and summer breaks, where students can make up lost days, Bell said. The three levels of language arts and math are each taught, and between 60 and 120 kids attend each session.

Students take a criterion reference test at the beginning of the week, and based on scores, the teacher focuses on the areas of the course where students scored poorly, Bell said.

"If the kids aren’t here to get the instruction, they’re going to fall behind," Bell said. "The kids are benefiting here because they are getting their attendance recovered, and a re-teaching on the information that they didn’t quite understand."

As a result, students have been able to boost their original grade in the course, and most get at least an 80 percent after participating in intersession, Bell said.

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