Sole Morality

It pays to make the grade

This isn't your parents' $10 per "A" on your report card type program either. No, the school district will be opening bank accounts for the students to facilitate bi-weekly deposits of their good behavior money. How much money would require that? Well, a good kids can earn up to $100 a month every month for just behaving themselves (good manners), getting good grades, and showing up to class on time and regularly. That's a chunk of change!

Does anyone else get a sick feeling in their stomach about this? It's not necessarily the kids getting money for good grades. That's been around for a while. Parents have been doing that for a long time. Some of New York City's schools did that specifically for Advanced Placement testing with underwhelming results. But that was a privately funded incentive program. And maybe that is where I am a bit hung up on this.

It's sad enough that the schools have to be parents to these kids in motivating them to do well (we'll forget about sex education, discipline, early morning programs, after school programs, and all the other ways the schools sub for parents), but now the taxpayers are having to cough up an extra $2.7 million for it in that school district. I imagine other solutions have been tried, I just find it hard to believe that that is a) the best solution out there and b) will even be effectively in any significant way in the long run.

Maybe I'm wrong, but something doesn't sit right with me about $2.7 million being taken from taxpayers to pay students to do what they should already be doing and what taxpayers are already paying for in the first place.