OK Google, what’s the famous quote from Woody Allen about showing up?
“Eighty percent of success is showing up.”
But here’s an additional quote, attributed to Thomas Edison: “Ninety percent of a man’s success in business is perspiration.” (In today’s world, it would definitely be phrased as “a person’s success” or something similar.)
I’m partial to both showing up and perspiring (so to speak) when it comes to education.
That’s why I hope Milwaukee Public School’s “summit on attendance” at 5:30 p.m. Monday at James Madison Academic Campus, 8135 W. Florist Ave., is a big success.
I’m not naive on this. I’ve covered a lot of attendance and truancy stories in the last couple decades, not focused only on MPS. Campaigns come and go. The net result is little or no improvement. But attendance is such a threshold issue in schooling — you’ve got to keep trying.
School attendance is among the problems that correlate strongly with income. Schools with a lot of kids from well-to-do homes don’t have so much of an issue.