I'm certainly in favor of bettering our education system, but the Capital Gains program is completely ridiculous on many levels, and it doesn't even aim to fix the underlying problems in the D.C. public schools.
Paying kids for school doesn't add up
By: Kyle Whitney
Posted: 11/20/08
My middle school days were largely spent sitting at desks learning algebra, writing essays and complaining about being in class. The teacher would often comfort me with the fact that he, too, was forced to be there each day, and someone would invariably yell, "But you get paid!" Without fail, the response would come: "So do you. Your report card is your paycheck."
I was only a 13 year old trying to survive the excitement of an Upper Peninsula childhood, but the pay seemed sufficient.
Now, however, the students at some middle schools in the nation's capital are receiving more literal, and more ridiculous, paychecks. With help from the Capital Gains pilot program, 14 of 28 middle schools in Washington, D.C. are rewarding the kids' efforts with cold, hard cash.
The program is the brainchild of Harvard economist Roland Fryer, and provides money to middle school students based on attendance, behavior and other academic benchmarks, such as homework completion and grades. The kids receive varying amounts of points for completing these already required tasks, and the points are then converted to dollars. Over the course of the school year, a student can earn a maximum of $1,500.
The total cost of this year's pilot program is $2.7 million. Half of that bill will be paid by a grant to Harvard from The Broad Foundation, an organization with the goal of "transforming K-12 urban public education through better governance, management, labor relations and competition." The D.C. taxpayers will be left to pick up the rest of the tab.
And the schools in the district clearly need help. According to a 2007 study, only 12 percent of D.C. eighth-graders were able to read proficiently at grade level, while just 8 percent achieved that designation in math. These numbers are lower than any state in the country.
I'm certainly in favor of bettering our education system, but the Capital Gains program is completely ridiculous on many levels, and it doesn't even aim to fix the underlying problems in the D.C. public schools.
The program suggests that students in D.C. would be better off, academically, if only we bribed them. Even if this ludicrous notion is true, society can carry that load for just so long. Kids can expect to receive regular paychecks from sixth to eighth grade. After that, the well dries up and the students are back to square one, poor and without academic motivation. Children that do well in school solely for a paycheck will have no incentive when the money stops and will be shocked if they ever head to college, where they will shell out thousands of dollars to continue their education.
Delicious
Digg
Reddit
Newsvine
Furl
Google
Yahoo
Don't let my niece & nephew read this
I think the kids in the study are overpaid. I was provided a relative pittance (even allowing for inflation) from my uncle who checked on my report card and slipped me a few bucks. This was not regular or grant-funded but it was an added incentive to do well, and son of a gun it worked. My mother is doing the same for a niece and nephew and they are picking up on the pattern (A or B = $).
A big problem with our overall societal thinking on this is that our "scientific" studies try to isolate the factors that, in combination, can lead to success (as defined by kids getting good grades and being able to read, which are not the same thing but are linked). Of course the "bribe" is a good idea in my family, because it comes from within and is not an isolated event. Everyone (well, most everyone) reinforces the idea that education is important for its own sake and not just for the money.
If, as the article's author suggests, students are "poor and without academic motivation" after the study, it's back on the home and community who failed in the interim to do much else other than allow researchers to pay students. They didn't even help the kids save any of the grant money. At this point I will be happy to discuss what Bill Cosby was right about even if we don't want to hear it. :-)
BTW the author and I agree that kids who do well "solely for a paycheck" are in for a rude awakening. Rather, we are in for it when such kids get older and will do anything for money. Oh, that's not new, is it?
there's no problem here. the
there's no problem here. the "scientific" studies are pretty good at figuring what works and what doesn't.
the challenge for us in this case is that what the scientific studies show is (that these programs don't improve academic outcomes) is that the goal of the pay for grades program is something other than improving academic performance.