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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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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+
I know, it's a joke, but you'll probably be disappointed. Everyone you'll be competing with has a degree, the subject of the degree and the magnitude are now the dominate forces (even when ridiculous). In some areas right now they argue you need a PhD to do silicon verification, when in fact I think you probably don't need any degree, at all to do what the job ACTUALLY requires. It's just a matter of having a huge number of equally qualified applicants after the same job.
The problem with this, for all of you who have jobs, is not about some wishy washy bullshit about "the joy of learning", it's about manipulating metrics for maximum return. It's not about how much you learned or how well you can apply your knowledge, but how to appear best on paper to get the paycheck. When the rubber meets the road, are you any more qualified to do what you say you can do? We've all known people who groomed that 4.0 GPA (or close to it), who didn't amount to anything or who got washed ashore when they jumped in the ocean.
To be fair, it is a very applicable life skill to large corporation life, and we all have to do it from time to time. But if you look around your organizations and note the flaws, defects and absolutely mind-bogglingly braindead behavior that somehow persist...behind each one of those is usually some bogus metric that says "we're great!". The road to hell is paved with broken metrics.
To the present day businessman, nothing else matters but making money today. Thus any short term manipulation that demonstrably shows profit, is a good behavior. To almost any other profession, including responsible businessmen, you have to be sustainable through at least your career, or however long it takes to return what you owe, ride out tough times, and guarantee your future. Teaching kids how to act in their short term best interests exclusively is not at all the right way to go.
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.
OK, not to rain on this parade, but....isn't our educational system pretty much predicated on cramming as much info into your head only to have you barf it back out on a test, never to use it again without looking it up?
No one seems to be asking the deeper questions:
Why do we have to pay kids to learn/study?
What are the specific flaws in the system?
What are we testing for?
What do we want to test for?
Are the testing methods adequate to the task?
Polly want a cracker?
I'm a happy pessimist. I expect and prepare for the worst, when it doesn't happen I am pleasantly surprised.
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!
It's a poor excuse for a study. The underlying issues in (USA) public education today are:
#1 - We don't stratify. In other words, we uniformly put the slowest idiots in with everyone else, rather than putting the brightest in one class and on down the line.
#2 - classes move at the pace of the slowest idiot. The dumb shits hold up class, the mediocre kids learn nothing as well, and the smart kids get so bored (waiting for socially-promoted 8th-grade retards to learn stuff they already mastered in 2nd grade) that they start acting up.
#3 - real standardized testing - you know, anything that might require the kids to have learned something and prove it - has vanished. Between that and social promotion, there is no expectation on the kids to achieve anything, despite clear and repeated case studies and larger-scale studies proving that holding kids to high expectations works. But since standardized testing started to mirror social problems - read: certain ethnic groups (black, illegal immigrant, etc) with near-zero family structure and a subculture that sees intelligence as race treason, were showing very poorly in the standardized tests - more and more of the tests have either been dumbed down to the point of uselessness, or have simply been done away with entirely.
Critics, who are unaware that most college students don't become liberal arts majors,
If you're going to offer the kids money, that's fine. One motivator works as well as another - when I was a kid, for example, a bunch of local restaurants chipped in and gave free meal coupons to any kid who made the honor roll.
First, though, you have to fix your metrics. The fact that they "doubled" achievement on the tests means little when the skills indicated by a "passing" grade on the newly-rebuilt "test" would, 20 years ago, have failed 2-3 grades lower.
...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.
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
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
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.
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.
you forgot to add #4:
In the USA public education is now just used as a tool for political indoctrination. With extremists at both ends vying to brainwash children.
"You have to get to the children when they are young and impressionable."
and #5
#5: Schools have now been regulated to substitute parents for a generation of deliquents who are incapable of parenting. Those children just get worse until they end up in high school with no sense of personal responsibility as their parents showed none.
Now teachers are being asked to change diapers for kids who's dead beat parents never bothered to teach how to use a toilet.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
If you're going to offer the kids money, that's fine.
