Bribing students isn't smart

The prevailing attitude in elite education circles these days seems to be: "We've tried everything else and that didn't work, so let's try bribing students to learn." So starting October 3rd, D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee will begin doling out up to $100 per month to 3,000 middle school students for doing what other children around the nation are expected to do for free - show up for class, behave, do their homework. When even academicians at Harvard - which designed and will help pay for the privately funded $2.7 million Capital Gains program - can't come up with a better way to motivate underperforming District students than handing them a debit card, it's time to wonder whether public education in America is a lost cause.

New York University Professor Pedro Noguera questioned the value of financial incentives after the percentage of New York high school students who earned Advance Placement credits decreased from 35 percent in 2007, when no cash incentives were offered, to 32 percent this year, when students received cash bonuses of as much as $1,000.

If bribing students is the answer, the adults in the education establishment are asking the wrong questions and adopting misguided, foolish strategies as a result. Too many tenure-protected teachers using a dumbed-down, out-of-date curriculum do a lousy job of teaching basic reading and math skills in the critical primary and elementary grades. Low-income and minority students who don't get additional enrichment at home or elsewhere inevitably fall behind. By the time they get to middle school, when Rhee's financial incentives kick in, a majority of these kids have failed to learn even the minimally necessary lessons, a fact duly reflected in their dismal standardized test scores and high drop-out rates.

Instead of giving debit cards to immature tweens in the hopes bribery will change their behavior, Rhee should first demand better behavior from all the adults in their lives. She needs to completely retool the curriculum, get rid of more bad teachers and ineffective principals, find new ways to involve more parents, and refuse to accept high levels of absenteeism, violence and low achievement as "normal." The District's public school system receives more tax dollars per student than any other school system in the country. The system's dismal record shows that money is almost never the solution in the classroom.