I’ve gone through public school, college, and taken a few IT courses on top of that and have a 3.9 average, and nobody has ever paid me a dime for it…quite the contrary, it cost me a lot of dough. I wonder if this could be made retroactive so Kevin can wet his beak, too…?

Should students be paid to study? Absolutely and unequivocally not! What nonsense is that? Is this some misbegotten idea of “incentive”? Education is a privilege. When did we forget that? It is not an entitlement. The opportunity to educate one’s self must be open to all, yes, but the acquiring of knowledge is entirely up to the individual. Our entire attitude towards education must change. Education and learning should not be horrendous struggles: student vs. teacher. When that is the prevailing attitude, screwball schemes are hatched such as, “Maybe we should pay them to study.” On the contrary, education must be made available. Beyond that, only those willing to abide by the rules of the school and do the work required of them may be allowed to receive an education. To suggest that the majority our young people are not capable of learning in such a system is to demean them utterly.

What ever works is well worth it!

This is what is wrong with society. We have created a whole group of people that do nothing and sit by and draw government benefits. Just like New Orleans, they sit there and cry, save me, help me, give me food, give me a place to live , give me, give me. They are helpless. I know of grants that pay people to get their GEDs and they come for the checks and still dont work. Mean while hard working people srtuggle and watch Democrats push more and more handouts. If you have to pay someone to study, I cant imagine they are learing anything but how to get handouts.

If you have to pay students to study, what do you think they are doing with the money. Im sure you are financing their habits.

Perhaps we should pay and award those who achieve the first time around rather than reward failure. As a mother of teens, they watch peers who don’t care fail on required exams. Why should that apathy be rewarded? Offer incentives up front if we really think that monetary rewards are the answer. Maybe families whose children succeed should receive tax credits–why not get the parents involved in the incentive process, too?

People get paid to work and studying is work and if the students improve in their class work as a result of this program then it is working and should be tried everywhere.

What happened to “don’t work, don’t eat”? In the case of students, if they don’t study(work) they don’t eat. No one paid me a dime to study or eat.

Excellent idea if the following is applied:

1) It has to be available to ALL students in ALL states (meaning this is federal).
2) You have to demonstrate progress to keep getting paid. At minimum an annual test where tests are nationally identical. Failure should require repeat of that course at the student’s expense (in time) to continue or reenter program to continue getting paid. IE.. if you fail your ‘fired’ just like real life.
3) The money could be an automatic “loan” (this is complex) that is recovered via taxes at a future rate. Lots of complex issues here but I think the ‘cost’ of this should be tied to each individual. If they ‘fail’ and drop out of productive society anyhow; fine.. the government eats the costs but if they succeed they should pay the money back (interest free of course) at some future date. This is equivalent to a new ‘tax’ or expanded school tax but so be it.

My two cents.

Thankfully the money to pay these students to go to school isn’t coming from the tax payer. I certainly hope the donor has the brains to require the students to pass a test before the dollars are handed out. Just paying them to attend class doesn’t mean they are going to learn anything.

I am a retired teacher. We should NOT be paying students. There are many other things we can do to encourage our kids, and give them incentives, besides just giving them cash. It may be what THEY want, but we’re an adult, we should know better. Besides, paying them with cash seems like “a copout” , an easy way out instead of taking the time to come up with other ways, taking the brain power and THE TIME to invest in them. Like those mastercard commercials say”…spending time with that important someone, PRICELESS.” So when will WE REALLY INVEST in our kids?!

If these kids are getting $8/hour to stay in school, instead of being forced to take crappy Joe jobs after school to support themselves or their loved ones…and it keeps them from flunking out and they earn their HS diplomas…and maybe even allows them to go to college…then it’s money well-spent.

If this is just bribery to make the kids study…well, any parent knows that eventually you’ll have to bribe them to do everything. Sadly, if they lose motivation when the money dries up, they’re the ones who get hurt the most by losing out on an education.

For you die-hard conservatives out there who think this is a bad idea, look at it this way: education has been proven to be directly correlated to wage earnings. If these kids can get more educated and make more money, you don’t have to pay more in taxes to support them later on.

I think this “experiment” demonstrates that poor parenting is often to blame for poor academic performance. Clearly motivation is a key factor in academic success, and parents already have the tools at hand to provide it. The problem is that few parents chose to use that power. What ever happened to the concept of making kids “earn” perks? You won’t find it these days. Your average high school student has a cell phone, an Ipod, a TV and Xbox in their bedroom, and…in far too many cases…..a car by their 16th birthday. Despite what kids and their parents seem to believe, these ARE NOT necessities. Modern parents of all economic levels place too much emphasis on providing their children with material goods and not enough on education or quality family time. If parents used cell phones, etc. as part of a reward/punishment system (or better yet…removed these distractions entirely until their child demonstrated the maturity to use them with discretion) and sat down with their children to make sure they studied, I guarantee they would see improved academic performance.

why is studying suddenly a paid job? if that was the case, i’d study my whole life and never apply my educational skills in the real world. education is not about making money, but a quality education can be turned into making a lot of money. everyone has a different value of getting an education, most of which comes from parental influence and values. some people value education above all else, to some it is very insignificant. we are investing far too much money in people who don’t value education for what it is, they only see it as not worth their time or money. this is just as bad as trying to coerce people on welfare who don’t want to work at all to get job training and a steady job. write these people off, don’t reward their ignorance about the value of education by giving them money.

