Aki Kurose Middle School was honored last week for its improved attendance record. As part of the Be Here Get There campaign, schools vied for prizes by improving their attendance as compared to the previous year. Aki Kurose Middle School increased attendance by 3.67 percent and was rewarded with Molly Moon’s Homemade Ice Cream scooped by ten Seattle firefighters who donated their time.

According to Get Schooled, Aki Kurose won their reward through teamwork. The whole school acted as a team focused on a core issue – getting every child to school every day. Teachers stood in the lunchroom with megaphones, speaking to everyone about attendance. Staff made calls to parents to encourage them to encourage their students to come to school. Students who missed school received home visits and encouragement from staff to be in school. Classrooms posted their attendance rates. All of these efforts combined with a keenness for competition led them to success.

The students were congratulated by former Sounders player Taylor Graham, who told them “Whether it’s on the field or in the classroom, you have to show up to succeed. Students here at Aki Kurose made the commitment to succeed in school.”

The “Be Here Get There” attendance campaign launched in October and is a collaboration between the City of Seattle, Seattle Public Schools, the Alliance for Education, and Get Schooled, which aims to make schools engaging and attractive to students by rewarding students for having excellent attendance.

Read more here.

This editorial originally appeared in the Seattle Times.

The biggest contributor to academic performance is school attendance. Teachers can’t teach students who don’t show up.

A nearly six-month-old partnership between the city of Seattle and Seattle Public Schools places a needed focus on improving attendance as another method of raising academic achievement. The “Be Here. Get There” initiative, funded by the voter-approved Families and Education Levy, correctly raises the need to get kids to school on a level of importance with engaging students once they are there.

The city, which controls the levy money relied upon by the district, set academic-performance targets that include improved attendance. The district earns a bonus by meeting the targets.

The payoff has been the district’s student-absence rate moving to its lowest level in five years. There has been a 50 percent reduction in absences since the campaign was launched in September 2011.

Like most school districts, Seattle’s attendance rates are high, around 80 percent districtwide and up to 90 percent in the highest-performing schools. But strong districtwide rates hide pockets of chronic absenteeism at some schools.

Read the full editorial here.