Parlor Spider...Step In, Little Fly

Insightful thoughts and/or rants from atop the soapbox from one who wishes to share the "right" opinion with everyone.

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Economic Stimulus Plan: School Division



I got mine just for being a taxpayer...I mean, I really didn't do anything special, and the government rewarded me with $600. Of course, I cannot look forward to getting that every year, but it was an interesting "bonus" instead of simply taking more and more (which the government will ultimately do, anyway. This is just part of a shell game they play). If I were to get that for four years, I could gain, uh, $2400 (I would STILL struggle in math, though). Shoot, I might as well go back to high school! I could make more than that, at least according to the latest gambit designed to keep students in school and increase graduation rates in city schools.
The brainchild of Roland G. Fryer, Jr. a Harvard economist and funded partially by the Broad Foundation, a new program is designed so that kids in city schools are being offered the opportunity to get paid for having good grades during each marking period. "Capital Gains" is what the program is called in Washington, D.C. and "Green for Grades" is the moniker in Chicago. The program is also offered in New York City, but I have not seen a name for it yet.
The program in Washington,D.C. is funded to the tune of $2.7 million dollars, half of it supplied by Harvard and half of it supplied by the school district. The first checks went out this week and caused quite a stir, as one might imagine. Of course, there are those who say paying kids for grades is simply bribery and feel that success and future rewards are enough. I'm not about to argue. I'm just here to report the facts.
In Chicago, for example, Mayor Richard Daley vigorously defended the program by saying that "...some of these kids have never before had money...some get nothing from home, not even hugs," so this was a big step for them. Maybe true. Daley also opined that the same reward system happens in the 'burbs as well since those parents buy their children cars and send them on expensive vacations as rewards. I'm not exactly sure how he can verify this unless that's what he does/did for his kids, but...seems logical. Our kids got rewarded with a high school diploma, but then our kids didn't face a dropout rate of 50% in their schools, either. Anyway, back to the Windy City:
In Chicago's city schools, a student gets paid $50 for evcery A, $35 for each B and $20 for every C in a marking period. Subjects counted for the dough are math, science, English, social studies, and physical education (YES!). There are a couple of restrictions, though. One is that a student gets only half the money upfront...the other half is given at graduation (not a bad idea, but what happens to the money in the meantime...401k?) The only downside is that a student cannot have any grades of F during the marking peiod. In Chicago, that disquaified 49% of the eligible students for this 5-week period. ouch! Thus, those students were not part of the total payout of more than $265,000 this week. Will that motivate them to try harder? Will the cash flow continue to motivate students? No way of telling, but if somebody has money to throw at a problem in hopes of fixing it, there are plenty of precedents to prove that success is not guaranteed. Will the cash be updated with an increase in inflation?
The total payout for all A's in 4 years of high school is $4,000. All C'c will get the recipient $1600. That's four hundred dollars a year...I made $600 for being a taxpayer...
At least I'd get A's in P.E. and English, and I'd end up a lot better off than the guy at the farmer's market in Green Bay today who was selling apples of mixed variety as a "Joe Plummer Special." (he didn't look like Todd Palin, but you never know)

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