<p>Apparently, NY has set aside $50+ million for a pilot program aimed at kids in low achieving NY school districts. Kids as young as fourth graders receive $25 for good grades, $50 for taking the PSAT, and $600 for graduating. We've always been motivated in some part by money ("go to college so you'll have a good job in the future") but isn't this teaching our kids to expect extrinsic rewards in exchange for doing something (going to school) that's supposed to be helping themselves?</p>
<p>Is there any other job which takes 12 years in order to see some kind of a payback for work well done? That's way too long for some people to stay focused on the task without a reward. If $1000 bucks keeps a kid in school long enough to get a diploma I'd be happy to pitch in.</p>
<p>Norcal, I can see why this is troubling, in a way, but the defining difference between middle class and poor kids is the ability to plan and think long-term; more so than the dollar figures of parents' income.</p>
<p>No, I'd say it's retraining kids who were raised without thinking of long-term rewards to work over the long-haul and experience some, any reward for their delayed gratification.</p>
<p>In young kids, we use extrinsic rewards (stickers, stars) for some years until the kid gets excited about learning and discovers the intrinsic rewards like pride over letter grades. It's a weaning process off of extrinsic and onto intrinsic rewards, for all children. You move from the concrete to the abstract. That;s for small children. </p>
<p>I wondered about $600 reward for graduating, until I remembered that dropouts cost the state so much more. $600 may be a bargain!</p>
<p>I'm sad that this is necessary but without motivation there can be no learning. I find it clever and disgusting at the same time; realpolitik.</p>
<p>All I would do would be to tweak it so that attendance is factored in, too. More than 20 unexcused absences per year ("year" = 180 instructional days), and regardless of the grade, no reward.</p>
<p>There's a lot more to the story than that. parents are going to be paid for taking kids to the doctor, attending parent teacher conferences and other such things. Students will receive $3000 for passing the regents exams required to graduate. this is a lot of money and it's beginning as a pilot program using private money, but the goal is to eventually use tax money. THose of us who have jobs here are taxed too much as it is. Enough is enough. Oh, and attendance is factored in. That's simply a separate payment.</p>
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parents are going to be paid for taking kids to the doctor, attending parent teacher conferences and other such things.
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<p>But when you balance things out which is more cost effective in the long range? Taking preventative measures; going for annual doctors & dentist vists, parent conferences to ward off potential problems or treating something once it becomes a problem (illness, dropout rates, teen pregnancy, etc) all which your tax dollars are already paying for through medicaid, aid to dependent children (welfare), funding the school system (where a student is legally allowed to attend day high school until 21). Sounds like instead of "taking more of your tax $$" it sounds like it could be a tax savings if the programs are successful.</p>
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Oh, and attendance is factored in.
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<p>If you get the chance, I would recommend talking to the GC at any NYC public high school to ask them how much of their time and resources are used for 407s, planning interviews, AIDP (attendance improvement/dropout prevention), ACS calls along with follow-up paperwork, and other mandatory attention intiatives that eat away at their day and take away from them having the time to adequately provide college counseling and guidance to your kid (an issue which seems to be a major complaint about GCs). </p>
<p>If attendance were not a problem that had to take up so much of the schools resources there could bbe so much more done that would be directly related to teaching and learning.</p>
<p>Sybbie, I disagree. As we both live in NYC, we may see many of the same things and based upon past history, I suspsect that this will be yet another vehicle for fraud and abuse. In a perfect world, perhaps a leg up would be beneficial, but, this will be just another way to suck money out of my paycheck and away from my family. I am so deathly sick of that. Oh and tax savings in New York? Good one! The ruling class will just find another way to spend my money, on something else with which I disagree.</p>
<p>I am quite sure that there will be a system of checks and balances. I am more tired of having money sucked out of my paycheck when people use the emergency room as doctors offices where preventive medicine can and regular doctors vistis can alleviate some of this.</p>
<p>As I stated in a previous post, I had to opportunity this year to be in all of this from the inside and I can tell you first hand the majority of a GCs time is spent on attendance related issues and reporting to the division of youth services. </p>
<p>I wouldn't wish planning interviews & AIDPs and the amount of time and paperwork done to complete them on an enemy, but APs, and principals are constantly on GCs cases to get them done because the information does trickle up.</p>
<p>If we don't find a way to help students be successful and become productive contributors to society, you will have even more money sucked out of your pay check having to pay for them in terms of medicaid, welfare, police overtime, court costs, prisons, food stamps, etc.</p>
<p>Sybbie, welfare fraud shows us that there is no history of checks and balances in New York. Also, please don't presume to think you know what I know and what experiences I have in terms of education and the school system because you have no idea.</p>
<p>I agree with finding ways to help students be successful, but I don't agree that this is it. Intelligent people of good will can view different paths to a similar goal. With the taxpaying population of New York shrinking, respect for that money is as important as any other priority. There really is a point at which the economy of the city becomes untenable, as companies relocate and taxpayers relocate. Keeping taxpayers here should be a major, major priority and it never is. The point I was trying to make is twofold: first that fraud is and always has been a major problem that will surely be rampant with this plan, and second that I don't believe that this particular plan will necessarily solve any of the underlying problems. I am particularly amused that Nanny Mike is citing the use of a program of this type in Mexico as a positive precedent. We all know how much sucess Mexico's having with its social problems.</p>
