Spring Break
Cash for grades, or academic bribery?
Lara Oliver
Issue date: 11/11/08 Section: Opinion
Personal pan pizzas for finishing books? So passe. Scholastic Book Fair credits towards books and prizes? Girl, please. Chuck-E-Cheese tokens? Get with the times.
These days, it's cold hard cash the kids want and schools are getting desperate enough to give it to them.
It's nothing new that America's public education system has seen better days. From the No Child Left Behind Act to lowering graduation requirements in high school: the schools have been looking high and low to find a way to energize students and improve test scores. And schools across the country have been turning toward cash for grades programs.
Schools in Atlanta, Baltimore and New York City have all turned toward cash incentives and some schools in Washington, D.C. even offer credits that can be turned in for as much as $1,000 at the end of the school year.
While it may seem like a great way to increase declining grades in the short term and get your school in the news for its ingenuity, is it really teaching kids the importance of delayed gratification?
Growing up, I always felt jealous of the kids that got paid for their grades. While I was working my butt off to barely make straight "B's" and getting a, "That's great, try harder and you might get an 'A!'" response at home, a handful of my classmates were getting up to $50 for each "A" they received and $20 for getting a "C."
That is, until I started noticing what happened to those kids through the years. The $20 for "C's" in elementary school turned into $50 for "C's" in middle school and then, once high school came around, nothing. Know how much the kids started caring once they stopped being paid for their grades? Well, I can't really tell you because every single kid I knew who got paid for their grades either got expelled from high school or dropped out. Turns out, you can't always fix a problem by throwing cash at it.
Supporters of these new programs argue that it teaches kids the monetary value of hard work, but what about the dangers of instant gratification? When you teach someone that putting minimal effort results in immediate results, and that their schools and government support the system, where will they learn the value of hard work? Or even that sometimes you have to wait for the rewards of your labor?
And where are we going to get all this money, anyway? Last time I checked, we were in a bit of a recession and, if schools have the piles of money to be handing out cash incentives for grades, why don't they improve the facilities and programs to make school a place kids want to be instead of a place they're paid to go to?
This writer can be contacted at opinion@theeastcarolinian.com.
These days, it's cold hard cash the kids want and schools are getting desperate enough to give it to them.
It's nothing new that America's public education system has seen better days. From the No Child Left Behind Act to lowering graduation requirements in high school: the schools have been looking high and low to find a way to energize students and improve test scores. And schools across the country have been turning toward cash for grades programs.
Schools in Atlanta, Baltimore and New York City have all turned toward cash incentives and some schools in Washington, D.C. even offer credits that can be turned in for as much as $1,000 at the end of the school year.
While it may seem like a great way to increase declining grades in the short term and get your school in the news for its ingenuity, is it really teaching kids the importance of delayed gratification?
Growing up, I always felt jealous of the kids that got paid for their grades. While I was working my butt off to barely make straight "B's" and getting a, "That's great, try harder and you might get an 'A!'" response at home, a handful of my classmates were getting up to $50 for each "A" they received and $20 for getting a "C."
That is, until I started noticing what happened to those kids through the years. The $20 for "C's" in elementary school turned into $50 for "C's" in middle school and then, once high school came around, nothing. Know how much the kids started caring once they stopped being paid for their grades? Well, I can't really tell you because every single kid I knew who got paid for their grades either got expelled from high school or dropped out. Turns out, you can't always fix a problem by throwing cash at it.
Supporters of these new programs argue that it teaches kids the monetary value of hard work, but what about the dangers of instant gratification? When you teach someone that putting minimal effort results in immediate results, and that their schools and government support the system, where will they learn the value of hard work? Or even that sometimes you have to wait for the rewards of your labor?
And where are we going to get all this money, anyway? Last time I checked, we were in a bit of a recession and, if schools have the piles of money to be handing out cash incentives for grades, why don't they improve the facilities and programs to make school a place kids want to be instead of a place they're paid to go to?
This writer can be contacted at opinion@theeastcarolinian.com.
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