Quote :

"New York City students could earn as much as $500 a year for doing well on standardized tests and showing up for class in a new program to begin this fall, city officials announced yesterday. And the Harvard economist who created the program is joining the inner circle of Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein, according to an official briefed on the hiring . . . Under his plan, fourth-grade students will receive up to $25 for a perfect score on each of 10 standardized tests throughout the year. Seventh-grade students will be able to earn twice as much — $50 per test, for a total of up to $500. Fourth graders will receive $5 just for taking the test, and seventh graders will get $10. Cash incentives for adults will include $150 a month for keeping a full-time job and $50 a month for having health insurance. Families will also receive as much as $50 per month per child for high attendance rates in school, as well as $25 for attending parent-teacher conferences."

http://tinyurl.com/ytc73m

Does anyone else have a problem with this? Here are my objections:
1) Education itself is the payment for your hard work. This is akin to your parents paying you to get Christmas presents. One caller rang in to support the idea, saying that school was akin to slave labor and that children should be compensated. This is utter bullshit because . . .

2) You get paid for producing, not working. Children aren't producing anything, they are absorbing knowledge so that they can be productive later on.

3) In a rebuttal editorial ( http://tinyurl.com/39e6y9 ) Barry Schwartz points out that people react differently the same dilemma when they act out of civic interest, versus when they act out of self interest (financial incentives).

Quote :

"An especially striking example of this was reported in a study of Swiss citizens about a decade ago. Switzerland was holding a referendum about where to put nuclear waste dumps. Researchers went door-to-door in two Swiss cantons and asked people if they would accept a dump in their communities. Though people thought such dumps might be dangerous and might decrease property values, 50 percent of those who were asked said they would accept one. People felt responsibility as Swiss citizens. The dumps had to go somewhere, after all. But when people were asked if they would accept a nuclear waste dump if they were paid a substantial sum each year (equal to about six weeks’ pay for the average worker), a remarkable thing happened. Now, with two reasons to say yes, only about 25 percent of respondents agreed. The offer of cash undermined the motive to be a good citizen. "

I'm not arguing against the market here, it is the most effective system for distributing goods and services, but that doesn't mean that tacking a financial incentive on everything (including free education) will make it more efficient. In this case, it removes the concept of civic duty that binds societies together and replaces it with the concept that everything should be assigned a specific monetary value.

[Edited on July 4, 2007 at 10:05 AM. Reason : . . . ]

7/4/2007 10:00:41 AM

I do

Taking tax dollars to fund this sort of thing is pretty awful if you ask me. I mean, I dont have a problem with paying taxes that go to actual education in my state, even though I cannot have children and likely will never adopt. Call it the socalist in me. This isn't that, it's just redistributing wealth on some stupid idea of "lets pay you for doing what you're supposed to do"

If children are to get paid for grades that should be done by their *families*. Good attendance- same deal. Adults? $150 for keeping a job? just raise minimum wage guys!

Now the $50 for health insurance, wtf- so you get the money to keep it if you have it and if you dont you dont get the money to get it? That's fucking backwards! Give that $50 to the adults who DONT have it! Or dont give it to anybody.

Crap like this makes me so fuckin mad. But then again, I've already vowed NY esp NYC as places I will NEVER live.

7/4/2007 10:05:10 AM

Well, raising minimum wage has debatable, at best, merits. But yeah if someone isn't already willing to work, $150 isn't going to change that. I agree that the $50 for healthcare is ludicrous. Assuming the employer doesn't actually provide it, the $50 isn't even slightly enough to compensate for the overall cost of healthcare.

I guess what I meant to say was that monetary benefits, especially to a pre-teen, are short term at best and will likely be spent very quickly. It does damage to the concept that certain investments, monetary or intellectual, pay dividends in the long run, which is a lesson that pretty much has to be forced on a child until they learn it by time and experience.

7/4/2007 10:09:40 AM

The best way to get a kid to stop writing on the wall is to pay that kid to write on the wall, and then decide to stop paying the kid.

When you insert a reward for something that was previously done for no reward, then a person associates the reward with the behavior, and will become less interested intrinsically.

I'd be afraid that if you pay high school students for good grades, and then send them to college where they aren't getting paid (unless they can internalize that scholarships = payment for good grades) then when they get to college their grades will plummet.

Then again, this program probably isn't designed for the kids that go to college, but it will affect them non-the-less.

7/4/2007 10:13:46 AM

*OLD*

http://www.thewolfweb.com/message_topic.aspx?topic=482649

7/5/2007 7:30:05 AM

If I spell every word in this post correctly, how much could I get for that?

I'll take a check.

7/5/2007 10:36:13 AM

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7/5/2007 10:54:14 AM

How easy is it to get a "perfect score" on these tests? it seems the payouts related to this are small.

And then the other payouts are related to attendance, which can only help things (there is still no incentive for just doing the work, they have to do this on their own).

Paying the parents to come to PTAs seems like a decent idea too, because if they would have had to take off from work otherwise, this would adequately compensate most people, and make them feel it's worth their time. And if not, it's an extra 25 they could spend on booze (which is what I imagine a disinterested parent buying with an extra 25 dollars). But, I also visualize a bunch of half-drunk parents showing up to talk to the teachers with no other motivation than to get the free money.

7/5/2007 10:57:48 AM