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Kids Score 40 Percent Higher When They Get Paid For Grades
A large number of schools participating in a pay-for-grades program have seen test scores in reading and math go up by almost 40 percentage points. The Sparks program will pay seventh-graders up to $500 and fourth-graders as much as $250 for good performance on 10 assessment tests. About two-thirds of the 59 schools in the program improved their scores by margins above the citywide average. "It's an ego booster in terms of self-worth. When they get the checks, there's that competitiveness -- 'Oh, I'm going to get more money than you next time' -- so it's something that excites them," said Rose Marie Mills, principal at MS 343 in Mott Haven. Critics, who are unaware that most college students don't become liberal arts majors, argue that paying kids corrupts the notion of learning for education's sake alone.
Maybe I'm an anomaly, but I'm only getting a degree to earn more.
Someone OWES my ass.
Glad it wasn't me. If I had that much cash back then it would have all been spent on pot. Smoking that much reefer would have to be bad for a developing mind... I might have become a physics major or something!
Before long children will be asking to transfer to the schools that pay the best.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
So ... what's the typical kickback to the markers?
did they pay this kid?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
This is dangerous: studies have shown that when you give extrinsic motivation for something, the intrinsic motivation tends to die away.
The paper I'm thinking of first observed that children in a class had lots of fun painting for no reason. Then, they started to extrinsically reward the children for painting, and the children started to paint a lot more. Then the rewards stopped, and so did the painting.
As the link points out, there is some debate about the truth of what I just said.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overjustification_effect
Imagine when they're going to college and need to pay to be able to study instead of getting payed to study. They probably won't bother if they never learned why they really should study. People better not get any ideas after this study...
Providing financial incentives makes people work harder. Duh.
All this does is bribe kids to cram as much information in as possible right before the exam, and I would be willing to bet most forget most of it in a week. It shows that kids have no passion for the material if the adults have to resort to bribes to get them to study. I've seen firsthand that people without passion for science/engineering, who only go into for the money or because their parents force them to, tend to make pretty shitty engineers and scientists...
Monstar L
In Soviet Russia, Schools PAY YOU!!!!
The idea that offering real rewards for achievement would make a difference is something that should have been obvious to anyone. This environment of PC-Everybody-Gets-A-Trophy has really screwed people up quite badly. I will be very glad when the whole PC mentality gets scrapped.
-- The morphemes of your disquisition are ascertainable, but they have eschewed an ambit of transpicuous exposition.
"Critics, who are unaware that most college students don't become liberal arts majors, argue that paying kids corrupts the notion of learning for education's sake alone." I don't know anyone who learns for the sakes of education. I don't think the 40% of kids who did better would have done so just to learn either. Money is motivation. Learning just for the hell of it is not. I wish they did this when I was in school. I got really poor grades in classes that I did no care about. I would have done much better if they paid me to learn the things that I found (and still are) useless.
The quote from Jerry Maguire and your kids will say "Show me the money!". Gee, I wonder what does it speak about our economy and our situation.
Where do I collect?
Seriously though, why is paying someone to do what they already should be doing, a good idea? Even if they are getting better grades, it is developing a sense of entitlement, which will be far more damaging than bad grades in the future. The world in general seems to already suffer from an overdose of self-entitlement.
"And in other news, adults produce more stuff when they're paid for it."
It's not terribly surprising. A big problem with kids (high-school included) is that they don't understand the value of an education. If you pay them then their short-sighted nature is much more likely to place a value on it.
This just in, kids do better when rewarded. Full report at yesterday o'clock.
...and to think I worked hard for just the annual "Book-It" Pizza Hut party! Really, though, if kids come to expect this as the norm, what will the NEXT incentive need to be to entice them to take more difficult and challenging classes (which may be harder to get the higher grades in, comparatively)? But, in a way, this is kind of like the bonus system used at many corporations... if you meet certain milestones which are above the standard, you gain more recognition accordingly.
39.6 percentage points higher than last year, when the kids were in third grade.
Does this mean that kids are 39.6% smarter than we thought they were? They just needed a reason to show it?
From TFA:
About two-thirds of the 59 high-poverty schools in the Sparks program -- which pays seventh-graders up to $500 and fourth-graders as much as $250 for their performance on a total of 10 assessments -- improved their scores since last year's state tests by margins above the citywide average.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
When some kids were getting paid for grades ($5 for a B, $10 for an A when I was a kid). My parents refused. They would tell me that it was expected of me to get good grades, and I didn't deserve a reward for doing what I was supposed to be doing anyways.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Right or Wrong my nieces grades have started to climb as soon as I started a "Grade Bounty". It has brought focus, and there is more motivation other than just Mom hounding her. I am slowing ratcheting up the bar, sort of got her hooked as a freshman in High School and going to make Sophomore bar a little higher and so on. Far as I am concerned money well spent. Cracked me up when she asked Mom if I was really Uncle was really going to pay up...I said you get the grades...I will pay up.
Imagine when they're going to college and need to pay to be able to study instead of getting payed to study. They probably won't bother if they never learned why they really should study. People better not get any ideas after this study...
Wonder how much they got paid to do this study?
Pay 'em with books, toys etc.
Unless you are disallowed to score > 72% without salary...
I don't know if this is still done, but I remember growing up some fast food places would give a free ice cream or sandwich to a all-a/b report card.
...I never got any :(
from 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
to 45 2F 6E 40 3C DF 10 71 4E 41 DF AA 25 7D 31 3F
...Even if they are getting better grades, it is developing a sense of entitlement, which will be far more damaging than bad grades in the future....
That insult is usually reserved for people who thing they deserve something w/o any sort of work on their part. In this case, the money is given to kids only when they get good grades (a.k.a. worked for them). I don't really feel your "sense of entitlement" complaint applies.
The catch, of course, is that 60% or more of his school grades are contributed by homework. Achieving 60% or less of the class credits gets you an F. So, here's a case where the kid does well on tests, usually getting As and Bs, but consistently gets Fs overall. He knows the material better than most of his peers, but is failing. I don't buy the BS that homework is an important life lesson that prepares you for the future, blah blah blah. I do realize, and my son either doesn't or just doesn't care, that any college education worth getting requires a lot of homework.
We know of at least one other child among his peers with pretty much the same picture. Neither cares much for monetary incentives.
you post under the name "cashman73". maybe cash motivates you too.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
This kind of stuff should be more a house hold thing, where parents decide to reward the kid if he/she performs well and exceeds a certain expectation, rather than schools doing this.
-- It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. -- Aristotle
I can pay my own kids. No need to pass through the "education" system.
Back when I was in highschool, a brief two years ago, my school district got a grant from the SOAR program which helped underwrite the costs for AP programs and testing. The students received not only a decreased application fee, but their fee refunded and 100 dollars on top for passing the exam. This didn't just encourage students to perform better, it caused the honors programs to increase drastically in their enrollment. Many more "average" students took advantage of the program and now are enjoying the college tuition credit that the AP exams offers. The most interesting thing to consider about this was that many students started referring to their education as their "job". I personally knew many students whose grades improved upon moving to harder material. The response I've heard from many accounts is that they felt that they finally were respected for the work they put into their grades. Now, the problem, I think, that may lie with this system as proposed above is that it seems to create no real boundary line between scholastic rigor and simply doing what is expected of you. If you show up and do what is asked of you, they pay you. It's not really creating the initiative among the students to own their own education. The moment that a student can realize for themselves that the teacher actually works for *THEM* and not the other way around is the moment that they can truly excel. All I can say is that I've seen the effects first hand. Our two local schools were public, poor, and had probably 700-850 students (consider that enrollment strongly decreases for junior and senior level due to drop out rates) combined for the total enrollment. We had 8 national merit finalists (top half percentile) and the National AP Scholar (only 1 or two given out per YEAR).
