Onward market solutions
Education - - Posted on March, 6 at 1:25 pm by Ken L
I can’t wait to see if Julie Bishop picks this idea up and runs with it.
Schools in New York City are trialling financial incentives to encourage students to learn:
School districts nationwide have seized on the idea that a key to improving schools is to pay for performance, whether through bonuses for teachers and principals, or rewards like cash prizes for students. New York City, with the largest public school system in the country, is in the forefront of this movement, with more than 200 schools experimenting with one incentive or another. In more than a dozen schools, students, teachers and principals are all eligible for extra money, based on students’ performance on standardized tests.
Each of these schools has become a test to measure whether, as Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg posits, tangible cash rewards can turn a school around. Can money make academic success cool for students disdainful of achievement? Will teachers pressure one another to do better to get a schoolwide bonus?
So far, the city has handed out more than $500,000 to 5,237 students in 58 schools as rewards for taking several of the 10 standardized tests on the schedule for this school year. The schools, which had to choose to participate in the program, are all over the city.
You know I think this is simply brilliant. It’s embodying the fundamental truth of the free marketeers’ vision of the future: one in which existence is defined by market value. If you dídn’t buy it or sell it, it won’t exist.
Moreover, paying kids to learn is a logical extension of the idea that they should be paid to do chores around the house. It’s never too early to get the idea into their tiny heads that everything has a price and if it doesn’t, then it’s not worth doing.
Cynics, of course, will point to a few problems with this wonderful new era of market-based education, such as:
- Financial incentives becoming normalised after a while, meaning that they have to be increased regularly to retain their punch.
- Scope for corruption, requiring the creation of a new layer of supervision and auditing.
- The cost of incentive payments being met by cuts elsewhere, like in basic salaries and infrastructure, because after all the good kids will be making all this money so they can go buy private tuition and their own computers and stuff and the dumb kids don’t need public goods anyway, because they’re, well, dumb. Let them get off their butts and do better in their tests and then they can afford to buy proper education. That will be how we can avoid increasing taxes.
- The novelty value wearing off after a few years, as happens with all management fads, leaving schools with a cumbersome and expensive system to administer that no longer serves much purpose but would be hard to dismantle because of the vested interests who benefit from it.
- The market-based approach spreading to all forms of education … because if it ‘works’ (or more accurately is proclaimed as working) then in all fairness it will have to be extended to high schools and universities and colleges. Ah the look on my students’ faces when they get their assignments back and see who can afford that new iPod they’ve been lusting after and who’s going to struggle to pay the rent this week!
In Australia I think there’s room to fine tune the system a bit to suit local circumstances. I think incentives apart from money might be appropriate in some schools: maybe ’surf days’ for students on the NSW North Coast, and joints for students … well, again on the NSW North Coast. And in the great Australian spirit of fair goes all round I think we should not only pay students for good grades but fine them for failing. Having to cough up $20 for getting the capital of Poland wrong should get even the dumbest 8 year old motivated to study.
A brilliant idea all round. Julia feel free to take it to the 2020 Summit.
Posted in Education |
March 6th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Ahh the old capitalism socety at its best. This is an excellent program in having schools descriminate against the no so bright and give them no chance in life at all. Heavens knows the Empire doesn’t need more ideas like this. They descriminate to throw money at things enough without thought. The school that Geroge Dubbya attended wouldn’t have received much would it. What about the idea of educating people to reach their potential no matter what, to enable them to live productive lives. This may keep them off the streets and limit the crime rate.
Teachers in the Empire will care more for the money than the kids.
So in this system the kids that have all the resources to achieve higher standards will gain over the kids that have not, that only makes sense because its all coming out of the education budget.
With the record the Empire has this system will be a catalyst for more hate, more student shootings, more cheating and more selling information at a greater price to assist to rip off the system.
Remember the Empire has tried to buy the Afghans and Osama, the Iraqis and Sadam, and many more despots but have never succeeded.
How can a country be so stupid.They should give the incentives to the politicians for good ideas, they wouldn’t have yo pay out mush would they.
This sort of thing never surprises me from that great mob of nitwits.
March 6th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Good post Ken, this takes away the want to learn from the need to learn,what this is offering up is the reward system, as in animal training.
A reward of a joint in the area where you are (provided the rates are not to hot:))would be an incentive to knowledge in “the Howard years,and why so’ or ‘Sex and the Howard years, a question’
I have found that the reward system against the approval approach never in the long term works, all of us animals seek approval over the top of reward, the reward is automatic when approval and encouragement is given,and is known.Bet you what you like that if any of us were in a position of peril and someone said hang in there mate or matess,help is on it’s way (true or false,)or was said I’ll give you x$ to hang in there,reply would be ,’just need help’.
I would like to ask Ken a question, do you find that approval by a mentor is more to development to the student(we are all student to life,only stops when the bucket is..)than a fiscal incentive?
This is (the gist of the post)so bloody last ten years and so fawning of US neocon doctrine, that it’s a welcome to see it here.
An aside; when you feed cattle to offset their forage , the reward system ,food,will always see them hanging around the same gate,waiting and not foraging.
March 6th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
You should add a highly qualified tooth fairy in that,after all marijuana leads to losing teeth,and, the blighters would need then how to wolf whilstle in a new way when the Bishop babe enters the school yard.If they do that,they also will need a quick rehydrator because of the flavour of their fingers and teeth,perhaps a anti-germicide of herbal origin to rub on their hands.And scrounging money to look for retro designed yellow framed sunglasses.