<p>I think that this is worth a shot as a pilot program, although my concern is the opposite of some here. Quick money for doing well in school removes, IMO, incentives for long-term planning. It might possibly keep a typically disengaged student in school long enough to come around to the idea that there is light at the end of the tunnel, but I worry that it could also leave that kid with the idea that education is not worth taking seriously unless there is a fairly immediate return of a few bucks. Still, kids will do a lot worse things than studey for an exam or get a library card for some easy money, so I think this is worth a try, especially since it is privately funded. (The payments for non-school activities, however, seem to me to have a clearer benefit in that they can save money for the state down the line, especially in the medical arena.) I just hope that the planners have in place some group of control students or some other way to meausre the success or failure of the program down the road. And neeedles to say, pay for study also won't work without the other neccessary component sof a good school system--committed teachers, sufficient funding, challenging curricula etc etc </p>
<p>As to fraud, well lets face it. Anything can be tmade fraduelent, whether in the public or private sector. We just went through a few years with Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, Tyco etc etc etc. Poor people have no monopoly on costing taxpayers and middle class people lots of money through fraud.</p>
<p>There was something in CA for a little while (one or two years?) when Gray Davis was gov., I think (I'm sure some CA posters will remember and can help with details) where kids in public schools got $1,000 scholarships for doing well on some tests in high school. It didn't last. When the budget got tight, the program was axed.</p>
<p>Zooser,</p>
<p>I am not assuming anything about you (and I am sorry if it has come off that way). </p>
<p>However, I am writing about my own first hand experience working as a GC in a Title I, NYC public high school that has a less than 50% 4 year graduation rate, which is currently a SINI, the targeted population for these programs and the exorboriant amount of time of their day which is spent on attendance related issues that take away from the business of counseling and guidance. This was vastly different and very eye opening when compared to one of ther top NYC magnet schools my child attended. </p>
<p>As always in these types of conversations YMMV, and if you wouldn't mind sharing your experiences that would be great because there is always something new to be learned.</p>
<p>I think a big difference, mstee, is that the CA program offered scholarship incentives while this program gives cash for even the most mundane things like getting a library card or going to school or going to the doctor. Who knows where that cash would go? How do you know that the kid would actually use the library card to borrow a book? Or that the parent would actually follow the doctor's orders? </p>
<p>For the record, I didn't support the CA program either. Getting the scores needed to get those $1000 scholarships was a piece of cake at my top public HS situated in a wealthy suburb. The only worse than paying the poor to get an education would be paying the rich to get an education.</p>
<p>I would be totally in favor of making scholarships be the incentives, rather than cash. If a poor and at-risk student passed all five regents exams, I would be honored to award that student a $3000 scholarship to the college of his choice. If he has 95% attendance, give him $500 for the college of his choice. Tie this into continuing of education and I'm totally on board. I am not interested in paying another mother to attend her child's teacher conference. We already pay for medical, enough is enough. It's been found that holding report cards for a parent to pick it up realy does increase attendance at PT conferences. that works. There are plenty of incentives that don't involve such a direct transfer of income from one person to another.</p>
<p>I agree, the California program was preferable. I had already taken my kids out of the public school at that point, so it didn't have any effect on my kids. I knew it would never last, though. This other program, however, sounds like a nightmare -- administering all these nickel and dime payments would cost a fortune.</p>
<p>I might add that I doubt that kids are going to try to get good grades for the 25.00. Maybe there might be a few, but most of the kids that would collect would probably get the grades without the 25.00. I hate to admit this, but I tried to bribe my boys to get better grades when they were younger, neither one would accept the bribe!-- That is, they just weren't motivated to get better grades even for pay. Ah, if only it were so easy!</p>
<p>Putting uneducated kids in prison and paying for emergency room visits for preventable health problems saps much more out of paychecks than this plan ever would. This is a lot of money for some of these kids and contains the element of future advancement. It was pointed in "Freakonomics" that the kids sold drugs for minimum wage or less and risked their lives doing so because there was a promise of possible, however unlikely advancement that they did not otherwise see. The notion that future planning is not part of these kids' repertoires was pretty much dispelled.</p>
<p>Hey, if paying people 600.00 will get those who otherwise wouldn't graduate to graduate, I'm all for it. </p>
<p>I simply don't believe it will work. The kids that I know that are having problems are not going to have them solved by promising them 600.00 at graduation.</p>
<p>Somehow, it seems to give the wrong message to the kids about whom their good grades benefit. I have no trouble coughing up money for merit scholarships to make it possible for people to go to college, but rewarding a grade or regents score as intrinsically worthwhile projects a skewed set of priorities IMHO.</p>
<p>And what would happen to the higher performing kids who decided to tank it? They would loose allowance, no mall visits, etc. The monetary incentives are already built-in for these kids. Why not build some in for the less fortunate kids as well?</p>
<p>There is a charter elementary school in Oakland, I believe, where the principal gives the kids money for various things, but there is much more to it than just giving them money, from what I understand.</p>
<p>We're going to see a lot of top scorers from those districts, I'm sure.</p>