The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
Money for Study and your Chicks for Free
Shinto
__BANNED USERS regular
__BANNED USERS regular
So I was listening to an interview last night on NPR with a prominent education thinker who died recently and he said something that I thought was great. He said, "children work for the same reason adults work" to get some kind of reward. In his own life he had worked very hard as a child because he wanted to go to college and at that point only about 6% of Americans were getting in.
He was bemoaning the fact that getting into college no longer motivates children because no matter how bad a student you are you can almost always find some college that will take you.
So the thought occurred to me this morning - why not pay kids to go to school? Every week they could get a paycheck for between zero and $50 depending on how well they perform as students in terms of attending class, behaving well, doing homework etc.
So I checked to see how much that would cost. Let's say you start paying kids seventh grade. In my state of New Hampshire we have 36 weeks of school and around 100,000 kids in 7-12. So if the system is set up so the average kid makes $30 per week the total cost per year of the program would be $108 million dollars - which is roughly 6% of what New Hampshire spends on education ever year. It seems affordable enough.
Basically I think this would motivate kids and maybe even change the dynamic that sometimes occurs where kids who get good grades are picked on. Parents would most likely insist that some portion of the money go into savings for college, so it would help with the ridiculous cost of that.
So what do you guys think of that?
He was bemoaning the fact that getting into college no longer motivates children because no matter how bad a student you are you can almost always find some college that will take you.
So the thought occurred to me this morning - why not pay kids to go to school? Every week they could get a paycheck for between zero and $50 depending on how well they perform as students in terms of attending class, behaving well, doing homework etc.
So I checked to see how much that would cost. Let's say you start paying kids seventh grade. In my state of New Hampshire we have 36 weeks of school and around 100,000 kids in 7-12. So if the system is set up so the average kid makes $30 per week the total cost per year of the program would be $108 million dollars - which is roughly 6% of what New Hampshire spends on education ever year. It seems affordable enough.
Basically I think this would motivate kids and maybe even change the dynamic that sometimes occurs where kids who get good grades are picked on. Parents would most likely insist that some portion of the money go into savings for college, so it would help with the ridiculous cost of that.
So what do you guys think of that?
Shinto on
0
Posts
Only .06% of their education spending a year? That number seems really off.
Statemaster says the yearly spending is 1.7 billion.
I'd guess New Hampshire spends a little more on education than states where motivation and better education is in even greater need.
I can hear Republicans everywhere shitting a brick.
College is still not a cheap endeavor regardless of whether or not you get accepted with your 1.8 GPA to Joemamatown Community College. In that sense, there's still some exclusivity involved. You'd still have to work hard to just be there. And JCC isn't exactly the same quality and respectable education you'd get at a school that would laugh at your below average test scores.
108 million / 1.7 billion = .06 or 6%
Not .06%.
That probably includes post-secondary insitutions too. Now I see why the budget is that high.
What's Statemaster? Time for Google, methinks. Sounds like a handy site.
Though, now that I think about it, since I left school, they've developed online grade reveals to parents and guardians (not just end of semester stuff, like every quiz and test and paper), and that was one of my sister's motivations for getting straight A's.
Honestly, though, what you're talking about would involve nothing less than a complete re-evaluation of our educational priorities, and Americans HATE honest societal re-evaluation.
O yeah, it's early in the morning. I am accordingly embarrassed.
In any case, still an affordable program.
Plus I'm pretty sure the teachers would riot when they realize that their students are collectively making more than they are*. Also, when you reward kids to do something, like.. giving them money to play video games, and then you take away that reward, they cut back on playing video games to a shocking degree. This is why electrician's houses are always not wired quite right.
I'd like to see it happen, maybe even in a small setting, just to see the results. Low income children tend to do worse because the parents don't help them out at home, and if the child was bringing home a little paycheck, they may give them some more attention. Which sounds really fucked up and awful, but if it works, who cares.
*You would think that the primary concern for most teachers is the advancement of their students. You couldn't be more wrong.
I don't think it is true that all parents would appropriate the entire sum for college savings. I'm sure almost all parents would allow their children to enjoy some of the money they earned in order to reinforce the good behavior.
In any case, I fail to see that even if the entire amount of a little over $7,000 is saved this would cripple a child's ability to obtain the financial aid necessary to attend college.
I'm pretty sure that teachers make more than $30 per week.
I think this would make my top twenty, if only because it is cheaper and easier to implement than other proposals that I can think of.
Actually, the difference between their valuing of $30 per week and the extra work required to get that money would be what might cause problems.