No, it's not fine, it will have terrible long-term effects. This is called behavioral/operant conditioning, which, in the case of children, will become deeply entrenched into the personality that they will develop as they mature.
Don't confuse this with parents who give their children extra allowance if they get good grades. When the reinforcement comes from the same entity which is providing the challenge (in this case, the schools), it becomes a far more mechanical, "pavlovian" pattern. I seriously hope that some psychologists are monitoring this program.
This isn't just a matter of culture (as others mention on this thread), this could have long-term effects that are completely unpredictable.
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
Who said anything about learning? This is for grades. I suspect there are some underpaid teachers willing to accept kickbacks for adjusting a few grades.
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%.
Hell, I only got a degree so I could put off working another six years (what? change majors a few times, and you too can turn a four-year stint in lazy paradise into six years).
Wow - Your college experience was a helluva lot different than mine. When I was in school, I was working my ass off to cover tuition, books, rent, food, etc. And earning an engineering degree besides. I was in school for 6 years too, but only because I wanted a Master's, I managed to graduate High School as a college Sophomore, and I had to bail out of school a couple of times to take internships/co-ops that paid more than I could make locally.
Lazy paradise? I remember a foggy sleep-deprived existence that involved short naps between busting ass. What's your trick?
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
as long as they learn something
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
English Lit.
In some areas right now they argue you need a PhD to do silicon verification
In my experience, nerdy professors are far worse at spotting fake boobs than your average joe.
Bull Hockey.
The "Secret" to raising smart kids is to instill in them a work ethic. I don't see how this is any different. Providing incentive to work harder at a task and achieve results, rather than simply stumble into them due to your 'natural talent' is pretty much the default story of how people become successful.
Your arguement seems to boil down to "convincing kids to work harder is bad because kids who work harder will look better than kids who don't". Of course kids who work harder are going to come off better, that's sort of the point. Given the rest of your comment is a rambling complaint against people who test well but can't perform, I don't exactly understand how you could possibly bitch about a method which actually convinces the children to perform well so you can accurately test them at their real performance level rather than at their "I could give a shit, why should I care what my score is." level.
If a school pays kids for good grades, wouldn't they naturally transition to expecting to get a raise at work for good performance ?
:)
Whereas with parents paying for good grades would either leave kids feeling like they've gone as far as they can when their parents die, or depending on the government for being rewarded when they do good at work.
Could you explain the problem to me please ?
I really don't want to read some article you've dug up on the Internet either, I actually want to read the explanation in your own words, as you understand it.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
That would be silicone verification. I don't believe a degree is required for that. It also happens to be a very hands-on field.
We don't stratify. In other words, we uniformly put the slowest idiots in with everyone else, rather than putting the brightest in one class and on down the line.
Putting the dumb kids in one class would only pigeon hole those kids. They would be made fun of at school, and systematically taught that they are not as good as the other kids. Whoever ends up teaching "the dumb class" would naturally have low expectations for these supposedly helplessly dumb students, and as we all know, teachers teach worse when their expectations are low. So your plan would help the kids who are already smart, while ruining the lives of kids who need the most help. Hell, many times putting a very dumb student in a class full of smart students improves the dumb student's grades, because good study habits rub off on them.
And even without corruption it isn't as if a grade actually reflects how well the material was learned. Grades reflect all sorts of things that have nothing to do with education, like dedication and the ability to brown nose the teacher. Teachers reward those who repeat what the book rather than those who demonstrate actual understanding of the material.
In many schools they remove credit from students grades for frequent absence, frequent tardiness, or as a result of in school suspension. Those things have no impact on whether the student understands the material taught but school funding is determined largely by attendance metrics. Any student who fully understands the material taught in a class, at any level of education from K to Masters should receive an A in the class if the purpose of a class is for students to learn the material and the grade is a measure of how well they have learned 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.
I remember, quite vividly, a story from grade school. I was 8.
Me: "Some of my friends are getting money for good grades."
Mom: "And?"