I like losing arguments, it just means that I can take your point and make it my own.
This only shows the short-term goals of people. Very few people think further than only 10 years ahead.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
This is the society we have built. Consumerism, greed, status seeking etc.
"We have met the enemy and he is us." -- Pogo
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
They can use their newfound love for math to keep track of the national debt.
When they get the checks, there's that competitiveness -- 'Oh, I'm going to get more money than you next time' -- so it's something that excites them," said Rose Marie Mills, principal at MS 343 in Mott Haven.
It does absolutely nothing for students who are uncompetitive or who view competition as something negative. It also hastens the failure of those who are already disadvantaged. If you can't compete (successfully) because of your home life or other circumstances, then this will just re-enforce the failure.
Again this is another example of incompetency getting promoted to leadership positions. If you need to pay people to achieve, then you aren't a very good teacher. If you want to merely train people to be good robotic workers in industry then schools need to focus less on the "3 Rs" (reading, writing and mathematics) and more on direct vocational training.
I do suspect that this protocol is a direct result of the school principal trying to meet and exceed quotas. Of course I could be wrong, but it seems more often than not that these short-sited, pop-psychology social engineering methods are often used as a gimmick for career advancement.
Interesting. If this program was implemented when I was growing up, I probably wouldn't be a college dropout. I also probably wouldn't be fluent in Japanese with reading and writing capabilities as well as be a web developers with side knowledge of programing in gtk using C as well as an assortment of other languages.
At the point I am at now, I feel like the only thing that College has done for me is get me in a huge amount of dept. This program may have set me right.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
... When money is involved people tend to try and maximize the opportunity to get money.
I'd be more apt to belive that by offering money you are raising the stakes and you'll get more people cutting corners to get the money.
I'd wager more cheating then more intelligence, once you add money into the picture.
By adding money as a reward you are raising the stakes. At some point, the risk vs. reward line is passed and the reward is now worth cheating.
I've busted plenty of people trying to cheat and I have seen on serveral occassions the reason they cheat was "If I got all As I could go to cancun, or I get a new bike, or I get a car for graduation, etc.....".
FYI: Baseball caps are not the way to cheat. Neither is your cell phone on vibrate.
Example:
(They would send an SMS to the cheaters based on which 10 second span was the answer so:
1-10: A
11-20: B
21-30: C
31-40: D
41-50: E
51-60: Pause between questions.
So I sat there looking at the answer sheet and sure enough the SMS messages were coming in. Wasn't hard to throw out all 9 of them.
The problem is: VIBRATE IS ACTUALLY LOUD WHEN 9 PHONES ALL GO OFF AT THE SAME TIME.
Sadly these were adult students to boot...
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
I wonder if this would help keep kids on the books and off the pipe or off the corner selling dope... I mean if you could earn $500 for getting a good grade then it might not be so desirable for the kids to seek out gangs and drugs as a source of income... The situation is much more complicated, but it does eliminate some of the argument from the inner city kids who state that studying ain't gonna put food on the table. I know, many people are yelling "That is the parents job", but that is not reality for an inner-city kid with 4 siblings and 1 parent who is addicted to booze and/or drugs and spends any state/fed assistance on their habit....
Is $250-500/student worth it for the improvements obtained? That's not too hard to answer. Find an alternative score-improvement technique and compare the per-pupil costs.
(For a sense of scale, the per pupil cost of a full year's education in nearby Pennsylvania averages ~$10,700. This program would add ~5% to the cost of an education, though only if every student maxed it out.)
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Rich kids that go to public school already know what this is all about.
When one is artificially paid for a commodity that is normally without value, the acquisition of that commodity for sale is just good business.
In other words I get paid 10 bucks for an A, I well pay you 5 bucks to get it for me, and make a tidy sum, or "buy your classwork from your poor student friends for better grades".
Oh well at least they are learning something! America's future at work!
People behave the way they're compensated.
The problem is that the metric never quite matches the goal. Anyone who's been in software development long enough has seen one or more "objective performance metrics" management fads come and go. With these there are incentives tied to making the dates, writing x lines of code, having fewer than y bugs, or whatever. What happens is that people make sure they pass the metrics. The trouble is that the metrics don't measure the desired behavior, just an imperfect proxy for it, and people figure out how to game the system. With programmers, they under commit, won't make changes, won't provide support, and won't work with their peers (though the exact nature of the dysfunction varies depending on the incentive structure). With students, the test becomes the goal and other aspects of learning are neglected.
...an acceptable substitute for parental supervision and interest into what their children are learning. The latchkey, Playstation generation needs to be bribed to actually educate themselves because frankly their parents couldn't be bothered. Absolutely pathetic if you ask me. Children 50 years ago would die if they saw how easy kids have it today.
You're out of luck. The program will never leave schools where the students are exceptionally poor and where graduation rates as well as basic math and reading skills are dismal.
My parents had the same philosophy: pay the lazy kid who barely cares enough to get out of bed in the morning for getting good grades, not the kid who would do well regardless of whether or not you paid him. The con was that my idiot brother then proceeded to register for classes with the mentally disabled kids so that he could get the maximum payout for the minimum of work. At least they're giving rewards for scores on standardized tests to try to prevent kids from gaming the system, but you know that the kids will find a way.
I firmly believe that education is a state and local responsibility, so far be it from me to criticize these parents for deciding to collectively pay their kids to go to school... but if they tried it in my area, someone would be receiving an angry phone call.
This will put even more pressure on teachers to teach to the tests. Especially in low-income areas (where these trials are being done), teachers want their students to get what they're worth.
Kids aren't "getting smarter" (by the way, what does "smart" entail?) They're learning to play the game that is the educational system.
Also, if the sponsoring organizations can afford to pay each kid $250-500, where the heck are they getting those funds, and why aren't they giving it to inner-city schools in the first place?
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." -- Albert Einstein
My parents paid me $10 for As (I got $20s/class if I got straight As) $5 for Bs -$5 for Cs -$10 for Ds and if I got a F, it didn't matter what my other grades were. I got nothing. After they started doing that, I was getting straight As.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
I think this is a fantastic idea.
Many kids see no immediate positive benefit to education. I know I didn't as a kid. Oh, sure, I knew that "In order to get a good job, you need to go to college!" but I didn't really feel that my efforts got me any semi-immediate gratification. I mean, you're telling a teenager or younger to put out efforts for something that is years, or even decades, away for them.
Put an immediate, serious benefit within their grasp of months and you will see a lot of kids go for it.
The only thing that made me perform in school was fear of my parents' retribution for failure. Lots of kids don't get that encouragement so I think this is a wise use of school money.
