Darius Garland’s Perfect 10 Play

📊 When Data Meets Discipline

In Cleveland, the numbers don’t lie — and they’re not pretty.
More than half (51.1%) of students in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District are chronically absent. That means one in every two students misses at least 10% of school days a year.

Now, Darius Garland — Cleveland Cavaliers All-Star and local icon — has teamed up with Mayor Justin Bibb and CMSD to change the scoreboard.

🎯 The Program: “Perfect 10 Attendance”

Garland’s initiative is as direct as his jump shot: show up.
Launched this fall at James Ford Rhodes High School, “The Perfect 10 Attendance Program” is built around a simple KPI — daily presence.

Students who maintain perfect attendance win big:

• 🎟️ Tickets to Cavs games (January & April windows)

• 💰 Two $5,000 scholarships for top improvers

• 🏀 Exclusive experiences with Garland and the team

The name? A nod to Garland’s jersey number — and a metaphor for the goal: consistency.

📈 Attendance as a Predictor

In education analytics, attendance is a leading indicator — a low-lag metric that predicts future performance.
CMSD data shows:

• Students missing more than 10% of school days are 2× less likely to graduate.

• Chronic absenteeism correlates with 25–30% lower literacy proficiency by Grade 8.

• Districts that reduce chronic absenteeism by even 10 percentage points typically see 5–7% GPA improvementacross core subjects within one year.

This isn’t a “soft” issue. It’s a structural one. Attendance is the first domino in academic success — and ultimately, workforce readiness.

🧩 Strategy Behind the Play

Garland’s model combines behavioral economics, social proof, and community influence — three ingredients that make this more than a PR move.

1. Behavioral Incentives: Tangible rewards — like Cavs tickets — act as immediate reinforcement, turning attendance into a short-term, measurable achievement.

2. Social Signaling: When a star player champions school attendance, the message transcends lectures. It’s peer-coded motivation.

3. Civic Partnership: The initiative unites municipal government, sports, and education — an often-underutilized synergy for local policy impact.

Think of it as a micro-level behavioral intervention, not a charity event.
It uses the psychology of fandom to re-engineer discipline.

🧮 The Policy Lens

This program’s brilliance lies in its data-to-action loop.

• Baseline: CMSD’s 51.1% chronic absenteeism.

• Intervention: Incentivized attendance (Perfect 10 Program).

• Output Metrics: % reduction in absences, academic lift, retention gains.

• Outcome Metric: Increase in graduation probability per cohort.

If CMSD can move attendance by even 8 points (to ~43%), that’s equivalent to:

• +2,800 students attending 90%+ of school days

• +600 additional high school graduates in the next 5 years

• Estimated $15 million lifetime earnings uplift per graduating class (based on Brookings lifetime ROI of high school completion)

That’s real ROI — not feel-good rhetoric.

🧠 Beyond the Box Score

This isn’t about basketball. It’s about bandwidth — the mental bandwidth attendance creates.
Every missed day widens the gap between potential and performance. Garland’s playbook reframes attendance not as compliance, but as commitment — a foundational life habit.

When students internalize that “showing up” matters — whether in class, work, or life — the city wins.

💬 The Quote That Says It All

That’s not PR polish. That’s leadership quantified.

🧩 The Broader Playbook: Civic-Athlete Alignment

Garland’s partnership with Mayor Bibb signals a new trend: athletes moving from influence to infrastructure.
This is civic engagement 2.0 — where branding meets public administration, and data drives community outcomes.

If this works, Cleveland won’t just have a winning team on the court — it’ll have one in the classroom.

📢 The Bottom Line

• Chronic absenteeism = Cleveland’s silent crisis.

• Garland’s Perfect 10 Program = behavioral design + local leadership.

• ROI = measurable gains in education, income, and civic engagement.

This isn’t charity — it’s strategy.
And if the numbers improve, it’ll be one of the smartest plays in Cleveland this decade.

🧩 Call to Action

Policy leaders, school districts, and community orgs should take note: this is a replicable framework.
Measure, incentivize, track, iterate — and make attendance your first performance metric.

Men lie. Women lie.
The numbers never do.