Paying Students Not to Skip School?

            Today (8/24/11) the City of Camden in New Jersey announced it will be paying about 70 high school students $100 each to attend the first three weeks of the school year.  The city will be paying the students from a grant that will expire on September 30^th.  The city is trying to bring attention to its new truancy program called I Can End Truancy as known as ICE-T.

            As expected, there were a number of critics who thought paying students was a ludicrous idea, especially as the city had to layoff almost half of its police and firefighter force.  The city justified this incentive by claiming it is trying to meet the required state minimum attendance rate.  According to the Mayor, Dana Reed, “we have talked about truancy for a long time, we wanted to come up with an innovative model[i].”

            Using money as an incentive to increase student participation in school is not an innovative concept.  There have been school districts that have paid students for earning good grades as well as parents who provide monetary and material incentives to their children to work hard to achieve academic excellence.  The Camden plan sends the wrong message to truant and non-truant students. 

            The Camden plan is not an incentive, but a bribe.  It rewards truant students who have shunned their education and removes the responsibility of the parent for allowing their teenager to skip school.  The plan is also a slap in the face of every student who is doing the right thing in school, every parent who take responsibility to make sure their child is going to school and giving their best effort in school, and lastly for every educator who works to keep students on track in their education.  If the city wanted to provide an incentive to truant students, the students who are attending and giving their best effort academically should be monetarily rewarded.

            The Camden plan is also a concession to the current economic factors that guide city services.  The city understands that school attendance equates to additional or lost state allocations.  In an effort to add, maintain or not lose state allocation to its school ditricts, the city has sent the message that it is interested in the bodies of truants and not the minds of the truants.  If this were not the case, academic incentives would have been included in the plan. 

Lastly, what happens at the end of 3 weeks when the grant money is spent?  Since the truant students were being paid to attend school, once they get paid and the incentive is no longer in place, what prevents them from being truant again?

            With the city’s financial problems, one would think the city would have considered charging $100 fines to parents of truant students instead of giving truant students $100.  Other penalties that could be considered are community service or suspension of privileges such as not being able to apply for a learners permit or work permit.  Instead of wasting $7000 on bribing truant students to attend the first 3 weeks of school, the money could be used in another capacity to achieve the desired goal.  The city of Camden needs to rethink its truancy plan.

---

[i] www.msnbc.com/id/44256731/ns/local_news-philadelphia_pa/#