I bet it pays better dividends, dollar for dollar, than pay raises for teachers. Paying teachers more might make them better teachers, which might impact their students. Paying students for good grades will DEFINITELY improve motivation.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
"argue that paying kids corrupts the notion of learning for education's sake alone."
They aren't paying them to gain an education, they are paying them to get higher grades. Grades != Education, and the purpose of grades have always been about money.
People send their kids to private schools so they get better grades
Universities only accept people with higher grades so they'll hang around long enough for the university to get some money out of them
Grades in university are all about showing off to a future employer.
I've experienced plenty of chances at education being hindered by the need for better grades.
...and that is all I have to say about that.
http://jessta.id.au
In the U.S. good education does not equal higher pay. Maybe it did at one time, but certainly it is no longer true.
I would argue that the getting a degree from the right combination of institutions is the gateway to higher pay. Two examples to prove my point.
4.0 from public schools ==> transfer into 2nd tier State University==>Enter workforce with 3.8 GPA and some lesser-known interships. This combination is not likely to end in higher pay. Rather, the student will probably make average wages in the first 5 years. What she does from there is up to her, but there are meaningful limits to the probability she would end up the most rewarded.
4.0 from private school attended by elites ==> transfer into 1st tier University==>Enter workforce with 3.8 GPA and some well-known interships. This combination is most likely to end in higher pay because they are most likely to be hired by companies that pay more in the first 5 years.
More importantly the 'pull yourself up by your own bootstraps' dream so often told in the U.S. has vanished due to the enormous costs of attempting the latter. This is part of the enormous class disparities that have grown in the last 20 years.
So, pay your kid to earn good grades at the end of each year. It's very far into **their** sense of the future.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
So, I got good grades in high school and got no financial compensation. (PLUS, I worked a part time job.) These kids get paid for good grades, which *I* must pay for with my tax dollars.
I have to wonder if the parents became more involved with their kids once money was brought into the picture. I think another study needs to be done to see if there is a way to encourage parents to be good parents and if that affects kids' scores
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
You collect at the poker table. I hear having all 4 of the 8's is a really good hand. Of course, as in school, having all four A's is better, so avoid playing nerds.
> Seriously though, why is paying someone to do what they already should be doing, a good
> idea?
Punishing them for not doing it is better? That's the alternative.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
There is a huge difference between actually learning and preparing children for tests. Getting kids to pass a test might make them look smart but they'll lack the necessary skills to be anything other than someone who can parrot information.
After teaching in Cairo, Egypt for a year at a private school, I found out the value of an American Education.
$10,000 a year.
That's how much the richest of the richest in Cairo were willing to pay so that their kids could get an American education.
It's sad to know that we have to pay our kids to go to school now. We're teaching our children that their education has no value, which is so egregiously incorrect.
Can we conclude that kids these days can only see the short-term gains and hence do well in class if they are paid for good grades? One goes to school in order to have a better life in the future - a long term gain.
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
Christ this is bad, they get more for good grades than the company I work for gives out for bonuses.
I always got good grades so my Mom didn't beat my ass and ground me for 6 weeks til the NEXT report card. Some years I was grounded for an entire semester.
Maybe money gets kids' attention. If so, perhaps it's just a matter of making the material interesting.
They can buy already-done-work with this money. No motivation here, except for cheating more easily.
Grading paying kids corrupts the notion of learning for education's sake alone.
Fixed that for you.
Studies show that conditioning human beings with treats (and threats) does not instill values, but results in modified behavior that goes away if the pattern of rewards is stopped. Seems to work with dogs, tho.
The current education system is highly oppressive and does not cater to the children's needs for activity, play and natural way of learning. Let's not call mandatory children camps schools.
For more info check Alfie Kohn's work and Sir Ken Robinson's TED talk on schools and creativity.
Kids don't give a shit about all of that stuff, it's emotionally fucked up beauty pageant moms, football dads, and principals who give a shit about that stuff.
Kids get the checks and start thinking about XBox games and other shit they normally wouldn't get to have.
What the fuck do people get an education for, to get a better paying job that's what.
Why do kids get such shitty grades, because school is like sewing soccer balls in a 3rd world country except it doesn't produce any tangible goods that's why.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
My motivation for good grades was avoiding a beating. That seemed like a pretty effective motivational strategy.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
He is now a junior in high school and gets mainly Fs, except in music which he enjoys so he gets an A, usually. He consistently scores at or above the 97th percentile in the numerous standardized tests that kids take these days, including the PSAT. He will soon start taking the SAT and will presumably do well enough.
Your child may be better off being home schooled. The slow pace and innanity of the environment he is in is supremely demotivating. College is almost exactly the same thing, so he won't do well there either. Unless, maybe he goes to a music college. This is pretty typical of gifted kids who don't fit into the square peg definition of excellence offered by most schools.
It's your job as a parent to keep trying different things.. If he's that interested in music, he needs real teachers, real discipline to become a competent musician. In exchange for him doing some homework, get him a good music teacher.
Don't give up now
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
From the article:
"It's an ego booster in terms of self-worth," said Rose Marie Mills, principal at MS 343 in Mott Haven, where nearly 90 percent of students qualify for federal poverty aid.
It is sad to see that in America we have tied self-worth to monetary possession. Worse, that the most impoverished feel the least worthy.
My page.
It was not a 40% improvement in individual scores. The article states that in some schools it was a 40% improvement in the number of kids meeting some exam standard. What the prior or new scores and what the standard is was not given. Paying may help but I doubt by 40%.
Is the opposite true? If you hit your kids for bad grades does that help? :-)
In the end would that be cheaper?
The more I learn about science, the more my faith in God increases.
This will certainly make it easier for kids to get the money to pay other people to do their homework.
as long as they learn something
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
WTF?
How is this worse than kids not learning in the first place?
Most kids see no value in education because they're kids.
Paying them, not only prepares them for life, it stresses the value of hard work and provides real results for that work.
Kids learn both their curriculum and that working hard provides tangible returns.
They're using their grammar skills there.
What Would Alfie Cohn Do?
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0618001816/ref=ase_fastcompanycom/102-5164850-9600113?v=glance&s=books
These anecdotes seem to fly in the face of research on the subject. What is being unsaid about this "experiment"?
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Given that the current system is based on rewarding students for education (albeit with grades, not money), changing what the reward is wouldnt make a difference. The Overjustification effect has already taken place. How many of your friends in school did their homework 'Just for the sake of learning'?
What's so terrible about wanting to get paid? When I was a kid, I was told that it was my job to be a student. I would have worked harder at that "job" if I had been getting something of value to me in exchange for my effort. I got news for you: most people are mercenary little shits. We don't want to bust our asses for no good reason. Why the hell should we?
I write sci-fi for metalheads
... after all, if there's no money in it, why do it?
Unchecked capitalism is the way our whole society should
be run. All those little old ladies of the future had better have
$5 bills spare to make sure they get help crossing the street.
Let's review what the "all that matters is money" mentality has accomplished on Wall Street:
* Bernard Madoff
* Adjustable Rate Mortgages - Who cares if they will never be able to pay their home loans, more money for us!