Me: "Can I get paid for my grades?"
Mom: "No."
Me: "Why?"
Mom: "Because your dad and I *expect* you to get good grades."
I thought it was not particularly fair. Not necessarily that I wasn't getting paid, but that others were when I was doing (in many cases) more work and achieving more. I said such... actually, it came out as, "If I'm doing what they're doing, why do they get what I don't?" and was told that "life isn't fair, but we're not going to bribe you to do something that you should be doing anyway."
In hindsight, I'm quite glad that they didn't. I ended up much better for it. I also think I did better overall than most of the kids who were paid. My goals were sold to me as long term from the get go. I needed to do well in school, not because I'd get some reward in 3 months, but because if I wanted to do what I want for the remainder of my life, I'd have to work to get there. It forced me to look years down the road right away. Plus, when I didn't grasp that (the idea of planning 10 years in the future when I was 8 was a pretty big thing to get my head around) they were more than happy to help me with that.
This sort of program feeds into feelings of entitlement, and to the feeling that an action requires an immediate reward. Immediate success rises, but when these kids get out of school, how are they going to react when they don't immediately get what they feel like they deserve? I have a feeling that it'll be an unhappy awakening.
As well as some underpaid parents willing to cheat with/for their kids...
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
First of all, I can only type so much before I need to get back to work, so referring a reader to an article on Wikipedia will likely cover far more ground.
But sure, I'll bite:
If a child receives a reward from a family member, that person will be able to "bend the rules" at any point, because there's no actual contract. They could gradually provide diminishing returns, and/or decide that grades on a certain subject are worth more "starting right now" (because, for example, the student is great in math, but bad in literature, so the priority shifts to increasing the literature grade).
On the other hand, an institution is implementing a mechanism. That same institution is providing the behavior pattern that will be reinforced. No matter how many rule subsets that institution applies, it will always have to be uniform, so the children could, in effect, "game the system". For example, if getting your grade from a D to a B provides a higher incentive than increasing a grade from a C to an A, then the kids will do the math. It's an objective mechanism, which, if modified, will be modified uniformly. You won't give different students different rewards for the same exact achievement. This becomes a static, objective reinforcement mechanism which *does not exist in the real world*. When they encounter real-world motivation systems, the rules will suddenly change, and they'll have to battle their now-ingrained expectations.
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
They would be made fun of at school, and systematically taught that they are not as good as the other kids
Well, that's the problem right there. See, we need to teach the Alphas and the Betas to be grateful to the Deltas for doing all the hard work, and teach the Deltas that they're very important and that they should be grateful to the Alphas and the Betas for making all those hard decisions.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
That depends if you think that knowledge gained is the only purpose of school and I think you would be hard pressed to make such an argument.
If you're trying to produce people who can work together and be productive members of society then it makes sense to dock people that not followed rules which directly relate to that. In-class suspensions for disruptive behavior makes a lot of sense to me in this regard although I don't consider hugging in the hallway to be disruptive.
Much of the business world involves finding constructive tasks to perform when you are bored out of your skull so it makes sense that school would discourage disruptive behavior even if the student proves that he understand the materials being taught.
Do I think schools should be this way? I don't know, society has a way of filtering out people that are destructive or at least finding creative ways to embrace the destructive nature of particular individuals. I don't think students should be robots but I also think disrupting a class is unacceptable so I guess I like it but would favor relaxing many rules that were only enacted because a few people were uncomfortable with the setting such as the banning of hugging.
"English Lit" is only half the equation. I think that for college to be a "lazy paradise" you need:
"English Lit" + "Easy source of income that doesn't mind funding your slacking ass"
As an engineering major, I could run off and co-op making 5-6x minimum wage. How people put themselves through college flipping burgers is beyond me... Especially if you're in one of those demographics that's discriminated against (or completely excluded) at scholarship time. May the gods bless the people doing that with one hand while supporting a family/kids with the other.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
I don't know, society has a way of filtering out people that are destructive or at least finding creative ways to embrace the destructive nature of particular individuals
Where else would we find police and armed forces recruits?
