Your guest just said something about how it is impossible to fix the damage done by schools and others to students, what about parents???!!! As a teacher, the correlation between parent attitude and student attitude is made clear to me over and over. Education cannot improve until the partnership between schools and parents is recognized and parents take real responsibility for their students. Until then, paying students to get better grades is just one more gimmick. And a damaging one at that.

Sent by Gillian Wegener | 2:49 PM ET | 07-02-2007

As a child I received $10 to buy books for every A on my report card. This helped me be driven in school, and additionally enabled me to educate myself through reading. I thought it was a great plan as a child and plan to have a similar one for my children.

Sent by Lora Wichser | 2:51 PM ET | 07-02-2007

We are getting away from the focus: How do we support a love of learning so that our children grow up with an eagerness to learn, unattached to specific reward system?

Sent by Kate Mayo | 2:56 PM ET | 07-02-2007

The very thing that's wrong with our current school system is that it fosters that attitude that learning is a chore, and that education ends with a diploma. If we cannot instill in our children a love of learning for it's own sake, then we are the failures.

Sent by Amanda | 2:56 PM ET | 07-02-2007

I have 2 children and I have never paid my children for their grades. They have been encouraged to learn for the sake of learning. They are both very bright individuals and have excelled in school. Their reward has been my financial assistance during college. As much as I want to give my children all the advantages in life, there are some things they need to learn to appreciate on their own.

Sent by Lori Bernard | 2:57 PM ET | 07-02-2007

Pay a child to get good grades?? You've go to be kidding. Parents should monitor their child's progress and be involved - and if the child either doesn't or can't learn - then they need to find out why. Usually its the result of too much "stuff" in the child'
s life and not enough parenting. You have to "pay your dues" before you get your goodies. The overwhelming need for "instant gratification" is one of the underlying reasons for the enormous amount of credit card debt in this country.

Sent by Laurie Tillett | 3:03 PM ET | 07-02-2007

I appreciate Professor Schwartz and the callers weighing in on "pay for performance" for kids in school. I am a parent of an 8 and 10 year old, a former teacher, and a professor of education. I think schools are an extension of the capitalist system and this incentive in NY is emblematic of this under-discussed but widely accepted role of school.

The real question is, how do we as a society think about the purpose of school? Educational philosophers have been debating this question for a long time. I choose to send my children to the local, urban district rather than suburban or private because I hope they will learn about the greater society. They learned to read at home, however, and now they are learning math, science and fine arts at home because those "subjects" or at least a serious opportunity to engage the ideas, are not provided by conventional public schools.

I don't pay for grades, by the way . . .

Sent by Michelle Collay | 3:06 PM ET | 07-02-2007

I can't believe that the professor's answer to the last caller was cut off! I want to know what his comment was!!

Sent by Donna | 3:10 PM ET | 07-02-2007

I love learning and ideas. Maybe I should have become accustomed to being motivated to make money. This practical component would balance my dreamy intellectuality. Receiving money would show children they can survive as adults by pursuing academic subjects. This would embolden them. Intellectual pursuits often benefit society.

Education is slavery as long as it is mandatory. Currently there is only negative incentive -- punishment -- for children who aren???t lovers of the intellect. A positive incentive, money, is general enough to be used for whatever any given student likes. This would give control to students, mitigating the slavery aspect.

Paying students for good grades is no different than paying them to meet objectives in the workplace. The ethics of workplaces vary. Schools are often more concerned with ethics. They may be more likely to train people to receive money for pursuing ethical ends.

Money is not synonymous with self-interest. Like the power it represents, money can be used for good or bad. It is not money that is the problem but the state of people???s hearts and minds. If we want students to use their money to do good, we should show them how doing good for others invites reciprocation of good deeds back to themselves.

Sent by Irene | 3:16 PM ET | 07-02-2007

For too long, this Country has ben creating an environment that puts the Planet/Human Condition secondary to the monetary gain or profit. For too long we have been dealing with symptoms rather than causes. In this era we must find ways to rekindle the intrinsic value of knowledge, truth, substance and inner worth. Must we continue to throw money at problems that need understanding? Do we lack the intelligence to deal with our problems in other ways? Are we simply lazy? Public School is a socializing entity. Do we truly want to try the easy way out... again? This time socializing the abhorrent value in our young ones that money is the ultimate goal!

Sent by Emory Randall | 3:30 PM ET | 07-02-2007

Paying children for good grades is capitalism pure and simple. It is very efficient in the short run but ultimatly souless. We should offer our children something better than the beliefs that we were infused with.
Maybe a donation in their name or their school's name that might help an impoverished community somewhere.
Lastly schools should be federally funded and remove the bulk of the resposibility from the states.
Make every school in NYC or anywhere in the US as good as Trinity, Dalton, Friends, Deerfield, Exiter,or Andover.

OH and increase the length school day and the school year.

Sent by Robert | 3:50 PM ET | 07-02-2007

Growing up I had many friends that were paid for grades. In my family, we were expected to work hard and do well. My brother and I both would have had much more padded bank accounts come graduation had we received even a dollar per "A", but in retrospect, I think our parents did it the right way. I worked hard for the sake of my education and knew that the hard work would provide for me well in the future, which it has. In the era of tight budgets and failing schools, I just don't think this is the answer.

