Urban Strategies Offers $300 Per Student Cash Incentive to Some Parents for School Attendance

Urban Strategies offers $300 per student cash incentive to parents to enroll students at Jefferson Elementary School in St. Louis, Mo.

Is it fair to offer a cash reward for school attendance? A local organization is offering parents a cash incentive to enroll their children at Jefferson Elementary School in St. Louis, Mo. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the money is limited to students who didn't attend school last year. The Urban Strategies, a local nonprofit organization based in St. Louis, is offering the $300 per child incentive to parents.

To get it, the kids must finish this semester with near-perfect attendance and receive no out-of-school suspensions; the parent must attend three PTO meetings. The program is being offered to families in three mixed-income housing complexes surrounding the school, where most of the students live.

Paying families for their children's behavior and attendance is part of an ongoing debate in a half dozen cities. Kids themselves also have been paid for everything from grades on tests to the number of books they read. A Harvard University study in July showed that such incentives improve classroom behavior — but they don't necessarily raise test scores. The study looked at incentive programs offered to 38,000 students at 261 low-performing urban schools in four cities. Source

I don't understand why students and parents who are doing the right things, attending school regularly, have good grades and work hard aren't rewarded. You can't force someone to learn. That's where personal responsibility and a drive to succeed despite all the odds come in. Some say low-income family need the help, but where do you draw the line and how do you determine that a family is truly low-income through no fault of their own or have been living on the public dole instead? Sorry, but these cash prizes ignore the glaring problems in many of these homes that lead to truancy, poor test scores and high drop-out rates. Why don't they institute programs to teach these parents and students the importance of getting an education and staying in schools?