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
Do you actually have a science, computer science or engineering degree? Except for the few who a) go into teaching or b) are the top 2% and land a reasearch posting ~90% of your university course load is completely unused on graduation. Of the 48 terms of class (4yrs @ 6 courses/term, 2 terms/yr), I think 6 (programming*2, comp architecture, sw engineering, digital communications * 2) apply to my top-paying telecom programming job.
Those who went into hw design (even more salary than programming) only use 4 courses...
The biggest waste was the 8 terms of advanced calculus. Unless you're doing primary research into magnetic field theory, knowing how to derive the LaPlace and other transforms is something you cram for, get your A, then gleefully drown in a several tankards of post-graduation partying.
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!
I don't give a shit why they learn, as long as they do it.
Yes but it isn't just that they are learning it is WHAT they are learning?
Are they actually developing good thinking and cognitive skills or are they studying to a test? Will they continue to learn even outside of school? Will what they learn actually stick around?
I suspect that it does help learning some but I also suspect that the learning done is heavily geared towards taking/getting through tests which often does not translate well to real-world performance.
When I first started home schooling my son, I went into a 'home school store' where they were giving a little seminar on how to legally home school. After it was over, the owner of the store came over and talked to me. I had flagged her as a wacko when she tried to convince me that the school system was specifically designed to do exactly what you describe. Since then, those that have tried to convince me that home schooling is a bad idea, almost always end up falling back on the whole "but kids need to 'socialized' to fit into society" line of reasoning. It's a little creepy how the general public whole heartily agrees with the "wackos".
Before I answer I have to say that we're getting into specifics which blurs the macro effect: applying these types of mechanical conditions to children, especially small children, will embed patterns into their minds that will be difficult to out-grow. You can grow out of "in bed by 10pm", but giving you material compensation for what you should realize is inherently for your benefit (education), will make you stop want to practice "educating yourself" once that compensation is gone.
To your question: Kids won't get fired from school. They aren't effected by the economy in this program. If a child does well they will continue to get paid, which is a parody compared to the real world. They don't have to seek promotion, they keep traveling though a linear path (think 1950s-style employment). They don't have to "find a job at another school". But most importantly, the environment is artificial. The difference is between real life, and a game.
What happens when that child grows up and the reward system becomes chaotic? You can be a hard, studious worker, and still get laid off. You have to develop communication and social skills to get a job and keep it. In an artificial environment, they just need the grades, and they can completely ignore their surroundings.
And one last "perk": imagine a child from a poor family. Suddenly attention is placed on the child to earn income at an extremely early age in order to provide for their family. When placed in a situation like that, where they might need to get good grades in order to feed and clothe their siblings, what's the difference between that and child labor?
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
While I may have a low opinion of home-schooling I don't think it is wrong, with the right parents it can give a kid a great education but there's no falling back on the "kids need to be socialized" argument. It is a valid concern with home schooling and often does result in adults that are not well adjusted. That doesn't mean its impossible for a home schooled child to be well adjusted as there are plenty of success stories out there as evidence. Sports and other out of school social engagements have often been used with great success to supplement the lack of peer interaction. Of course there are plenty of failures so you can't fault people for being skeptical.
Both methods have their problems, if a parent understands their responsibility then more power to them as there is a chance they could do a better job. A friend of mine back home was home-schooled by his wacko religious fanatical mother and it didn't turn out so well even though he was a smart kid. After a few years of rebelling and getting away from his mother he has evened out quite a bit even though he is still a bit awkward.
Of course I went through public school and still ended up awkward until a few years of college and work life straightened me out which is why I don't have a problem with home schooling in general as neither method guarantees any result.
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.
Survival of the most fit. What's wrong with giving the best advantages to the kids who can make the most of it? Is there some nobility to having a world full of mediocre achievers?