My instinct is that you would just widen divisions, with those kids who work hard or are smart enough to do well without effort happily being rewarded, and those kids who have to put in a lot of effort for little reward getting pissed off. Similar studies of such reward structures suggest that you just entrench differences: you would get a some kids at the top trying a little harder to get full rewards, and a some kids at the bottom deciding that the paltry $5 they get for trying quite a lot harder is unfair, and do even less than previously. I'm not at home so I can't find the book I remember these from, but I understand it was a pretty common phenomenon if anyone else knows of some figures.
I don't know, however, what the effect would be across the board, whether it would raise performance. IE it might make the curve less equal, but nonetheless raise it as a whole.
This wouldn't create higher education, this would create a new group of kids who work at the minimum possible level to get the cash. A college diploma and any possible knowledge gained from such an experience would be accidental.
How about this for an argument against it? The price of drugs will *skyrocket.*
I don't know.
Usually the problems associated with testing regimes involve the incentives it places on teachers. They mold the curriculum to the test etc.
This would be incentives for the children. I would presume that no such distortion would take place.
Although I can see children deprioritizing school work which is for some reason not involved in their pay evaluation.
Teachers in general are under paid. I'm pretty sure that the school paying their 20 students each $30 per week would piss them off.
One reason why they don't understand the value of money though is that they don't have any. I think this could help.
There are some schemes like this in the UK already. I don't think they start as early as Shinto's idea (in fact if my understanding is right they start where his idea ends) but here's a link anyway: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4118840.stm
The idea is to pay kids to go to grades 7-12, not to college.
Maybe.
Maybe they would appreciate the improved work environment they stepped into every day if kids had a stake in showing up, behaving and doing their work. Which is what would happen if the thing worked.
If the thing didn't work, then there is a bigger more obvious reason not to do it than teachers being dissatisfied. Like that it doesn't work.
That's not a bad point.
I wonder if there is any way to surmount that particular difficulty. Improvement bonuses or larger relative payoffs toward the bottom of the scale.
It's an interesting idea, but I really don't think it makes sense on the grade-school level.
ITT I fail both reading and math.
I guess I should start looking for janitorial work.:P
At the moment the only parents doing this to their children are the ones who value a good education for their children or the prestige that comes along with having a "smart kid". If there's money to be earned, I fear even more parents will force their children to pour all their time into studying.
I dunno, the idea of little kids making money sounds like something that might work if the parents would not be greedy assholes.
You'd have to balance that against a fear of them playing favorites or abusing it some other way I'd say.
@durandal4532 - I think that it is fair to be concerned about kids taking only easy courses. I'm not sure that isn't a problem that some mechanism wouldn't be able to counteract.
As to it changing the attitude towards aspiring toward a profession - I don't know. That doesn't really ring true with me. A lot of people go to work every day with the intent both earn a paycheck and to get ahead in the long term and get into a more successful career.
EDIT:
Oh right, Fryer:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/19/nyregion/19schools.html?ref=education
* Sign In to E-Mail or Save This
* Print
* Reprints
* Share
o Del.icio.us
o Digg
o Facebook
o Newsvine
o Permalink
By JENNIFER MEDINA
Published: June 19, 2007
New York City students could earn as much as $500 a year for doing well on standardized tests and showing up for class in a new program to begin this fall, city officials announced yesterday. And the Harvard economist who created the program is joining the inner circle of Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein, according to an official briefed on the hiring.
The economist, Roland G. Fryer, who has published several studies on racial inequality in public schools, met this month with school principals around the city to push his program, which uses money raised privately.
Both Mr. Klein and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg have been eager to hear Professor Fryer’s thoughts on how to reverse the persistent lagging of poor and minority students, who make up most of the city’s public school enrollment. But educators have been skeptical, saying students have to love learning for its own sake, not for cash prizes.
Now Professor Fryer will be the Department of Education’s “chief equality officer,” a member of the chancellor’s senior staff. The title is meant to reflect his primary focus — to improve the performance of black and Hispanic students.
The school incentive program is part of the mayor’s wider antipoverty initiative, which also includes other cash payments, all raised privately, to influence behavior and reduce poverty. Details of the various incentive programs were announced yesterday by Linda Gibbs, the deputy mayor for health and human services, at a briefing at City Hall. The incentive programs are expected to attract more than 2,500 families in Harlem; Brownsville and East New York in Brooklyn; and the Morris Heights and East Tremont sections of the Bronx, she said.
Cash incentives for adults will include $150 a month for keeping a full-time job and $50 a month for having health insurance. Families will also receive as much as $50 per month per child for high attendance rates in school, as well as $25 for attending parent-teacher conferences.