So now we're even moving this lesson into the classroom? If you thought Bernard Madoff was bad, wait until the working class is made up of students who were taught in school that all that matters is their paychecks and incentives - not hard work or achievement.
Even so, I would prefer an educated drug user to an uneducated one.
Honestly I'm not surprised at this at all. And I also don't think it has much to do with "ego boosting". I think it has everything to do with making the kid feel like the test is not a pointless colossal waste of time. I know when I was a young kid in grade school tests certainly felt like that to me. Kids don't generally see the big picture and the long-term benefits of things. I also know that when I was a kid, if you gave me the choice between having fun or doing something extremely boring that would probably pay off in 10-20 years the choice was a no-brainer. However, getting paid gives a result almost immediately, and gives a kid access to things they may not get access to any other way.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Again and again...why does *no one* understand the simple principle of CORRELATION DOES NOT EQUAL CAUSATION? The teachers may have inflated the kids grades...what if you were one of those teachers? And the low-income kids really needed that $500? I would do the same thing; Give everyone an A, whether they earned it or not...would not want to be responsible for them starving...
Could we get a source other than the New York Post please? The paper called itself "New York's daily picture newspaper". Since Murdoch took over, it has only gotten worse. It makes me embarrassed to live in New York City.
From Wikipedia:
"In 1980, the Columbia Journalism Review asserted that "the New York Post is no longer merely a journalistic problem. It is a social problem - a force for evil."
The New York Post is for gossip, clever headlines, and sports. But not for journalism. It's like slashdot, but dumb.
Don't mess with The Phone Company. Piss them off and you'll be using two tin cans and a piece of string.
Are you kidding me? People actually needed a study to tell them that others, especially children, are financially motivated?
I am no Einstein here, by any means, but I did manage to nearly ace the SAT in 8th grade and still manage to fail a course a year in high school. Why? Because it didn't matter. I still got into a good college, am finishing up a degree in IT (with over 3.8 GPA), and just wish someone would have thought of this sooner. Hell, if I could get paid by being smarter than all of my peers, not only would I have done better in school... I would have had that spiffy new PS2 the day it came out.
I believe it was Daniel Tosh who said something like: "Can money buy happiness? Maybe not, but it can buy a wave-runner. Try frowning on one of those."
Something witty.
nuf sed
You expect a grade schooler to care about education for the sake of education?
Unless you have a much higher opinion of the us public school system than I do, grade school is pretty boring, and you don't learn much for how much time you put in. Also, more importantly, grades and learning are very different things. I got terrible grades because I hated homework, yet I still got a good bit out of many of my classes. In high school, i got bad grades in most of my AP classes, yet come time for AP exams I still got 3s, 4s, and 5s, and I feel like I learned a good bit. I was interested in the content, I just wasnt motivated to do what I needed to do to get decent grades.
However, during my last year of high school (which just ended), I held a job as a programmer, which I got because I was well qualified, even if I was young. So far, I'm paid well and this, along with the fact that things i do have bearing on real life, motivates me greatly, so i really work to get things done, and keep my job. In grade school, what happens if you're lazy? You get yelled at, maybe held there longer even. There is no perceived reward, and at that age few kids see the value of the education, and frankly I don't blame them. Our school system is boring. Giving kids some motivation to learn is a good step towards getting kids learning and our education system back on track.
I remember taking my first English test in high school. We'd all read this book, and were to be tested on it. I read the book cover to cover, and felt like I really understood it. Not just what the book said, but what it meant. I felt like I picked up on the theme of the book, and the message the author had embedded in the story. Nobody knew that book better than me.
But when I get the test, not one question required me to discuss the book intelligently. It was a multiple choice test, where each question asked you to recall some obscure detail in the book. Example: What was the name of so-and-so's aunt. How many times did whatshername etc. The questions did not test whether you understood the book - just that you read it and memorized parts of it.
And that's the problem with schools and testing - you can pass a test without even understanding the material. Just memorize the details without exploring real concepts and ideas. And thus, it's no wonder this program works. Kids don't need to think in order to pass school, they just need to devote unreasonable amounts of time memorizing facts. And of course, nobody wants to do that sort of tedious studying, unless they are paid for it.
Our school system was set up to prepare students to work in mechanical, fragmentary jobs. They teach kids to memorize and spew out information on command. They teach kids to obey authority, and walk in lines. They teach kids to sit in rows and eat lunch at scheduled times when the bell rings. It's a great way to prepare kids to work in textile mills. Sadly, we have a different type of economy now, where those skills no longer apply.
We must teach kids the intrinsic value of learning. We must teach them to think for themselves, and question the world around them. We must reward creativity, and encourage imaginations to run wild. The students who learn those lessons will succeed in todays information economy. Paying students small wages to do trivial work will only prepare them for jobs where they are paid small wages to do trivial work: McDonalds.
They're the ones who deserve to be mocked, not the smart kids or the hard-working kids.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
When I was a kid, if somebody had asked me why I went to school, my answer would have been, "Because state law requires that I do so."
I write sci-fi for metalheads
Nice liberal arts crack. Actually liberal arts is generally one of the biggest majors at most universities. I looked up my alma mater - University of Texas - most popular are Biology, Business, and Liberal Arts.
I think barring school specialization, you'll always see Liberal Arts at the top. There are still a large number of people who are after an education and realize that college is not a vocational school.
Critics, who are unaware that most college students don't become liberal arts majors...
After all, it _is_ possible for people to double major, a liberal education is a wonderful thing, blah-de-blah, but paying kids just makes too much sense to get side tracked. Just look at how cheaply results are attained at a few hundred dollars/student, and it places the responsibility and motivation exactly where they should ultimately reside. Giving kids money for achievement just means they can have pride in achievement -- and money. The two are synergistic, not exclusive.
Something has to be done. When I graduated decades ago I was one of 10 honor students among 81. This year my small town graduated 41 honor students among 62. And still flunked No Child Left Behind for the second year. It's all B.S. right now. I think we do need objective measurements of success because otherwise local schools will call everyone an honor student and proclaim excellence achieved -- but NCLB isn't being funded and has its own issues. So if it works, pay the students.
My high school (and all others in my county) paid $40 for every AP test that you made a 4 or 5 on. We had some of the best AP test grades in our region of the state (except the Euro test, every fails that one). On calculus the year I took it no one made less than a 4, most were 5's.
I see, so doing what works is "corrupting," doing what fails isn't.
Kind of the core of why academia has been on a downhill slope for decades.
As someone once said, "the word "academic" is a well-known synonym for the word "meaningless.""
That being said, I don't think that, for the most part, the public school system can be fixed with "band-aids."
How much improvement in scores is seen if the teacher promises to have sex with the A students?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Since I am late to the comments game, the chance of modding up is low, and there is no intrinsic value, and therefore it is not worth for me to to risk receiving a less than 5 score grade.
I would have written something insightful, but now it is not worth it.
There are ramnifacation to introducing certain types of incentatives.
Also very important is the impact of how the students perceive knowledge sharing.
The competitive environment can cause students to be more closed and protective
believing they will then have a competitive advantage, where instead they would
benefit from learning in collaboration, sharing and teaching each other,
similar to what we do on slashdot very openly and freely.
