At best I could hope for a pat on the shoulder or a ‘Wow, good job!’ when I brought home an ‘A’ on a paper or exam back in high school. My parents, like many, expected that I achieve my grades based on a longing for academic knowledge and higher learning, and for the most part that is exactly what I did. However, this isn’t the case for everyone. Many have tried and still are trying to reform America’s failing educational system, but there just doesn’t seem to be a clear or consistent solution to this monumental issue. So then, how to get children to want to learn who might not be intuitively inclined to do so? How about paying them for it? At first glance the headline, ‘Paid to Learn???’ might seem somewhat of an outrageous notion (as the three question marks suggest) as well as undermining of the fundamental purpose of what education should seek to do. After all, whose fault is it that students are failing? What about the students who are already achieving at standard levels or higher? How much should students be paid to learn anyway? There are many questions that need answering, but I think the logic behind these proposed programs is what really matters most. A September 15 CNN.com article titled ‘Program pays students for good grades, parents to get involved’ by Deborah Feyerick said, ‘Nearly 60 percent of African-American fourth-graders in Des Moines can’t read at grade level, according to the Iowa Department of Education.’ The article goes on to illustrate how student’s parents are rewarded for showing up to parent teacher meetings and getting involved in their students schooling. Parental involvement in the educational progress of their kids would inherently have a positive effect on their child’s academic performance. The idea isn’t so crazy. If it takes $20 or $30 to get a parent to actually meet with teachers and take on a more active role in their child’s schooling, then why not? Before transferring here, I spent last year enrolled in NYU’s secondary education program and what I saw while observing and tutoring in inner city schools only further fueled my interest in these types of programs. These kind of ideas had been circulating for some time and when I asked kids what they thought about being paid money or given cell phones for better scholastic achievement, the general consensus was that they and their friends would, in fact, work harder for something tangible in return. And why shouldn’t they? Critics argue that the point of education should be to get kids to appreciate the value of knowledge and gain a better understanding of the world at large. But let’s be realistic; in our modern meritocratic gone mad society, isn’t the point of education really to get a better paying job and make more money? We’ve all seen the pay scale with degree charts. An American today is at odds to get any skilled job without at least a bachelor’s degree under their belt. Why not teach kids this correlation during their time in high school? The concept is simple — more schooling means more money, and that would be an incentive for even the most underachieving kids. Not that I’m saying we still shouldn’t push children to learn for the sake of becoming competent independent thinker, but when an educator holds a parent teacher conference night at an inner city school where most of the students are from lower income families, and no parents show up because they’re working a night shift to pay the bills, then why not offer them an added incentive? Sure, any ‘pay to learn’ system has to be handled reasonably and responsibly, but I see no reason why an agreeable medium can’t be reached if a school district is ready to try out something new after all else has failed. Not all school districts are alike, and what works successfully for one may fail miserably for another. We need to keep an open mind, however, about reward-based programs and I think with further research and investigation, maybe we will one day have a solid model both the pockets and minds of children.