Sent by Lenina Carton | 4:21 PM ET | 07-02-2007

What is next, paying kids to eat thier vegetables? blow thier nose? sleep at night?

I thank my parents for showing me the true value of an education and refraining from monetary rewards for scholastic achievement.

Sent by Abe Medina | 6:03 PM ET | 07-02-2007

I'm astounded that children would be paid to go to school. It seems to me this would just reinforce a concept that school is a chore. The greatest gifts a child can have are the love of family and a good education that fosters a love of learning. This means that parents must be involved and that education methods may have to change. My daughter is in a Montessori school, and the more I see and research this method of education, the more thrilled I am that she has this opportunity. A love of learning is fostered from the beginning by allowing the child to essentially teach themselves. I've been watching closely - they all do it. It's magical. Some public schools are trying this. I hope this trend continues. If kids think education is a chore or some type of slavery, then our education system is a failure.

Sent by Peggy Hunt, St.Thomas, Virgin Islands | 8:15 PM ET | 07-02-2007

As I was listening to this segment, I was driving back from lunch to my bar review class at the University of Colorado School of Law. I was wishing that someone would pay me to sit through the next three hours of video I had to watch that reviewed the answers from the practice exam we had taken two days before...on a Saturday! But then, I thought back to how excited I was to go to school when I was younger. Every day presented a new opportunity to be wowed by some seminal event in my world history class, to escape into a different world in literature class, and to listen to my physics teacher serenade us with old cowboy songs during zero hour. Plus, who could forget recess - that never felt like the "slave labor" described by one caller in relation to how his children felt about school.

Maybe I'm just a bit of a geek, but I think that paying students to do well in school will cheapen the experience; kids will just jump through the hoops to get $20 for whatever letter is deemed to be "worth" paying for. Doing so will cause them to leave behind what is truly important about school, what really prepares us for college and beyond - the experience of encountering something new and different and becoming excited about it. To lose that would be cheap, indeed.

Sent by Alaina Stedillie | 12:14 AM ET | 07-03-2007

gee, "back in the day" in so. L.A., grandparents would beat the child who failed to get to school. Most of them would speak of the bad old days when they were too poor, the wrong color, forced to share one ragged book in a class-we got the lectures...learn,you earn, but learn because you have the opportunity to Be Somebody, not a shoeshine boy, dishwasher, or car mechanic.
i work with many teachers,college grads,and not one of them knows anything about Madison, Paine, Jefferson, Moliers, none can identify the differences between capitalism (economicsystem) and communism (social system)...they never heard of fitzgerald, stienbeck, hemingay, dylan (thomas, not bob)...and they speak of paris hilton, brittany,julia, ipods..hey.This ain't a culture. its a consumers "lifestyle" we have given our children. Stuff and money, never poetry and music, art and ideas, just stuff and money is what most of the teachers i run into hold dear.
A long time ago, I was living with a woman who had not read a book in 25 years-since school. I stuck McMurtrys Lonesome Dove in her bag when she went to the beach for two weeks. She came back addicted, and books filled the our lives, and her kid, who hated reading, got bored, opened Interview With the Vampire, and got hooked...
we teach by example, once the doorway is opened,the words 'no frigate like a book' mean new worlds.
I think its better to know bob frost,harold bloom, dorothy parker or alice walker rather than t.v. trivia, or who hip hops the hottest...but i am old now, and more into books than bread, whid=ch shreds my cred, as the children say/

Sent by lou gonzalez | 2:57 AM ET | 07-03-2007

Our school districts are already dangerously under-funded; adding a monetary reward system to the annual budget would cripple public education in the US.

One of the callers spoke of using a different kind of reward system. When I was in elementary school, I took part every year in the "Book-It" program. For every book I read and wrote a book report on, I received a star. When I reached 10 stars, I would receive a free personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut. Let's just say that for me this program was a success: I scored tons of free pizzas, and to this day I am an avid reader.

Sent by Jane | 4:56 AM ET | 07-03-2007

Clearly money can be applied as a motivator for some people (mostly adults, children when they are old enough). Nobody will deny that. There are, however, other motivators.

Whether children respond to the motivators applicable to some adults remains an open question. Whether money, the motivator of preference within a capitolistic society, can be effectively used to encourage children to learn remains an open question.

One must ask which alternative solutions were considered? Why where they rejected?

One can only wonder if the suggested strategy is universally applicable. I personally doubt it. The existance of alternative strategies for children's education that are more effective makes the question moot. That those strategies existg and apparently have been ignored suggests that the basic problem is being ignored.

Perhaps some research is needed into learning how adults identify the motivators of children. (ie poor teachers) Perhaps some research is needed into learning how those identified motivators can be applied to the problem of teaching children (ie poor learning process)

I would suggest that this is little more than an application of the phenoma - a solution in search of a problem

Sent by David Lightstone | 9:20 AM ET | 07-03-2007

I agree with comments saying incentives negate intrinsic motivators -- Alfie Kohn's book Punished by Rewards goes into this more and is my bible. One comment though that hasn't been made: what about children who have difficulty with their learning? This NY progamme will only go to lessening their motivation, as they won't be achieving the same monetary gains as their peers...

On a personal note: I was in 10th grade when my mother decided that it would be good to "incentivise" my sister and me for the first, though she refused to pay with money. Confused by the point of this, we asked her to stop.

Sent by Autumn Childs-Grove | 9:36 AM ET | 07-03-2007