(even despite of the point system which also motivates some,
but it takes experience to know the value and cost of such systems)
Good to know my theory has met with some real-world verification.
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
I have to say, the misconceptions in both the summary and many of these comments raised my blood pressure.
For some reason education runs deep with people. Everybody and anybody thinks they're an expert and has opinions. But barely any of them can tell you the core psychological differences between different ages of children. A 4 yr old is VERY different than a 6 yr old in what motivates them and what their brains are receptive to. And an 11 yr old and 13 yr old are extremely different as well. Development is NOT linear. And while sitting an adult down and lecturing to them may be the best way to transfer knowledge to adults, it is completely unnatural for nearly every stage of childhood development. So they end up hating learning and we have to resort to 'tricks' like this to entice them.
The main difference between a successful genius like Edison or Da Vinci and an average person, is that the genius is fascinated by things and loves to work on them.
This program itself is a band-aid. It may very well be helpful in desperate areas. But it's a band-aid on top of a very deep problem in the structure of what we think 'education' should be. When the critics argue that "paying kids corrupts the notion of learning for education's sake alone", it doesn't matter. The way the current system is set up, there's no way that a majority of the kids are going to love learning.
I'm a certified teacher in the US. By pure chance I came across a school that used a method spread by a Dr. Montessori (the same method that Larry Page & Sergey Brin, the founders of Google, credit as a major factor in their success).
The first thing that struck me is how eager these kids were to work on things and find things out on their own. The smartest kids were well beyond most of the ones I knew in mainstream education and the slower kids STILL loved learning. Then I realized how happy the children were. Yes, there are always problems, but very few were bored and no one sat around like a broken shell of a human waiting for the day to be over.
I ended up getting my certification in Montessori elementary education, and the classes were MUCH more thorough and in depth then when I went for my mainstream certification. Now I feel like I was somewhat amateurish when I taught before. I had little idea about how to really work with the psychological sensitivities of each age and turn them into something truly developmentally constructive.
Only a small part of development is the transference of knowledge, which seems to be the main focus of current mainstream education (and what this little pay-for-grades project helps with). But if the aim is switched to aiding human beings in their life and development, then we start to use knowledge as a tool.
We use the knowledge to develop the brain, rather than trying to drop knowledge into an undeveloped mind as if it's an empty container waiting to be filled. This kind of development is what I think Einstein was talking about when he said, "Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school."
I urge any parents to look into the Montessori method, and visit a school in your area if you can. But understand that some schools use the name without really using the method.
This program that pays children for their grades is like painting on old, crumbling house. It does help a bit, and it definitely looks nice. But I'd rather get inside and strengthen the architecture. The paint will wear off eventually.
Spoiled brats. Some people would kill to get an education of any kind.
While this might be a motivation thing, there is another point to be made: Kids that are getting money for grades are less likely to need to get jobs to buy all the junk they want. After school jobs might be good experience, but I suspect that focusing more on education might be better.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Interesting you should bring that up. I'm about to retire from lifelong service under the federal Civil Service Retirement System. I'm one of the last group hired under CSRS nearly 30 years ago before the system was scrapped and a hybrid system more closely resembling private industry was put in place.
Back during the dotcom bubble, I was (I've since moved on) a reasonably competent sysadmin in an all-Unix environment. Not a fortnight passed that I didn't turn down a job offer for at least double my salary. Some were willing to pay me 5 times my salary. Of course, those guys all wanted me to work 100 hours a week and carry a pager, to boot. I had no idea if any of them were going to be in business in 5 years. I turned them all down.
In a few months (or 5 years, depending on how our current reorg goes), I'll be retired. I'll have good (not great, but good) life, health, and long-term care insurance for the rest of my life. After deductions and assuming a frugal lifestyle, I'll get a small pension that amounts to, based on my projections, about 110-130% of my expenses. I have a few hundred grand in savings but I don't actually need any of that to live.
I got to this point via a willingness to delay gratification in exchange for stability and long-term viability. Y'see, when I was in my early 20s, I was unemployed for a couple of years. I felt like a leech. I was consumed with guilt for not pulling my weight. When I got a job, I was damn well going to keep it come hell or high water. As a result of that attitude, I've been willing to take the safe course and it's worked out reasonbly well for me.
My point is that I reject the notion that offering a generous retirement is necessarily a bad deal for the government and for society. The government has saved a bunch of money via my willingness to accept below-market-rate salaries over the last quarter century. Now they get to pay my pension with less valuable, post-inflation dollars. Not a bad deal for them, for me, or for any young person who can see themselves in their old age. It's too bad that such systems are gone now; I think they could still serve a valuable function.
No, I didn't just coast in school. I hated school. I already knew how to read by the time I started kindergarten, and could even write a bit and do some addition and subtraction. Having to go from reading the newspaper after my father was done with it to singing the alphabet song was intolerable. I hated being spoon-fed scraps of knowledge that I could have obtained on my own given time and free access to a library. I resented being forced to associate with children with whom I had nothing in common but the fact that we were of a similar age. I resented being told to leave a task unfinished just because "it was time" to move on to something else.
In answering your second charge, that I saw no inherent value in education, I could follow Mark Twain's lead and distinguish between education and schooling. However, I will not do so. As far as I'm concerned, there is no such thing as inherent or intrinisic value. Knowledge and education have no value to me unless I can put it to use.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
It was a practice on the Catholic high school I studied (Santo Antonio Maria Zaccaria - Rio de Janeiro - Brazil) to pay an amount of money equal the value of the monthly fee for the three "best qualified" students in the classroom. But it didn't help most 'average people' to get best grades, only the ones that already studied very hard cared to be on the ranks ;)
I've been a long time reader of Slashdot and held off on most comments, because the topic of discussion is often beyond my area of expertise, I'd feel out of place trying to add an intellectual comment on a topic I'm not adequately informed in. However, this is one that as a long time educator I am comfortable with. For those wanting to know more about the source of the problem, below is a rough overview:
1) No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is passed as Federal Legislation. Requiring States to reach increasingly higher levels in Math & Reading (Overview: http://www.ed.gov/admins/lead/account/ayp203/edlite-slide001.html)
2) School are forced to track and improve at a state level.
3) Each year the target grows (eventually reaching 100% by 2014), school that fail to meet this Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) are penalized.
4) Each year it is tougher for schools to reach the target on these Assessment tests, thus they risk losing money if students don't perform.
5) Article is linked on Slashdot regarding students getting paid for performance, those reading it closely will see that it's due to the NCLB & AYP requirements.
As a school, a lost student is 4-8 thousand dollars of lost revenue, so paying $500 or $250 per student to insure that they meet AYP and continue receiving their larger revenue is a short term business decision to survive a flawed piece of Federal (unfunded) legislation.
I'm not defending what the school is doing, but the biggest problem is getting students who don't care about tests or school to care about THIS test, as for many schools we are far enough into the program that they are facing penalties for not making AYP. If you can find a way to motivate students, who have the ability, but not desire, to do well on a federally mandated assessment, the schools would love to listen. I can assure you most schools have tried all the common sense means and smaller tricks to motivate these kids. Just one more example of big government trying to run things from DC without really understanding the long term ramifications of their decisions.