The city has already raised much of the $53 million it needs for the program, Ms. Gibbs said. The effort, which officials said was the broadest ever tried in this country to pay poor people to develop good habits, is modeled in part on one in Mexico.
Although Professor Fryer helped devise some of the broader incentives like the payments for high attendance rates, his main proposals involve payments to children for doing well on tests.
Under his plan, fourth-grade students will receive up to $25 for a perfect score on each of 10 standardized tests throughout the year. Seventh-grade students will be able to earn twice as much — $50 per test, for a total of up to $500. Fourth graders will receive $5 just for taking the test, and seventh graders will get $10.
Officials expect up to 40 schools to participate this fall, with a total of 9,000 students, in the pilot phase of the program, which will be monitored by Professor Fryer. After two years, they said, they will evaluate it for possible expansion.
Principals in the system’s empowerment initiative — who have more autonomy to run their schools — can choose to join the program.
Similar, smaller programs for cash incentives to raise schoolchildren’s performance have been put in place elsewhere in the country. In Chelsea, Mass., for instance, students can receive $25 for perfect attendance. And in Dallas, some schools hand over $2 for every book a child reads.
Despite the criticism of the program from some teachers and principals, some community leaders praised Professor Fryer’s idea yesterday as an inventive way to encourage students to do well in school.
“I’m willing to say let’s see what works,” said Darwin Davis, the president of the Urban League. “We are in a capitalist society and people are motivated by money across race and across class, so why not?”
But Mr. Davis also cautioned that the amounts of money being offered were relatively paltry in New York.
“I wish $50 could be enough for an insurance payment, but that’s not going to be the case,” he said, wondering aloud how many tests students would need to pass to buy the latest video game.
Sol Stern, a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, called the idea a “insult to every hard-working parent.”
Mr. Stern has said he would support paying teachers more to work in low-performing schools.
But he cautioned against giving too much credence to the notion that money would prod students. He said the mayor was being a “sucker for the market system.”
I think the Masters programs at colleges need to have more scholarship opportunity. Like if you have a cum laude status then you can stay in school for your masters automatically.
My only objection to the Shinto plan is that I agree that kids have no value of a dollar, and we need to be careful to not teach them this "money grows on trees" philosophy. There needs to be a way to let them enjoy the money, but not loose sight of why they're earning it. Other than that it sounds very good.
Also, there should be a match system for the teachers depending on the number of kids that get into this program, factored evenly for the teachers that have to teach remedial classes. Their money can go into christmas bonuses or early retirement funds.
However, as you can imagine there is a fair bit of opposition to this, with the argument that government shouldn't be providing rewards for children to achieve at school or college because it sends out the wrong message.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
I agree completely. I'm in college, and I know what good 30 bucks can do for me in a pinch (dinner for weeks thanks to the ever so cheap asian market) however, I think the point of trying to improve the educational system in America is to close gaps like this in our society, where some people are way on top and others are at the bottom of the scale. What do you propose they do about the richer students that can afford extra help and thus get paid more in the end? I don't think its very fair to those students that try their hardest but don't have the resources to get tons of extra help, etc.
Besides, give nerdier kids more of a reason for bullies to beat them up! Haha, everyone would know who to steal the lunch money from
Yeah, but this way the kids can afford to hire adam baldwin as a bodyguard........
It's not actually the top & bottom of the whole scale that is the issue, it's more top & bottom within each grade. Basic problem is that the renumeration ($30) and the grading (ie A grades = $50, B grades = $40 or such) are less divisible than the range of student abilities (ie thousands of students). This is a problem common to all such grading structures, that you naturally get people at the bottom and lower of the scale for each grade who are usually aware of their place (ie when you get 59% on a test and record a C, where 50-59 = C, 60-69 = B, you feel a bit peeved) and that the grading system doesn't actually reflect their effort or score.
So you get whole range of people within the system whose psyche (and thus future effort etc) is influenced by their grading, not simply the very top and very bottom.
At the same time, as I said it might well raise the curve as a whole, but at the cost of being an unequal incentive. That would still justify it in my opinion, because the realistic purpose of education policy isn't to produce educational equality (though that might be the stated goal), but to educate the whole as best as possible.
That wasn't actually my point, but it's a good one. Somehow I hadn't even considered the variable effect of $30 on a student according to how rich they / their family is or where they live (pricing), which really should be blindingly obvious!
Are you fucking kidding me?
Teachers are one of the lowest paid state groups. It's amazing that they even do their job at all.
I don't really care as long as more students try harder.
It's not like I made this suggestion out of sympathy for the unpaid work of pustulent teenagers. So what if Ricky Rich ends up with an extra $15 a week more than Joe Average as long as Ricky and Joe are working harder than they would otherwise.