Putting "dumb"kids in class with "smart" kids limits the heights to which the smart kids can grow. Putting emotionally or psychologically deficient kids in class with normal kids is disruptive to the normal kids. Do you think the smart/normal kids want the dumb/deficient kids in their class? Of course not.
But guess what? The dumb/deficient kids don't want to be there either. These dumb/deficient kids would much prefer to be in classes with others that are more like them, so they can feel "normal" by comparison with their peers, and receive the appropriate teaching methodologies at a comfortable rate that allows them to feel a sense of accomplishment they otherwise could never achieve when mixed in with kids far above their intelligence.
You completely ignore the reality that many supposedly dumb kids are potential smart kids with no motivation to improve, because everyone around them tells them they are hopelessly dumb, and all their dumb friends think it's cool to be dumb.
The problem with paying for grades is that it takes No Child Left Behind even further - it now gives a solid price for cheating and "teaching to the test".
Before you started paying kids, it was just about teachers' rewards - like pay incentives and keeping their jobs. IIRC in some districts teachers' cheating approached 30% (I could be wrong on this; read Steven Levitt's Freakonomics.)
Now you've put a solid price on cheating.
In my experience, the best people on the job aren't those who got the best grades, it's the ones who overcame more than others, who demonstrated true effort. I can tell you stories aabout the penniless kids who boostrapped themselves from Harlem, or Mexico, or Eastern Europe. They make the best employees; they work hard, they value work, and they strive for improvement. Heck, I've had work crews get pissed because I told them they couldn't work on Thanksgiving.
So rewarding kids for grades has put a solid price on cheating, and will eventually result in kids saying: Pay me or I won't go to school.
Heinlein lampooned this in Stranger in a Strange land; perhaps those giving out money should actually read some literature.
I really would love to see a statistical analysis of the kids' tests.
I can honestly say that, at a minimum, 95% of what I learned in school was worthless. And, even though I'm a college graduate (3.7 GPA) - if you were to give me a 7th grade history exam, I would fail.
In fact, I'd probably fail most 7th grade exams.
The subject matter is pretty specific, even in 7th grade. Even a book I did read in 7th grade English class, now, is all but forgotten. If it was a book I enjoyed, I might remember, vaguely, the plot. Most English books stunk and I remember nothing of them.
Essentially everything I learned in school was to earn a piece of paper that said, 'This guy has a degree'. Even in my major, in college, the majority of what I learned had no use in my day-to-day activities as an adult. I studied mainframes programming languages in college. JCL, COBOL, ASM, a class in C. My first job out of college was programming in .Net - something I picked up from books while going to school.
I'd go so far as to say the *vast majority* of students are not learning for any particular reason at all. In the lower grades, they do what they are told. By college, most of the students, particularly the ones that are going to graduate - have selected a major that is going to lead to a job that will both pay their bills and be tolerable.
As I said. The home school "wackos" and the public school "general public" describe the public school systems goals to be the same thing. Unfortunately academic education is not it.
My gym teacher made > 100k to teach kids to play softball and basketball. He was also the 'trainer' so I guess he was involved with the sports teams.
Gym teacher.
> 100k.
This is in a town where the median *household* income is 60k.
Just sayin....
You mean that you're going to pay more money to the teachers that teach to the test rather than the ones that actually teach anything useful.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
I had to read your post a few times, mostly because I have such a hard time relating to it. You are implying either directly or indirectly that you coast or have coasted in school because there's no money in it. Also, it seems to be that you inherently find no value in education.
Well, I agree almost 100% with him.
I coasted in school because I hated it. I kicked ass on tests, but once I hit high school, I pretty much stopped doing homework. I graduated, barely, after failing one required class twice and passing an "alternate" version of that class the third time.
It's not that I found no inherent value in education. I spent plenty of time at home learning and practicing things that I cared about, and that's why I now have a well-paying job that I enjoy.
The problem was that the "education" offered at school was, with a few exceptions, wholly uninteresting. I didn't, and still don't, see any inherent value in answering several pages of questions about the plot of Watership Down, or memorizing the list of Indian tribes that lived in this region centuries ago. I saw no inherent value in getting high grades at the end of the quarter, either, so I didn't.