People do things when they are motivated. Escalating the motivation from "look! I got an A!" to "Look! I got $400!" is logical when you consider American culture hates intelligence but loves greed. In the end though you're still teaching kids to jump through hoops to get a carrot. Sit down. Be quiet. Trust Authority. Remember your place. Be a Jock, Nerd, Loser, Pick-a-clique. The kids who win in the end are the ones who some how learn to be passionate and self motivated despite school.
Nicely biased article stub.
The learning done and the benefit of the money is taken for granted, the article is merely proof of a fore-gone clonclusion,
Critics are put down directly as people who don't know an obvious fact.
And to top it off we have a nice cut kid smiling with some dollars. Isn't it nice to know that she is worth that much money?
Here's the problem I see with this.
The school I went to had 1000 students.
Assume this works great and grades go up.
It would suddenly be in the school's best financial interest to reduce the grades of top students to prevent the pay-out of 500,000/yr.
This is something parents can do, but don't ask the school boards to pay for it, because it'll harm them. Do you know how many teachers $500,000 will buy?
It's been a long time.
Although I'm sure that kids these days aren't consciously rationalizing it as such, they must, on some level, be recognizing that a good education isn't as straight a path to success as it once was. The real problem is the growing deficit in quality jobs. After observing so many well educated adults work so hard just to cover the basics, is it any wonder that kids need to be bribed to give a shit?
In any case, it's more about who you know, than what you know. For right or wrong, bullshitting and networking are the skills to have. And kids don't need much motivating to work on those skills. They'll work on them for free. And they have more tools than we ever did to help them out there.
Interesting, wouldn't you say?
I'm not surprised. Oddly enough, some of the highest grades I got in my entire educational career were [1] in grad school, when I was paying my own way through, and [2] in taking continuing education classes required to keep my teacher certification--in which case I not only would have had to pay for the class if I had failed, but I could also have lost my teacher certificate.
As a former high school sysadmin, I was responsible for printing and distributing mid-quarter progress reports from our Basmati-based grading system. It was a pretty simple Access form that would sort the reports by fourth-period teacher.
Sure enough, one day after school, I find sitting on a table in the library: tape, scissors, scraps of paper, and copies of progress reports. A student had managed to cut grades off another progress report, tape them in place, copy it, and fool both her guidance counselor and her church, which was paying $5 per 'A' on progress reports.
I gave all the evidence to the assistant principal for curriculum. I think there's a special place in hell for people like this.
...is the 40% increase. That's a huge number. It means the kids are capable of performing 40% higher than they currently are; they just fail to do so because they don't give a rat's ass about the tests. What I wonder is whether kids in other countries aren't already performing closer to their "theoretical max"? That is to say, U.S. kids don't under-perform their international peers solely due to a difference in ability, but also because of a difference in "giving a rat's ass about the tests".
The education system isn't about education. It's about penal reform.
When kids are born, their instinctive emotional responses, their ability to be idealistic, and their ability to believe that they can change things for the better, are all intact, because at first they don't know better. I remember one example during my first or second year at school when I didn't want to engage in some of the activities we were doing in class; that was when the dichotomy began to be imprinted, between what I wanted, and what everyone else wanted me to do.
The entire purpose of the education system is to beat anything out of a child that doesn't conform, and this economic program could just be seen as getting the proverbial indentured servitude started that much earlier. The bastards at the top of the heap actually prefer beginning to indoctrinate kids as young as they can, because they know the truth of the words of Uncle Joe. "Give me a child until he is 5 years old, and you may do what you will with him thereafter."
During school, kids get allotted the place in the social hierarchy which they very often occupy for the rest of their lives, and God help you if you're not inherently an athlete with around a 130 IQ. You actually ironically don't want to be far above 130, though; because virtually nobody else is, so if you are, it just makes you look like a freak.
The education system for me was purely about psychological survival, and I very nearly didn't survive; I spent two months in a psychiatric inpatient unit after leaving, and probably another six months in outpatient therapy after that. I went very close to insanity.
'Even if they are getting better grades, it is developing a sense of entitlement, which will be far more damaging than bad grades in the future. The world in general seems to already suffer from an overdose of self-entitlement.'
You may be right. But none of that has anything to do with school. Schools are not to mold your children into anything good or bad. Schools are to impart a knowledge of logic, history, mathematics, science, language, etc. Making the child they impart that knowledge upon a decent person is the parents problem.
>While I don't agree with this program, I do agree that kids need to see the immediate benefits
>of education. Kids in poor cities do worse in school, and it's no surprise why: Everyone they
>see around them is poor. When all you see is poverty, you give up hope of rising above it.
>And once you've given up on your dreams, education seems like a waste of time. Why bother
>succeeding in school if you're destined to work in a crappy job for low pay.
I agree with you here.
>I think the answer lies in changing the way we teach. You don't need to think in order to get
>good grades in today's schools. You only need to memorize, study, and bullshit your way through
>school. Paying kids for grades will only encourage them to get better at taking tests and spewing
>out facts and definitions. It doesn't mean they actually understand the material, or care about it.
Then alter the standardized tests to check the metric you are actually interested in. This is a separate issue from paying students who achieve the metric.
>We need to show kids the benefit of education... but we also need to teach the intrinsic value of
>education and the joy of thinking. I think the best way for students to learn both lessons is to
>get experience doing real work where they get to think for themselves, make decisions, and become
>a valued member of a team. Experience learning. They can see the benefits of having a rewarding
>job where you feel valued, while learning to think on their feet and become leaders. When I went
>to college, I had a class in public relations where teams of students were paired up with local
>non-profits, and had to create a pr campaign for them. It was the hardest thing I ever did in
>school, but I learned more in that class than I ever did in all 4 years of high school.
I don't know that you can teach the value of they joy of anything. As they say, there's no accounting for taste, and what one person finds joyful someone else may not.
Nonetheless, if you desire to reward students for their ability to think, make decisions, and be a team member, then you need to alter the test metrics. Again, this is a separate issue from paying those who achieve the metric.
>What I'm saying is, paying kids is nice, but if you really want them to learn, get them involved in
>what their learning. Instead of drilling kids on the menus in microsoft word, how about we let them
>explore computers on their own in a supervised environment. Lets have more science experiments and less
>science quizzes. It will unlock the benefits of education right away, while teaching them how to
>learn on their own. They will learn lessons they'll never forget.
The trick is developing a metric that can measure the success or failure of teaching those things.
Personally, I'm not to terribly put out with the metric I was put to when I was in school, the SAT. You can either do the math or you can't, and you either comprehend English or you don't.
If you want to come up with a similar metric that captures the student's ability and/or desire to think, I'm fine with that.
In short, I'm less concerned with the metric as I am with coming up with ways to motivate kids to achieve the metric. Once you've mastered the latter, the former can be whatever you want it to be.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Once you are working most jobs look at previous experience and how well rounded of an individual you are. A 4.0 gpa doesn't help when you are leading a group and those are the jobs that pay really well.
Oh, right. Let's bring our children up in a communist educational system where everyone works to varying degrees to get the exact same reward, and then just throw them into a capitalist society. Or do you do work for free?
