Diane Ravitch On The Misguided “Pay The Student” Plan

7 Comments:

• 1 paulrubin
  · Jun 22, 2007 at 6:30 pm

  I read the article and it’s back to how unethical this all is. Hogwash. I have a sneaking suspicion that the people most outraged by this program are wealthier than average. They don’t want to see their “hard earned” tax dollars go to poor people which is meaningless here because it’s not tax dollars being used at this point. It’s private monies in an experiment.

  I’m sorry but I’m not going to be two-faced about this. I get incensed that the politicians don’t want to pay me for harder work the way I should be paid but kids are going to work harder because of their love of learning. Come on folks. The vast majority of kids in this country don’t come close to working to their potential and a large percentage of those that do fall into the category of [bring home bad marks and you'll get a butt whoopin'].

  If this were gift cards for Burger King or tokens for the local arcade we wouldn’t be having this discussion. And if it were $50 a year and not $500, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. It’s because someone has the courage to think that a meaningful tangible incentive might turn around all these underachieving apathetic kids, that everyone’s all hot and bothered. God forbid we realize that kids need both positive and negative reinforcement just like the rest of us. And if that’s a couple of hundred a year to turn the lives around of tens of thousands of kids in NYC alone, maybe hundreds of thousands, so be it.

  What’s really immoral is not trying everything we can think of. Yes pay teachers more. Yes make their working conditions better. Yes to high tech. And so on. But we should really be using incentives better. Summer school’s a joke? Make it harder, longer, and tougher to move to the next grade. And make kids who do ok on tests but who do nothing else in class suffer consequences too. Positive and negative incentives. Bring em on.

• 2 roryslife
  · Jun 23, 2007 at 8:40 am

  Its actually a pretty poor critique. It doesn’t ever say that the program wont work, only that if it does its for the wrong reasons.

  Do the ends justify the means? All I care about is if the program raises achievement, and if it does does it do it in the most cost efficient manner.

  Arguments like Dianes are a slippery slope. Next thing you know she will oppose any plan to improve teachers pay or working conditions, since the right thing to do would be for teachers to sacrifice their financial stability because its for the great good of society. Any plan “destroys any hope of teaching the value of intrinsic motivation, or the rewards of deferred gratification, or the importance of self-discipline for a distant but valued goal.”

  How much do you want to bet that the money spent on this program raises achievement more than spending the same amount of money on reduced classroom size or increased teacher pay?

• 3 phyllis c. murray
  · Jun 24, 2007 at 8:04 am

  Equity and Access for All in Education
  By Phllis C. Murray

  “In the United States, an Individualized Education Program, commonly referred to as an IEP, is mandated by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act(IDEA). Public schools are required to develop an IEP for every student with a disability who is found to meet the federal and state requirements for special education.” Wikipeida

  Where is the plan for the gifted or average student? It would be wonderful if a plan were mapped out for average and gifted students as well as disabled students. This would make the academic road from Point A to Point B more secure for all students.

  In that way, IEP for all children would be written, like the ones outlined for students with disabilities and include the following:

  The child’s present levels of academic and functional performance

  Measurable annual goals, including academic and functional goals

  How the child’s progress toward meeting the annual goals are to be measured and reported to the parents and supplementary aids to be provided to the child

  Schedule of services to be provided, including when the services are to begin, the frequency, duration and location for the provision of services

  Program modifications or supports provided to school personnel on behalf of the child
  Explanation of any time the child will not participate along with nondisabled children

  When the student is 16, a statement of post-secondary goals and plan for providing what the student needs to make a successful transition.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individualized_Education_Program

  Why not revisit the IEP for the disabled students? It can be modified to meet the needs of all students. Put the money back in educational long-range planning.

• 4 paulrubin
  · Jun 24, 2007 at 10:31 am

  I think it’s all about quick fixes more than anything else. Unfortunate but it’s reality. But let’s say for argument’s sake that we take 400 7th graders in a middle school and they ‘average’ $300 a piece in this system, that’s $120,000 or roughly two brand new teachers when you factor in benefits. Would two teachers change class sizes enough to impact test scores if there’s already, I don’t know, 25 teachers in place. That’s not even enough teachers to add one for each major subject. Would tossing that $120,000 out there for the 25 teachers to fight over make a bigger difference? That’s almost $5,000 bonuses at stake if divided up evening. More if you target it towards ELA and Math teachers but then it’s more of a union issue that doesn’t easily get resolved. You could also for the same price put Smartboards in many of the classrooms involved, or add about 75 laptops. And on and on. And all for what? To show kids are doing better on standardized tests and NOTHING else. But I digress.

  The bottom line is it’s an experiment and it’s one that needs to be dealt with on a fairly large scale across a variety of school neighborhoods and should be performed in conjunction with other experiments to see what works best and what works worst. Personal opinion shouldn’t be a primary factor AND arguing over the ethics is a personal opinion.

• 5 Persam1197
  · Jun 24, 2007 at 4:27 pm

  As someone who grew in one of these poor NYC neighborhoods and now teaches, this approach is garbage. It’s an affront to the educational system and the people it serves.

  If only complex issues were all solved by the allmighty dollar. The fact is that “experimentation” only happens to certain types of folks, namely the working poor.

  The kind of uses that could be made with this money would include:

  1. Reducing class sizes
  2. Making schools a part of the community offering courses and workshops to parents on financial matters, immigration issues, consumer affairs, job training, etc.
  3. Social services
  4. After school activities kids so that parents can be assured of their children’s safe-keeping
  5. After-school and weekend jobs for teens
  6. Helping to make certain neighborhoods safer so that kids are not distracted by gangs, crime, and violence.

  Bloomberg/Klein’s payola scheme undermines the work we do as educators and assumes the working poor need a dollar dangling over their heads to give a damn about their (our) own interests.

  Standardized tests cannot and do not measure the potential and work of any student. They provide a very limited picture of where students are. They do not measure the person as a whole, nor do they provide an accurate picture of the teachers in a school. Merit pay, either student or educator, is nothing more than smoke and mirrors obfuscating the real endemic issues of our society which we are afraid to deal with.

• 6 CitySue
  · Jun 25, 2007 at 4:33 pm

  While the out and out bribery of the plan is hard to swallow, how is the appeal different from “Stay in School” campaigns based on getting a diploma or a college degree because you can get a better job? The only difference is the time frame.
  If our culture put more value on education for its own sake, perhaps more people — of all classes — would stay in school for its intrinsic payback, but in keeping with our bottom-line ethos, let’s face it, most of us have our own version of “bucks for [good] behavior.” Would it be better if, instead of cash, children who work hard and obey the rules were rewarded with universal admiration and praise, and kids who blow school off were not considered cool by their peers? Of course it would. But until that day, at least let’s not pretend we’re all too good for bribes.

• 7 jd2718
  · Jun 25, 2007 at 11:01 pm

  Let’s agree for the moment (and I don’t really agree) that giving cash is acceptatble.

  Have they even chosen appropriate standards for earning bribes?

  These people even screw up screing up.