Of all the memories I have, none of the really good ones are about money. All of them are about something I worked hard over a period of time and felt proud of either the accomplishment or the praise of others, sometimes both. I remember skating backwards for the first time. I remember getting my dad to come to one of my shows. An odd memory I have is working hard for my dad one summer doing dreadful work in the hot summer sun, but it was for the purpose of helping him build the house our family lived in.
Do you have any fond memories of doing things that serve no greater purpose and end up being useless to you in the future? Digging holes just to fill them back in, perhaps? Spending all day counting the grains of sand in a jar, only to find that the person who asked already has the answer and doesn't care anyway?
Because that's what school felt like most of the time. I have plenty of fond memories of accomplishing things that I worked hard at, but none of them were school projects.
And in fact, the best memories I have of schoolwork are for the work I got the lowest grades on: the anti-prohibition essay that resulted in me being the only kid to fail DARE, the essay on Fahrenheit 451 that focused on an incidental bit of technology rather than the philosophical issues the teacher wanted me to write about, the epilogue to The Grapes of Wrath in which I imitated Steinbeck's style and expressed my dislike for that tedious novel.
However, I have found that the less tangible rewards (time is a big one for me now) are far more rewarding.
I agree, time is a great reward. That's why I chose to use my time for things I cared about instead of wasting it on meaningless schoolwork.
Money is a great incentive for higher grades, and if scoring higher is the goal, then paying kids for schoolwork is the way to achieve it. But I think that's the wrong goal. Grades don't matter. We don't gain anything by convincing kids to work harder at meaningless tasks that provide no real benefit for them or anyone else.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
You gave us the answer already. If a child is properly socially adjusted, he or she will immediately shun those peers who don't help the group in some way, and those peers will either learn to adjust or they will be left behind. Society is all about group function, and a classroom ought to be a reflection of that. The issue is that instead of allowing children to partake in a society inside the classroom the same way they would outside it and to punish each other for transgressions, we have raised the THINK OF THE CHILDREN banner to protect the outliers and denied the classroom society its ability to function normally. Then we put a harried, poorly educated single adult in front of the class and expect that adult to moderate everything in order to produce the same social outcomes that the class would naturally grow into on its own (with guidance, of course - and with proper modeling from the outside world. One more great reason to go on field trips and community service outings is to widen the range of social experiences a child has!).
Now, I don't advocate leaving kids behind just because they don't "fit in". I think everyone needs to have some place to fit... but if a child is having issues in a regular classroom it'd be nice if there were more alternatives than special education or juvenile detention centers. I've known kids who in 4th or 5th grade, having come from working-class homes, decided that they wanted to continue the blue-collar tradition. It's not a great choice but it would make a lot more sense to help the kid understand that by sending them out to apprentice themselves for a year with a tradesman or trade school (and maybe they will like it - and there's nothing wrong with training more plumbers and mechanics!) than it does to do what we currently do: "It's school! You NEED it! You'll never get by in the outside world with a 5th grade education, so shut up and do your homework!"
Education is the cornerstone of democracy and it's fantastic that we are setting our bar "high" (yeah, right) for our most precious resource - our future leaders. However, not everyone can be president. Why not encourage trade work and usable skills to help kids realize why reading and math are necessary, instead of pretending they're useless as long as they're students? As a side effect, I'm pretty sure kids who are proud of what they're doing in school ALSO get better grades, plus gain better understanding... and you don't have to bribe anyone!
I say this by first acknowledging that I have pretty much every book Heinlein wrote. But please do not bring in his libertarian wank dreams into a discussion about what is real literature. Heinlein's ideas worked in his books because he rigged the stories so that they worked in his books. Period.
He spung a good tale, and I've worn out more than a few copies of his stuff as a kid. But basing your life decisions on what a grumpy old man who had problems deciding if he was a libertarian or a facist WISHED the world was like rather than actually view the world head on, is as bad as doing what you claim those people you are snidely insulting have screwed up on.
