Off The Cuff

Pay Kids To Take Tests! How About Me? I Can Take Tests!

Posted by: From Arkansas in Are You Kidding Me?, Give Me A Break, It's A Rant on Feb 19 2008

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The television news came out with a way to encourage kids to do better in school…pay them to take the tests. According to some of the kids, they were netting over a hundred bucks just to take a test and get a pretty good grade. Take the test, get ten bucks. Get a good grade, get forty bucks. Now that’s a pretty good deal, don’t you think? Or is it???

I cannot tell you my first reaction. It would be close to unprintable. Are you kidding me????? Pay kids to take tests and get good grades. Well, let’s face it. Some kids have been getting paid for grades for years. My Dad tried that on me for a couple of years. Actually, with me it did not work since I was being lazy at the time and did not see the future so I did not care about the money I wasn’t really going to see for up to nine weeks. Some kids cannot see that far ahead.

Now, the big question is…did it work for anyone who tried that? Most of the time, I would say the answer is…maybe for the short term but what about the long term effects of such a plan? For instance, this program works for only a certain grade level. What happens to the kids that expect to have rewards after that? Do they stick with it because now they understand about getting better grades? OR do they fall back into the old habits because a couple of paid tests do not mean a lifestyle change? Perhaps the kid got disenchanted with the fact that now there is no reward anymore.

The big question is, indeed, the long term effects. Well, let’s see. In our school system, when my nieces were in elementary school, the teachers rewarded kids with things like candy and little toys. As they grew older, the school would have behavior parties for those who were “good” for the last nine weeks. In other words, they did not get enough marks against their names on the board. Of course, the number of marks did vary from a few to nine, one for each week of school that quarter. There have been other rewards as well. But the question still is, what is the long term effect?

What I have seen first hand is that a child will come to a place where they will not work at their homework, for instance, because there is no incentive to do so. Sometimes, they will “lose” the work, leave it somewhere or simply not do it at all. Why? As I said, no incentive. They simply do not care. This is because the teachers in the elementary school taught them that it is only valuable when you get a reward for what you do. In fact, that works at home too. Chores need to be done but they do not choose to do them because there is no reward, no incentive. They do not see that just doing the work is reward enough.

This is an absolutely flawed idea. The man who came up with it is not seeing the long term effects. In fact, he is only seeing the short term. Yes, children from low income families do benefit from this program…up to a point. But what happens to them a few years down the road when an employer hires them to work, doesn’t give them any rewards for doing the work they were hired to do???? They get discouraged, disenchanted, disheartened and then they quit in a fury because the boss did not recognize their efforts. Actually, the boss probably did BUT the person is hired to do a job. When that person does the job they were hired to do, they get a paycheck!!! THAT is the reward. IF they go beyond what they were hired to do, they might be rewarded with other benefits and bonuses.

The flaw is that the child grows up expecting to be rewarded, and in this case with money, for everything they do no matter what it may be. Is that really how you want your children to grow up? I don’t think so!!! Are you kidding me??????????

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