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I have moved to newlyancient.com and will be writing regularly there! Content on this domain is no longer updated, but will be maintained as an archive in its original form.

Tag Archive for 'achievement'

A + $

1 year, 11 months ago 2 Comments

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As I have pointed out before, paying for good grades is not an acceptable method of encouraging education. It makes the idea of learning become something akin to a job… that you are providing the system with a service which you receive compensation for. In reality, the opposite is true. The system provides you with knowledge, and you (often) return it with work or (outside of public school) payment. What will these students think when they reach higher grades where they are expected to do work for its own sake? Well, Stephen Colbert certainly didn’t miss this opportunity for a laugh. He certainly makes Chancellor Klein’s payment plan seem rather ridiculous:

Everything done in school should be done for the sake of furthering a student’s learning. Anything that doesn’t do so, should be eliminated - not compensated for. Money is the wrong solution to this. It teaches students to rely upon the gift of the government and does not foster a sense of life long (or even year long) learning.

School is not a job. In a job, you provide a service and are compensated for it. Instead, school is more like the local health club - you pay your dues (taxes) and go there to work (school work). The eventual gain is a healthier body, just as in schools the eventual gain is an education. It would seem incredibly ridiculous for the health club to pay you to better yourself, so why should it be accepted in schools? Leave rewarding to parents…

Shifting Focus

2 years, 2 months ago 3 Comments

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As more and more schools adopt growth models for student progress analyzation, the outcries are starting to be heard. They come from the typical suspects: teacher unions and parents of disadvantaged (low performing) students. From the teachers, we hear the typical protests against accountability:

It is pulling apart teams of teachers and it doesn’t look at why test scores are low. From the very beginning, we viewed it as a slippery slope that did not do anything valuable to improve the educational environment in the schools.”

Aimee Bolender

I agree, accountability can and will pull apart teams. However, maybe those teams should be pulled apart. You couldn’t get away with zero accountability in any profession besides teaching, so why are educators above inspection and accountability? Good teachers who improve student’s education deserve to be payed more than their weaker counterparts. In addition to the typical union complaints, the “disadvantaged children” supporters are complaining of any shift of focus away from them. Well, I hope increased accountability on a student basis will shift some money and focus away from the bottom to the top. After all, it is desperately needed. Why should the lowest performing students be given their own classes with plenty of funding, while top students are stuck in classes well below their level or are put in classes with no funding. (As yours truly was). Why does “special education” have it’s own department and classrooms, while “gifted education” is forced to piggyback off other class resources if it is recognized at all. Maybe I’m biased, bu doesn’t the school system serve all students, and not just the lower-end students.

Bribery For Good Scores

2 years, 2 months ago 4 Comments

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A new plan in New York would pay students to score well on standardized tests. What!?!? Have we learned nothing about fair play and fairness. Unfortunately, the primary measure of school performance is standardized testing schools. If students are payed to score better, than they are essentially being paid to make the school look better. That is misrepresentation to the public and is absolutely unacceptable. That’s as bad as a suspect paying off the jury… it is simply unacceptable. If we want to reward students for achievement, which is a good idea, then we should find better ways to do it. Host parties for honor students, take students out who make exceptional gains, but don’t use money to artificially inflate test scores.