Korean Job Discussion Forums

[mack4289]

http://www.slate.com/id/2177554/nav/tap3/

"New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg brought only condemnation upon himself when he announced last Thursday that he is thinking about giving free cell phones and minutes to some public-school students who perform well on tests. The proposal is part of a larger effort (financed with private money and means-tested) to pay students in low-income schools for testing well.

.... In fact, Bloomberg is on to something. The cell-phone bribe and the pay-for-test-scores scheme, which provides up to $500 a year for seventh-graders who do well on 10 exams, are the brainchildren of black economist Roland G. Fryer. An assistant professor at Harvard who also serves as the New York City Education Department's chief equality officer, Fryer himself grew up in difficult circumstances (his mother left when he was very young, and his father spent time in prison for sexual assault).

... the incentive structure in American public education was terribly biased in favor of well-off kids and against poorer ones. Students who were shooting to attend selective four-year colleges�most of whom were upper-middle class and white�had plenty of incentive to do well academically.

But for the vast majority of students who were not aiming at elite colleges, there was little reason to do more than slide by.

... Today, that's not quite as true. Schools give poor kids and middle-class kids alike a reason not to actually fail, because failing often gets you kicked off a sports team or held back or denied a diploma. The sticks, in other words, apply to kids across the economic spectrum.

But the carrots�the positive incentive to do better than pass�still apply mostly to economically advantaged students. They see attendance at a four-year college as a real possibility. And they see evidence all around them of the importance of doing well academically. Cell phones and $500 might seem like a poor substitute for that sort of motivation. But they're a whole lot better than almost entirely abstract notions of success, which is what's currently on offer. Why not give it a try?"

Hard to argue with, eh? Remember the incentives/bribes are all paid for with private money.

[Big_Bird]

Seems worth a try

[Kuros]

The only criterion by which this should be judged is whether it works. And I cannot see how it would make grades worse.

[Pligganease]

Maybe they can use the cellphones to text the answers to each other like the kids in Gwangju.

[Big_Bird]

[loose_ends]