<p>“Chicago parents will be given $25 Walgreens ‘Balance Rewards’ cards in exchange for picking up their childs report cards and attending parent-teacher conferences, according to a press release from the city.” …</p>
<p>[Chicago</a> Schools Bribe Parents With Gift Cards To Stay Involved](<a href=“HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost”>Chicago Schools Bribe Parents With Gift Cards To Stay Involved | HuffPost Life)</p>
<p>I am surprised that some schools require parents to pick up report cards. Ours have always been mailed, or emailed, or sent home with the child for signature. Requiring parents to make that trip to pick up the report card during work hours is probably a deterrent to doing it. Same with teacher conferences during work hours.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>From the article.</p>
<p>Also interesting that that Walgreen’s is looking at it as a customer promotion idea.</p>
<p>Why am I expecting the union leaders to try to extract a similar bribe for each teacher that fills the report card? One extortion avenue they did not think about … yet. </p>
<p>Unless they hold out for an iPad Mini!</p>
<p>I thought they were having a money problem there… Wasn’t that why there was a strike? I hope Walgreens gave the cards to Chicago for free.</p>
<p>It’s pretty sad when a parent won’t pay adequate attention to their kid’s education unless someone pays them to. I don’t really see the point and consider it a waste of money because if the parent is only showing up because they’re being paid to, they’re not there in spirit and it’ll be ineffective. This is money down the drain.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’m glad people are starting to recognize that parental involvement is a far more salient and reliable predictor of student success than all the other sideshows.</p>
<p>So how does the bribe make the parent more involved? Will they be quizzed on the child’s grades? Unless Walgreens is giving the cards for free, it’s a pretty stupid way to spend money they don’t have.</p>
<p>
It doesn’t.</p>
<p>Does the study support the endeavor? Does picking up report cards and attending parent conferences for money contribute to student success? I doubt that is what the study looked at.</p>
<p>I work in an very poor city and will be attending my first report card night night next week at the high schools. It is opportunity for my nonprofit program to “sell” our services to the families.
It is very difficult to engage these parents and guardians.</p>
<p>Reminds me of Freakonomics and the experiment in there where they tried to use financial incentive to make kids study…</p>
<p>
Do you think there exist any parents who’d like to attend parent-teacher conferences but cannot easily afford to take a few hours off from work? Offering gift cards could well reduce financial barriers to access.</p>
<p>
Do you really think that’s the case for the majority of the parents the cards apply to? I considered that angle and it probably applies to some of them but I doubt to all of them and possibly not even a majority of them. If it’s the only way some parents can manage logistically to get to the school to address specific educational issues with their kid then there’s some value in those cases.</p>
<p>But really, there should be no necessity in a parent ‘picking up a child’s report card’. My parents never did that and neither did I (they were mailed home). There’s not even a necessity to meet with the teacher if the parent is staying on top of what the kid’s doing in school. I’ve never had a session with a teacher that added any real value but then there were no issues to discuss either - I see the value if there are issues to discuss.</p>
<p>Even if a parent can’t take off of work to get to the school they can still be involved in their kid’s education and stay on top of them in this regard.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>What a surprise! How many studies do we need to conclude that our schools can only educate the students who have support from OUTSIDE the school. Parental involvement is a proxy for direct family help or hired help. </p>
<p>All those examples simply confirm the utter mediocrity of the schools in terms of performance.</p>
<p>" How many studies do we need to conclude that our schools can only educate the students who have support from OUTSIDE the school."</p>
<p>Actually, there are studies that indicate that, for these students, school might simply get in the way of their education.</p>
<p>Doesn’t it occur to you how desperate it it is to proffer up such an incentive plan? Look – all of you are on friggen College Confidential. The target audience for this plan do not have PCs or tablets at home. They barely have HS diplomas themselves. Educators are trying anything to get parents to show some spark – anything.</p>
<p>It’s easy to sit back and pass judgment on these parents or the educators – but walk a mile in their shoes. My alma mater school district has the lowest HS grad rate of any large city in the USA – approx 21% of ninth graders will have a graduate in 4 years. Among these, only about 10% go onto to any sort of 2 or 4 yr college. Among those about half will get a college degree in 4 or 5 years. That’s roughly 1 in 100 ninth graders who will be college graduates in 8 or 9 years in my nearby city. Where are the other 99? And this is the largest school district in the state.</p>
<p>Don’t cast stones if you’re not willing to help. Go tutor. Go read at the elementary school. If you are male, you’ll be a celebrity all star in areas where positive adult male attention is starkly absent. Do something, anything. </p>
<p>But to roll eyes at these incompetent/dumb/worthless/insert adjective here parents is meaningless and frankly distasteful.</p>
<p>Off my soap box now.</p>
<p>No, go back on your soapbox and start screaming for schools to educate, for teachers to do what they claim they can do under the umbrella of a monopolistic system, for the providers of educational services to work as the professionals they claim to be, and for for all educators to stop making excuses for their inept performance.</p>
<p>Our public system of education is built on the promise to educate all in exchange of a monopoly. Not only the easy to educate ones. Parents are PAYING for the services to be delivered. They are no more responsible for the education than they are for providing defense, police, or medical services. If you CANNOT expect a patient to supplement the diagnostics of a doctor on his own, why are parents supposed to fill the holes left by the educators. </p>
<p>Countries that do better than us have NOT abdicated the leadership necessary to redress decades on a slippery slope and are not relying on the parents to hide the mediocrity of the teachers; they have focused on the real issues and created a system that demands and REWARDS excellence. Only the best can become teachers. We, however, prefer to scrape the bottom of the barrel, protect the lazy and undedicated, and cave in to most demands of higher pay for fewer and fewer days and hours of service.</p>
<p>All one needs to do is check the latest demands in that city that just offered the bribe.</p>
<p>For education to work, the student must get to school. That is the job of the parent, not the school.</p>
<p>
Even the best diagnostics don’t help if the patient doesn’t comply with treatment…</p>