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
All of this reminds me of one particular day in Poly/Sci when a student who was clearly incapable of following any aspect the lesson, kept interrupting and finally thought he'd be cute and ask the professor, "Why do I need to know this stuff, anyway?"
The prof's response made him an instant hero:
"You don't . . . the world will always need fry cooks. Now get up and leave."
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
critics argue that paying kids corrupts the notion of learning for education's sake alone
Nobody learns just for the sake of learning. We learn to improve our condition; to develop better technologies, grow more food, and make life easier. Learning "for the sake of learning" would be a waste of a good mind. I think this program is a good idea. Giving kids more immediate rewards for getting their education will condition them to enjoy education more in the future and ensure that they are setting the proper foundation of knowledge for college and/or the workplace.
Critics, who are unaware that most college students don't become liberal arts majors, argue that paying kids corrupts the notion of learning for education's sake alone.
Considering most kids don't actually care to learn just for education's sake, I'd say that's just fine.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
I'm a high school student who just graduated last week. Tell me the value of what I have learned so far, if I don't understand it as you claim. What will my diploma accomplish? What can I do with it?
But more importantly, how can I succeed with the education I've received? That's what it boils down to, and by and large, the answer is, "You can't, at least not yet. You need to work even more." A high school education means absolutely nothing these days.
Blame the students, I guess, they're too dumb/stupid/interested in their cell phones to blame back. Is that how Slashdot runs these days?
...that merit pay for teachers is just around the corner? Heavens no - perish the thought!
As a father (and tax payer), I don't like the idea. There are high-minded philosophical issues I have with this, but on a more practical level, is this really what we want to do with our kids? And what happens when the payments stop (will they stop)? What's next, paying people for public service/volunteer work? (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/world/americas/02iht-campaign.4.14179758.html)
Ken
The 40% increase is *not* in grades but in assessment test results. Kids don't care about assessment tests. They effect the school and not the student.
If you tell someone to do something for no reason are they going to do it A) better or B) worse than if you paid them?
The schools are just sharing the money they get from better test results with the kids.
As a parent, I have tried many things to motivate my children. But the one most successful method has been money for pre-stated accomplishments. Money for success works; period. My eldest just turned 18, and will go off to college. I guess teaching her to be goal oriented with long term planning will finally flourish, or something else not so promising. But from personal experience, I have been more involved when rewards were put in writing, then backed up with results...
>And what test metric measures a students creativity, critical thinking, and capacity for independent thought?
You'll have to come up with that yourself. I imagine something like and IQ test might do. The point I am trying to make is that if you are unhappy with what is currently being taught and the metric used to determine success or failure of teaching it, then you will need to come up with alternatives.
All of this is beside paying students for achieving whatever metric you deem suitable. If you aren't able to create a metric to measure the success of your curriculum, well, you have your work cut out for you, then.
>The medium is the message. Tests aren't designed to teach that kind of knowledge. You can change the questions on the tests, but
>the fact that they are tests means they will always be test questions. In other words, questions with a clear simple answer.
>How do we test students on subjects without simple answers? Essays are probably more effective in that area, as would be the
>type of experiential testing that I'm advocating.
That's fine by me. Come up with a superior method of teaching and metrics to measure your success or failure of the processes you employ and I'm all for it.
I'm still all for paying students as an incentive for scoring highly on your metric.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
is always about how to corrupt
Clearly we know the value of education, but the acid test in this debate is to find the motivation for kids to learn.
This is the age where knowledge on the Internet is slowly coming into being. It is almost free to have enough knowledge to earn a degree at the home computer. So in a few years, we might finally have the answer. In this near future, there will be no excuse for literate able-bodied people to say "I can't get an education". Average ten year olds should be able to think "if I work hard, I can earn my freedom from relative poverty and hardship," and by so doing know enough to earn a degree by the time they're 15.
If a few bucks can boost a few scores, how about the promise of quick independence and potentially unlimited earnings???
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
I learned that when I used to be a Republican. :)
I write sci-fi for metalheads
Education for education's sake?
OMG!
I don't think so. Education = $$$.
Its already been mentioned here, so I won't go beyond that.
I wish I got paid for grades. It would have motivated me a little more.
As for the education I received in my gov't funded high school, it was utter garbage.
But I passed, got that useless high school diploma, and moved on.
What happens when the kids performance becomes an important contribution to family income? Then the kid actually can't score well on a subject and ? What happens when a kid hits the news for being beaten by a parent for not scoring well? What happens when kids cheat to score higher? What happens when its easier to mug the kid who did well then to be the kid that did well? Its a piss poor solution to complex problem.
Sounds like a neat idea. It's like a little career, before your real career. Maybe this would motivate some kids that are otherwise thinking, "why should I do well in school?" Sort of a sampler as to what could happen if you work hard.
Of course, there's the cheating/collusion/milking the system angle. One would have to put in some pretty intense safeguards. Anyone clever enough to get past them, well, heck, maybe they earned it.
Wrists killing you? Not in 2 weeks. Learn Dvorak.
I'm sure the notion of being payed for doing schoolwork has occurred to everyone in their elementary days. Then I got older and realized that I was getting an education for free. (Really through taxes, but essentially free.)
Sorry to hear that. I'd like to chime in on this one.
I have 3 lovely, well adjusted, funny, principled, intelligent daughters. I do not deserve them.
All 3 were valedictorians of their HS, without pushing by us.
Anecdotal? Perhaps, but harder to argue with results * 3.
I've never before shared this much info about what we did. FWIW, YMMV, etc.
1) Give them the gift of self esteem. Demonstrate your believe in their intrinsic worth, and act out of love only. This does not mean giving them every toy they want, but it does mean make sacrifices when you can for the best aspirations of your kids, and constantly showing them how much you appreciate them. Be sentimental and approachable. I think my kids knew I would have been no less their fan if they were D students.
2) They need you, give them all of you. Don't hold back and don't ever fake it with them. They know you; no double standards! If that movie is bad for your kids, parents can do without watching it. Schedule regular whole-family time and 1:1 time. Family dinners together are important.
3) Humor and curiosity are some of the best tools. Demonstrate them. Memorize funny poems, make music together, show how to take things apart, and keep it all upbeat, even crazy.
4) Don't let anyone else raise your kids. That includes daycare and school systems. I lean toward public school system over homeschooling, and it worked out for us, but that depended on what the system had to work with. Social development and problem solving is important. So are friends. Be involved parents, room mothers, etc. Know the kids in their K-6 classes; they end up on your doorstep asking for dates. Here's the tough part, but it proved extremely important: I barely made a living wage and my wife made more than me when we decided one would stay home. It was her call who would. I don't know if I would be able to look my kids in the eyes if we hadn't sacrificed.
5) Money incentives? Oh ya. Make cash match effort was my philosophy. They got a pittance for base allowances but kept job-journals as they learned to write and were richly rewarded for finding new ways to help. In school, the first A is the easiest, even hard not to get. That last A is a bear, it's the subject they don't like. My kids got $1 for the first A, and the pay doubled for each additional A. They nearly bankrupted me. Long term, the investment works out. The youngest just took her MCAT.
to ensure early hard disk corruption :-)
this is far too much money to give kids of that age anyway. This age group would be happy with $5. Hell, my daughter's teacher once rewarded the class with sweets for a good test - the excitement this caused was amazing.
