Right. Right. Right. As if your father never paid you to get better grades. As if you never gave your kids something valuable, maybe even cash, because they did well in school. Paying kids to do what they're supposed to do - study hard and learn - that's not a common practice of the middle class or upper-middle class or the affluent. Families in the counties surrounding Baltimore don't do that sort of thing.
Right.
Our kids just learn for the love of learning.
They don't need no stinkin' bonus.
We would never stoop to bribing them.
Trips to Florida during spring break, a car by junior year, full financial support of their costly club sports - there's no quid pro quo when it comes to grades, is there?
Right.
I listened to a conversation the other day about Baltimore schools CEO Andres Alonso's controversial plan to pay some 5,000 city students to work harder to improve their grades on the Maryland High School Assessments. They have to pass that test in order to graduate. Too many Baltimore kids have been failing. Alonso wants to give those who failed once a little incentive to do better.
He wants to slip them a few bucks.
Boys and girls who are supposed to graduate in 2009 and 2010 will get $25 for improving test performance by 5 percent, $35 for a 15 percent improvement, and $110 for a 20 percent improvement.
There's been a lot of comment on this since Alonso announced it - most of it condemnation.
The people in the conversation I heard -their knees were jerking so much they were in danger of tearing their ACLs. They sneered at Alonso's idea, ridiculed it, put it down hard.
What? Pay kids to perform in school? Outrageous! Wrong way to go. Wrong message. Kids should learn for the sake of learning. This is a desperate measure by the school system, another liberal, Harvard-inspired giveaway that will never work.
The whole time I'm listening to this - middle class and upper-middle class, middle-aged men and women - I'm thinking, "What? None of them ever got a little something for getting better grades? They never slipped their own kids anything for coming home with A's and B's?"
Look, in case you haven't noticed, the Baltimore public schools serve a mostly needy population of children. It's not their fault. It's just the reality. Nearly 16 percent of Baltimore families live below the government's poverty line ($20,444 or less for a family of four), according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau statistics.
