Can students be paid to excel

[concerned]

www.nytimes.com/2008/03/05/nyregion/05incentive.html?th&emc=th

This is an interesting artical. It deal with the debate concerning paying students to perform well. I can see giving them a pizza party but I am a little hesitant about giving the student who get an A grade on a test $ 50.00

The fourth graders squirmed in their seats, waiting for their prizes. In a few minutes, they would learn how much money they had earned for their scores on recent reading and math exams. Some would receive nearly $50 for acing the standardized tests, a small fortune for many at this school, P.S. 188 on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

When the rewards were handed out, Jazmin Roman was eager to celebrate her $39.72. She whispered to her friend Abigail Ortega, “How much did you get?” Abigail mouthed a barely audible answer: $36.87. Edgar Berlanga pumped his fist in the air to celebrate his $34.50.

The children were unaware that their teacher, Ruth Lopez, also stood to gain financially from their achievement. If students show marked improvement on state tests during the school year, each teacher at Public School 188 could receive a bonus of as much as $3,000.

So far, the city has handed out more than $500,000 to 5,237 students in 58 schools as rewards for taking several of the 10 standardized tests on the schedule for this school year. The schools, which had to choose to participate in the program, are all over the city.

Read the rest of the artical.

[froggy]

Wouldn't be the "American" way if there wasn't a cash prize waiting at the end of it. Sad.

[kim]

Well, I remember when I was in high school in the 80's, the arcade at the mall would give you tokens for every A you had on your report card.

[froggy]

kim said:

Well, I remember when I was in high school in the 80's, the arcade at the mall would give you tokens for every A you had on your report card.

I remember that, too, but I don't think we ever brought ours, even though I would have had a lot of tokens coming. Its too bad kids need an incentive to be smart and work hard.

[dgriffin]

I have real doubts about this. There are too many opportunities for its intentions to go astray. Can't imagine what a few teachers might do for their bonus. Let alone the kids. Seems like it sends a message that if you can invent a technique...any technique.... to help your grade and pockebook, that is the only consideration. What would be wrong with cheating in this style of education? Besides, I proved to myself in college that I could trump courses with techniques that left me relatively clueless about the course content. I was hellbent on good grades by that time and real learning was not my major interest back then. It would have taken an older, sage mentor to impress me with my stupid short sightedness, as opposed to a teacher and a system waving bucks under my nose.
That said, I do remember offering cash to my teenagers for A's for a short time years ago. I think it may have worked, too, but only as part of a regular program of evening homework and other things that involved my wife and I in their education.

[Clipper]

My dad always gave me an incentive to get good marks also! The incentive was applied if I DIDN'T get the good marks.

What the hell! We pay high enough school taxes now, to insure that our kids are getting a quality education, and programs to keep them interested. I think it is absolutely F'ing ridiculous that we are now going to pay the spoiled little shits to take advantage of the education??

I never cease to be amazed what a downward slide, parenting is experiencing. Parenting is about teaching and discipline. Parenthood should teach children that rewards are for those that take responsibility for their own futures and the rewards ARE the bright future, not a cash incentive for high marks.

Bullshit like this program will double your school taxes and foster a brand new generation of dumb asses like the parents and administrators that have created such an absolutely stupid program.

If someone wants to give their own kid $50 for good marks, knock yourself out! Just don't do it with MY tax money!

A good incentive would be to tell them if the DON'T get good marks, they will get a kick in the ass, and their cell phones will be shut off until they get "A's". We are applying incentives to the wrong portion of the anatomy. Soothing their little spoiled ego's with more spoiling, and ill conceived rewards will do nothing but create another generation of idiots and miscreants.

There!! Now I have vented all my frustrations for the morning, haha!

[froggy]

I'm right there with you, clipper. I know we had incentives at home, and the alternative. My mom usually was the one to dole it out. She knew the kinds of grades to expect of us, and it was up to us to meet those expectations. The reward came at home, not paid by school taxes, as it should be.

This kind of thing will open up a whole can of worms where cheating takes on a whole new meaning. Now there would be even bigger incentive to cheat to make a buck. That is not the kind of educational incentives we should be encouraging. Next thing you know we'll have an entire generation of con artists who managed to finagle their way thru school. This isn't a slippery slope, its a cliff.

[kim]

I made a blog post on this topic last month. It had to do with throwing kids parties for getting a C. You can read it here: poppinsponderings.blogspot.com/2008/02/good-grades.html

[froggy]

The funny thing is that peer pressure can be one of the best (and worst) influencers. I mean I remember kids getting bad grades getting picked on, called a retard and that stuff. There is an incentive to do better so one does not get picked on.