Discipline (bootstraping or whever else you want to call it), is simply motivation. Yes, some people in bad situations often get the motivation to better their place in society simply to avoid being stuck in that situation for the rest of their life.
But that isn't the ONLY motivation in life and frankly, if you think the only way someone can be motivated is to have a shitty childhood, I suggest you put down your Frank Miller comics and rejoin the rest of us in society.
No, GPA shouldn't be the only measurement of someone's value in life. And it's extremely easy for some people to simply coast through most of their childhood and get to the end of it with a high GPA and absolutely no fucking idea how to survive in the real world. But that doesn't mean all of them have or that sitting back and saying "Fuck it, good grades for for nerds" is going to make you any more successful.
95% of what you learned in school was worthless?
So sad.
You know, I did a computing degree in Computer Science. I graduated in 1976.
I reckon I used most of it. Yup, even COBOL.
But what I learned, most essentially, was nothing about computing, as such.
I learned how to solve problems.
I learned how to learn new things.
I learned how to find things from book and people (no Internet then) and use that.
I learned how to - learn.
And it sounds like you did too.
From your parents, your friends, your school teachers, your university education you learned how to find out about your world and solve problems.
On the way, you probably picked up a stack of things you might not think useful - the capital of France, the name of the highest mountain in the world, the currency used in Germany (oops, that's changed - are you keeping up? .. I suspect you are). And you learned to stay up to date. This is good. You are a much more interesting person to talk to than someone who knows none of those things (not necessarily nicer, but probably more interesting).
Not educating people has been tried - it doesn't go well. In general, the countries that give the best education to the highest proportion of its citizens tend to be at the top of the human development index - and that that do badly end up at the bottom. Coincidence? No, I don't think so. (USA is not at the top - 15th - sad, isn't it? [Disclaimer - I live in Australia, at 4th position, so I'm biased])
Learning for a reason - perhaps not. No. I mean, there just aren't that many people that speak Latin, for example, but it is still fairly widely learned.
Again, what is learning about? If you learn just one thing you are going to do badly. When I studied my degree, the logical thing to do would have been to learn COBOL. Just COBOL. That's not what happened - and my life is far richer than it would have been.
So, keep learning. Don't decry your past learning - you are a student all your life.
"Cats like plain crisps"
Having been both home-schooled and public-schooled for various parts of my education (I attended high school and elementary school, but not middle school), I can say that homeschooling is as good as the student. The "socializing" argument is easily reversed: for the outcasts (like my brother, who was teased to the point of tears on a daily basis because of his writing disability), or for those who have better things to do (I wanted to study my computer science. Learning the same elementary algebra 3 years in a row at a public elementary school just doesn't help that task along), homeschooling is a reprieve from the "socializing" that is doing a lot more harm than good.
I believe that homeschooling versus public schooling versus any other option that might be available needs to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Treating children as if they all learn in the same way, at the same pace, or with their age group just doesn't work. Homeschooling isn't for everyone. Neither are public schools. Both can be equally damaging to someone who isn't suited to the environment. And the "lack of socializing" is becoming less and less of an issue as the internet becomes more prevalent (and, there are plenty of places to go other than a school to interact with your peers. But your peers aren't always those who share your age -- as in my brother's case, or TFA's case, where the age group taunts the kid or is so far behind the kid that there's no comparison).
My $0.02. Probably biased :)
The "Secret" to raising smart kids is to instill in them a work ethic.
You know, every person I've ever known professionally who used the term "work ethic" was so into monitoring what other people were doing that they got lost in a fit of cynical self despair. True story:
"Worker#1" was always on time, worked a full shift, clocked in and out, and produced mediocre work.
"Worker#2" was frequently late, goofed off at work occasionally, forgot to clock in or out, and produced outstanding work.
Worker#1 said to me "I don't know why you allow Worker#2 to goof off - I work much harder than he does and am always on time.
