Win a laptop! Gift cards for Modell’s sporting goods can be yours!
A cheap e-mail pitch from a huckster?
No, it’s the Bridgeport school system trying to keep kids in the classroom. Incentives, otherwise known as bribes, are a growing trend in public schools. For seven years, Hartford has had a drawing — either a car or $10,000 — for kids with perfect attendance.
Here’s Bridgeport’s offer to high school students; attend classes for 90 straight days and win a chance at a laptop. Register for class early and you might win a $50 or $100 Modell’s gift card. Bridgeport school officials argue their kids can’t learn if they’re not in class.
New York City will take it to another level soon. “Opportunity NYC” is a privately-funded $50 million program that gives families up to $5,000 a year for fulfilling basic parenting objectives like taking the kids to the doctor or making sure they go to school.
Is this a harmless way to get kids to keep their noses in a book or is it the last gasp of the urban public school?
Probably a little of both.
Bribing kids and parents smacks of desperation and defeatism. There’s no other reason for staying in school other than a $50 gift card? Is there anyone who believes children should be grateful for a chance at betterment?
Actually, there is.
The Achievement First charter schools, based in New Haven, prove over and over that it’s not the kids’ fault. It’s the schools’. Achievement First kids just rocketed to the top of the Connecticut Mastery Tests, as they do every year. The reason is as simple as Achievement First’s motto: “Extremely high expectations for student achievement, rigorous instruction, no-excuses discipline, and a positive, achievement-oriented school culture.”
Urban public school administrators love to trot out excuses when confronted with charter school success: They cherry-pick the best kids. They only have one or two schools. False on both counts: Achievement First kids are chosen by lottery. Achievement First now operates 12 schools in Connecticut and New York.
At Achievement First, the kids think “Just imagine what I can do with this education.”
In Bridgeport, they say “Just imagine what I can do with a $100 gift card.”