The Colorado school year is marked by two periods in which schools engage in rampant bribery of students. The first is Oct. 1, the official count day. The second is the March week of state standardized testing.

One rewards presence. The other rewards performance. The combination of the two gives us the very definition of an unintended consequence.

Let's call it "Get 'em and shed 'em."

I bring this up because, in the past week, we've read about Jewish students missing count day because it fell during Rosh Hashanah. We've read about school districts grumbling because many hundreds of their students left for online schools only to return after count day.

Count day is everything to a school. Enrollment determines budget, staffing, number of courses offered. Every student present on count day — or a small window surrounding it — brings in an average of $6,400. That money stays with the school — even when the student does not. This is key.

"A lot of effort goes into getting students there just for that one day," one principal tells me. "Food, raffles, prizes. Sometimes it's like 'You've got to be kidding me.' "

Just last week, says another principal, a family planning to move to another district a week after count date was pressured by the new school to enroll earlier.

"They told the mother if you don't come now, you can't come. It's high stakes, and people go crazy, and it's because we're all desperate for money and we're all advocating for our schools."

School administrators long have complained when neighborhood students enroll outside the district only to straggle back months later.

"The way I see it is: 'You get that money, it's your responsibility to educate that child for the rest of the year,' " John de la Garza told me in 2004, when he was a North High School assistant principal.

Which brings us to the "shed 'em" part of the equation. Schools have an incentive to recruit students for count day. But they have a disincentive to keep those same students if they are performing below grade level or have spotty attendance, because that jeopardizes test scores.

"I'd love somebody to make a movie about this," says Alex Medler, vice president for research and evaluation for the Boulder-based National Association of Charter School Authorizers. "Use a hidden camera and follow an 18- or 19-year-old kid into a school before count day. Give them a scenario: They're an alienated, at-risk kid who wants to enroll. Record the answer. Do the same thing after count day. You know that on Oct. 1, they'll take them, and on Jan. 1, they counsel them away, maybe to an alternative school."

What I've seen is that amid all the demands on teachers and administrators, a struggling student begins to drift and keeps drifting, out of the class, out of the building, out of school.

"It's not a matter of bad people," says state Sen. Mike Johnston, D-Denver, who has sought to end the one-day count. "It's a matter of good incentives to behave badly."

This is complicated, and I won't hit every argument and counterargument. But I've never seen the sense in allowing public schools to keep public money for public students they are not educating. Or in a system that sets up a conflict that hurts students.

Most states base funding on average daily enrollment or average daily attendance, which uses multiple count dates, Johnston says. A state study released early this year recommended such a system here. Both the Colorado Children's Campaign and the Partnership for Families & Children are lobbying to end the one-day count. It's a matter of fairness, says Ken Seeley, president of the partnership. An averaging method better allows for money to follow the student.

Such a change has its skeptics, among them Aurora Public Schools Superintendent John Barry. He worries about the implementation cost and the lack of evidence proving a switch would improve attendance or graduation rates, which is, of course, the end goal. "And if there is no evidence, my question is whether the pain is worth the gain."


That day in 2004 at North, de la Garza was searching for 180 students projected to enroll in the school. He wouldn't find many of them. Those he did find chose to attend stronger schools in neighboring districts. I couldn't blame these students for seeking the best education they could find. But some did return to North after count day and a school with little had even less.