I replied "He gets his work done on time, and I wouldn't come down on you if you decided to goof off occasionally or arrive late."
The reply was "I wouldn't do that, because I have a work ethic!"
What Worker#1 failed to recognize was that it was the results that mattered, not how hard you believed yourself to be working. It's not just that - in "creative" industries (web development, in this case), goofing off is vitally important. Creativity can't be forced, and it's been my experience that the brain needs to rest to be able to foster creativity properly. Spending your "down" time mentally criticizing your fellow employees and obsessing over "work ethic" just makes you unhappy.
My wife and I have decided we're going to home school. Researching this, we've found that studies show that children that are home school are statistically better socialized. Are there plenty of cases that we can all think of where parents home school just to shelter their children? Sure, but overall, people that enter home schooling with the right attitude about engaging children with people outside the home have children that are better off. First off, much of the time spent in school isn't spent socializing, it's spent sitting quietly a few feet from friends, whom you aren't allowed to talk to for most of the day. With one day a week around other home school students plus a few activities, a student can get the same amount of socialization that the institution taught student gets in a whole week.
Plus we have the opportunity to have our students go and experience the things they want to learn first hand from some place, and interact with adults. We also remove them from an atmosphere where many students punish their peers for success, and where bullying is prevalent by underachievers against achievers.
But the real reason we've decided to home school is that by every metric that yields success in school, home schooling is better than institution schooling. Those things that really seem to matter are parent interest and participation and student to teacher ratio. Even when home schooling multiple children at a time, the parent does most of the instruction in a one-on-one or a one-on-two basis, and most of the learning comes from reading material that could have been assigned in the school and done at home, or in lab activities. Home school children have a much higher self motivation to learn in a home school situation, because the class moves at their speed, and is best taught tailored to their interests.
I partially disagree. While this is the situation for many college students, there actually are quite a few opportunities out there, both paid and unpaid, that can advance students in their field of study significantly.
How many of these students actually consult with their career services departments (and I mean hunt them down) to gather internship opportunities? How many students get out there and network with working professionals (save workshops and stuff) to extend their contact pool? How many students waste an incredible amount of time partying, drinking and living the high life?
Example: I was in the bathroom taking care of business, and I overheard two seniors talking about vacation. One of them had the option of either landing an internship or taking off the entire summer, flying to Vegas and just "chillin'." He decided to chill for the summer, and explicitly rely on his parents to come both the vacation and any outstanding loans and such.
Now, to give benefit of the doubt, he could have been in school for three summers, or was already working really hard and needed a break. However, something tells me that neither of those were the case.
This is one example out of many. To say that college kids can do "nothing" to expand their opportunities is horribly one-sided.
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.
Because blue collar work, "working with your hands", is shunned and looked down at. You're getting dirty. You're using your body and not your brain. I'm fairly sure, even here you will find quite a few people who consider people who learn a trade "too dumb to do something smart".
And salaries reflect that. Unjustified, if you ask me. I tried my hand at a few "blue collar" part time jobs while getting my degree. Money is always welcome, but this money was hard earned. Not to mention that I am unable to put stones on top of each other in a way that they stay that way.
Now, I'd be lying if I said I'm unhappy that my "brainy" work of programming and IT administration is better paid than plumbing and bricklaying. Hey, even I am a little selfish. I just don't understand it. If you'd ask me what's harder, it's a no brainer. On one hand pushing a few buttons on a keyboard, on the other lugging around a few 100 pounds of cement and bricks...
And if you ask me what's more important... well, try to live in a well secured server...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I would argue that the internet would be far, far, far more of a destructive way to socialize someone than any public school.
My evidence: furries, livejournal, facebook, 4chan, 2girls1cup, tubgirl, and goatse.
Work that will be replaced by robots in 10-20 years (I'm not saying construction sites will be 100% robotic, there will be 5-10 employees on site but they won't be moving bricks around) should be looked down on, so people don't accidentally dedicate their lives to it.