There will be problems because of this - too much of a big reward -> they will become demotivated as soon as they don't get $500. Then it'll be HELL for the parents & teachers.
blind are we, if see not we could, the production of a clone army!
in school, having all four A's is better
I thought it was all about the three R's.
I figured that meant Rivest, Riemann and Röntgen. Turns out I was "Rong" again :(
Cue the 'Oh the poor poor children will cry themselves to sleep if we actually expect something more than attendance in school.' estrogen-high soccer moms.
and think we should stop paying everyone, such that they can find the joy of working for the work itself and not just the pay.
>Read "Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire" (Rafe Esquith, actual teacher in LA) and then
>tell me teachers can't make a difference with tactics other than paying for grades.
Instead, I shared two 7-hour plane rides with a high school teacher.
>Motivating students is great, but as soon as you remove the extrinsic motivation you end up with a lot
>of kids who have no intrinsic motivation to do anything they're not paid for.
Wow, just like real life!
>No volunteering, no helping out around the community, no smiling at people on the street.
Wow, just like real life!
>They work because they're paid, not because they have any desire to contribute to society in a
>positive manner or because they take any pleasure or pride in their work.
Wow, just like real life!
I do things I don't want to do because I get paid or receive some other kind of compensation. That's the way the world works in real life. Everything else I do because it's pleasurable. If it ain't fun, I ain't doing it unless there's something in it for me. Life's too short to volunteer for misery.
>Maybe if we brought better teachers on board FIRST, we wouldn't have to resort to such drastic
>measures to positively motivate kids to do what kids ought to be doing naturally -
>exploring the world around them.
As the father of two kids, I can tell you from experience that that is not what kids do naturally. What kids do naturally is be self-centered, hedonistic, selfish little beings. True, they will explore the world around them - while satisfying their self-centered, hedonistic, selfish instincts.
If you could craft an educational system that catered to their self-centered, hedonistic, selfish instincts, you'd probably have an excellent vehicle for conveying knowledge. But the fact is, learning is, for most of us, hard work and thus not terribly fun. Thus kids need other things besides pleasure to motivate them to learn. For me, it was fear of my parents' reprisals for failure to succeed academically that motivated me.
Again, as my teacher friend explained to me, you can get all the better teachers you want on board. Unless you have kids that are motivated BY SOMETHING to learn, it won't matter. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink unless he's motivated.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
I agree, in a perfect world, we should all just want to learn, we should not have to pay for anything, and life should be good.
Real world here though, people need incentive to do stuff, nothing is free and nothing is ever just good!
I say whatever turns their crank, it could be money today, WoW credits tomorrow, and tacos thursday...
in the end, it is a proven effective model that WoW uses, and makes a bizillion dollars with, the interest of the game comes from the cool accomplishments, gear or talents that comes from putting in the hours on your character....should be the same in real life...
Trust me, go into the ghetto and tell them you will pay them to go to school, and based on a system they will get money, you will see the biggest movement since MMOS hit the net. A ghetto girl gets 5000$ through out her educational years...enough to
send her to college free for a few years.
But I think you need to face the possibility that some people are just 'dumb'
Conversely some are really 'smart'
Interesting thing is what the criteria is for this division. Ignoring the tiny 'dumb in every way' group - and without intentionally descending into schmaltz, surely the key is identify what people are good at/enjoy and allow them to follow that path from as young an age as possible.
By all means ensure there's a foundation of basic numeracy and literacy, but just seems quite quite bizarre to me how some subject seems to find themselves on a curriculum where I swear they've never been of any use to 99% of the countless millions that've studied them.
Had a slightly beery conversation a while back on this very topic, and concluded that glaciers are possibly the most pointlessly known topic.
OH MY GOD is that poorly written.
There's the idiot who wrote it for the New York Post and the idiot who wrote it up for slashdot.
Three of biggest examples of the idiocy, in reverse order of stupidity:
1) The story is not about kids scores going up by 40 points. The story is about the percentage of kids "passing" the test going up by 40 points. If a lot of kids are near-but-below the passing mark, scores could go up by just a couple of points and yield a 40% increase in the passing rate. (Obviously, an extreme way to make the point, but there clearly was nothing like a 40 point increase by the kids).
2) Sample size. That almost-40% number is just at one school. Any one who knows anything about statistics and/or testing knows that small schools are the most likely to see wide swings, showing the greatest gains in passing rate and the greatest losses. One of two schools cited in the story has about 65 kid/grade. That's a small school, even by the "small school" standard. The other school also has less than 100 kid/grade. If you don't understand this stuff, you should not be writing about testing or statistics of any sort.
3) Why doesn't the story report the overall impact? Why doesn't the story report the overall increase in the participating schools compared to the rest of the city? I don't mean controlling for factors, just a straight comparison? (I'll tell you why: a quarter of the school showed LESS improvement in math and a third showed less improvement in reading. At least the story mentioned that.) We all know that scores were up city-wide.
I'm not even getting into testing issues, pedagogical issues, developmental issues or the sustainability of these gains. I am just talking about the reporting.
With the possibility of public schools handing out tax dollars to students. As it is, I don't go to public school or have any kids and don't think I have any business paying for it. As it is, most public schools spend over $10,000 a year on each student. For around half that, you could give a child a quality private education. As with most things, if you want to pay more and get worse results, get the government involved.
It's a perfect time for being wasted.
A perfect time to watch the stars.
- Burden Brothers, "Beautiful Night"
about derivatives
What is the big deal about paying kids for good grades? Parents do it all the time $20 per A, $10 per B. So the school is doing now SO WHAT!! I wish they did this while I was in school I would have applied my self allot more. Most children do not/can not see properly into the future. They donâ(TM)t plan for the future the way we do. If we give them a reason to sit through these boring as hell classes other then you need this to get a job, then I'm all for it. I would say that 98% of adults who have any degree will tell you that they did not get their degree because they love learning, they got it so they could advance in their current position or get a better position i.e. MORE MONEY!!!!!! The only difference is with the kids is thatâ(TM)s its more short term then long term
This isn't about the kids who perform better. It's about the schools who by essentially bribing students to study for specific tests, show higher test scores, qualifying them for increased aid under NCLB.
"No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up." -- Lily Tomlin
Okay, so a third-party agency now has to motivate kids to get their grades up?
Man, when I was a kid, your *parents* did that.
They had a variety of methods. Some parents offered money for As and Bs. Some parents *charged* money for Ds and Fs. Some did both. Some parents used other forms of positive encouragement and/or other penalties for failure. A lot of kids just sort of *assumed* their parents would be upset if they flunked, and labored to avoid finding out any further details. Others wanted their parents to be proud of them, and were willing to work for it.
What all of these things have in common is this: the kids all knew that their parents *cared* about their grades, *and* the kids all knew that they personally were considered to be responsible for said grades.
Our parents used to help us with our homework, too. Well, okay, most of the time all they really had to do was remind us that we actually had to sit down and do it, now, before we could go play. But parents *did* this. And they made it stick, too. I was there. I remember. I didn't *like* doing homework, but I did it anyway. I had to.
What has happened to our culture? It's broken.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.