Posted by
Juliana Johnson on Tuesday, October 14, 2008 5:25:46 PM
William Butler Yeats once wrote, "Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire."
The
city education establishments in Chicago, New York and Washington,
D.C., beg to differ. The leaders of these abysmally performing systems
believe education is indeed the filling of a pail - with money. For a
change, their latest gambit is not aimed at funneling taxpayer dollars
into bureaucracies but rather raising private funds to pay students for
good grades.
Chicago Public Schools became the latest to adopt
the "Green for Grade$" test program whereby a control group of 5,000
freshmen at 20 high schools will get graduated cash payments for
academic performance: $50 for an A; $35 for a B; and $20 for a C.
CPS
Superintendent Arne Duncan told the Chicago Tribune, "I'm always trying
to level the playing field. This is the kind of incentive middle-class
families have had for decades."
Duncan, like others in charge of
government monopolies, is defiantly unbounded by his own hypocrisy. For
it is Mr. Duncan and his friends running the teacher's unions that
oppose pay-for-performance reforms such as merit pay for teachers who
produce results in the classroom.
Speaking of the incentivized
middle class, a more reflective person might contemplate why
middle-class families, who make up a significant portion of the 3
million people living in Chicago, have abandoned CPS as Duncan
correctly implies.
A system from which only six in 100 students
will go on to earn a bachelor's degree by the age of 25 is a system
that parents who have the ability to flee will flee.
Some
critics of the "Green for Grade$" program have said such payments for
grades are getting students to do the right things for the wrong
reasons and will fail to cultivate a real interest in learning. Others
have been more pointed, saying the payments amount to bribes.
The
fundamental problem with cash-for-grades programs is that they are yet
another bailing-out-the-Titanic-with-a-teaspoon approach to education
reform.
As these programs gain traction in our nation's
worst-performing school systems, we must recognize them for the
misdirection plays that they are and not allow ourselves to be taken on
a tangent that moves us away from a discussion of long-term, systemic
school reform.