This is F’n Bull****. “F” those lazy mo f’ers. I want my reparations for all the money I earned while attending school and didn’t get paid one lazy cent. This is such sh**. Sorry a** lazy people. Talk about empowering lazy people to be even more lazy and expect to get paid for it. Sorry sh**s.

GEEEEZ….GRRRRR

government will always find a good reason to create some other tax, which will somehow be misappropriated and turned into profit for themselves. thanks to the fiscal irresponsibility of the last 8 years this country is seeing the beginning of the fallout to come. Housing costs up, insurance rates up, property taxes up, cost of gas up, <– this is trickle down economics. So, why not add to the pressure that is building up now and pay students to study.. maybe a few of them will learn how to be fiscally conservative which would be beneficial for us all

I agree, but disagree. The idea of the program is obviously offer some sort of incentive for struggling students to study more and improve themselves which improves the nation as a whole. But $8hr is ludicrous, there would be no way to keep that funding level through all the students who could use a bit of incentive. I think a better idea would be to offer perhaps a PC if they completed so many classes with demonstrable results, or possibly even a small scholarship if through the courses they improve enough to be accepted into college.

As an urban high school language arts teacher — there are far too many students who expect grades given to them because they show up in class — even if they are tardy! They sleep in class and when I wake them up, they swear at me. Oh sure, they are sent to the principal/ISS but we just need to “understand” their less fortunate world. Did I mention they have iPods, unlimited text messaging on their phones and are wearing top of the line Nike shoes? This is my last year teaching i this environment. I am tired of this celebrate diversity education system with a 50% drop out rate!

I guess getting an education so you can get a better job is not incentive enough. But this is right in line with the proposed policies of granting illegal aliens free college tuition. My ass gets real chapped every time I write a check repaying my student loans.

I’ve been a teacher for 31 years and I’m totally against paying students to learn. Think about it. If I’m a student and I goof off long enough, some idiot is going to pay me $8.00 an hour to do what I should have been doing all along. Maybe if I hold out long enough, they’ll pay me $10 or $15 or maybe just support me for the rest of my life. If I’m a hard-working student, maybe I should quit working so hard so that some idiot will start paying to learn again. Meanwhile, the underpaid and hardworking teacher is pulling her hair out because no on wants to learn unless money is involved.

I don’t agree with this. These children will be ruined. What happened to …if you study and work hard, you will reap the rewards with college and better jobs.. What they are learning are… if you give me something, I may do what I really suppose to do anyway. Thus we have ENTITLEMENT.

One problem that today’s youth have is they are fully focused on immediate gratification. This just encourages it. Young people will never be successful in life if they can’t learn to sacrifice now for delayed rewards. They need to be encouraged to study today for a better future, not because they will receive money for sitting in a room and daydreaming about how they’ll spend it.

No I don’t think that they should get pay for go to school or doing homework. If they can see that they will earn money in the real world,then I don’t think we need them. I think that all of the people that says a spanky and other things is wrong. They need a spanky and then go and do homework.

I find nothing wrong with paying children who need tutoring. However, I believe the minimum wage is more than enough, or a lump sum only if they maintain perfect attendance and achieve a “B” or better.

Tutoring isn’t for the student who does well anyway. Those students already have the support they need to achieve in school. It is for the student who finds it difficult to understand the subject, and with little support at home or among friends, so just “gives up”. Most often these are the students who end up giving up on school entirely, drop out and begin a lifetime of crime of one sort or another, or begin the welfare career to survive. We can all learn from this experiment!

This “experiment” demonstrates that poor parenting is often to blame for poor academic performance. Motivation is clearly a key to academic success. Parents have the tools to motivate their children, but sadly most chose not to use them. Items like cell phones, iPods, X-box, which used to be “luxuries” are now viewed as entitlements. They serve as constant distractions from studies in both the school and at the home. Unfortunately, far too many parents are all to willing to give their children whatever they want, but ignore what they really need…..discipline.

We never seem to learn from our mistakes, this is just another form of welfare. No one is motivated by having everything given to them, nor do they appreciate it. People who work hard to get what they have will always appreciate it more, whether it is something small or large. We are condeming our young people to expect everything to be handed to them whether they work or not. Sad, sad. What happens when there are no more workers and the only thing left are takers……..someone has to work to provide the money in the first place, we already have a much smaller working class then we do people who “need a helping hand”. The US is heading toward being a “Third World” country.