On the flip side of the same coin is the downside, which applies to the "nerds" who always get good grades, getting picked on likewise.

[Disgusted-Daily]

It's like the jobs that pay commission or a job performance pay. Let's face it everybody regardless of age needs an incentive to do anything.

Is it sad, maybe. After all kids learn from the adults. I have paid my son to do well in school. I don't agree with the money coming from the tax payers.

You have to wonder if the teacher was making an extra $3000 was he/she putting in a little extra effort to make sure the kids were on the right track. I would think so. My son is in 4th grade and even know I have given him money as a incentive to do well it is still not enough at his age. The teacher plays a huge roll into his learning.

With this said I think if the kids can do it for money then they also should be able to do it without. Whether it is $50 or $5 it is allot of money to my son or an average 4th grader and wouldn't take much of an incentive to do better, something as small as no home work for the weekend is enough incentive for my son.

[frankcor]

The nuns did something like this when I was in school. They whacked whomever got the lowest grade on an assigment.

[rrogers40]

I would think the incentive would be: if you don't pass this test your not going to pass my class, and if you don't pass my class you are going to have to beg for money on the street.

I'm sorry but if you don't take your education seriously than I don't care if you starve to death because you can't get a good job.

[dgriffin]

rrogers40 said:

I would think the incentive would be: if you don't pass this test your not going to pass my class, and if you don't pass my class you are going to have to beg for money on the street.

I'm sorry but if you don't take your education seriously than I don't care if you starve to death because you can't get a good job.

RR, you're right, of course. But it's amazing how little concern many kids have for their own future. Ask a typical kid what they want out of life and they might tell you to work at MacDonalds and drive a Hummer and live in a big house. They can't do the math. Not sure I could have either at that age. That's why it always comes down to parents taking care of their children, doing the hard job of parenting and forcing kids to do what they don't want to do. Appealing to the kids to make their education work, through anything that motivates them, such as money, is doomed to failure because only the parents (supposedly) have the foresight to see the consequences....sometimes. We might want to get tough with the parents, somehow, rather than with the kids.
I spoke a few months ago to a parent who complained his 19 year old son, a high school graduate, couldn't get any work, except at the x-Marts and beef pattie palaces. I wanted to tell him, but didn't, that 50 years ago .... that's half a century ... society began to point out to everyone that in the future 12 years of educationn wouldn't be enough. That an extra 2 years of training in some specialty field, such as offered in a college or even in the Army, would be necessary in order to obtain a good job. I happen to know the boy got no encouragement from his parents to continue beyond high school. Fifty f*cking years of being told the obvious and this guy is complaining!

[dgriffin]

kim said:

I made a blog post on this topic last month. It had to do with throwing kids parties for getting a C. You can read it here: poppinsponderings.blogspot.com/2008/02/good-grades.html

Kim, I remember that post in your blog and it was right on. Here's something that frosts me. Our local paper each year or so carries a story about the mostly 16 year old young women with babies graduating from the local BOCES Alternative School. What a great job they did and how they are deserving of much praise. I wouldn't suggest they should not be complimented, but where is the perspective? Often, these girls chose to have a baby to get out from under parental supervision, applying to social services for their own apartment so as to have independent lives, their boyfriends over when convenient, away from parents' prying eyes. Besides, as every woman nows, babies are fun!
County social services mandated them to the Alternative School in return for free housing and food. And now we are feting them as if they had pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and surmounted impossible odds. I'm sure many did just that, coming from domestic violence situations, stupid parents, etc., etc. But it bothers me that my children stayed the course, overcame their own hurdles, studied every night, met the challenges of life head on and I haven't once seen them praised in the newspapers for it.

[Clipper]

I have said it before, and I will repeat it again! Take the little couch potato, nintendo addicted little wusses and draft their ass into the army for a mandatory two year hitch, like they used to. We came out more mature, with a sense of responsibility, and discipline, and hardly anyone was even tempted to move back in with mommy and daddy.

Those of us that didn't want to go in the army, enlisted for 4 years in the other branches and got a little longer exposure to maturity and responsibility, before coming home and getting a job and starting our "adult" lives.

Part of the problem now is that kids are not tossed out of the nest, so they don't know the point of demarkation where they are supposed to become independent and grown up. Until dad unplugs the nintendo and shows the kid the door, they aren't going anywhere.

I guess some of them won't leave home until mom and dad get up the guts to break the kid's dinner plate and replace his bedroom furniture with a den set, and burn the kid's bed.

When I was in the navy, I met a kid that went home for christmas to Mississippi and came back to tell us his parents had moved and not left a forwarding address. He later got a letter telling him that they loved him, but that he could not live with them when he got out of the navy, and the letter had no return address on it. Pretty cold, but to the point.