Investing Money Wisely in Education

Fulton to pay students in after-school program
Creekside High and Bear Creek Middle will pay students $8 an hour for "Learn & Earn" program

I believe I've advocated this before, but I would take this to a much higher level in terms of payouts. When students enter their first year of high school, give them a menu with attached bonuses scaled to their GPA. A 4.0 gives them $2,000, 3.5 and up, $1,000, 3.0 and up, $500. Do this every semester. Do the same for SAT exams. When students are given a direct and immediate incentive to get better grades, they will devote more hours to studying that playing on their Nintendo. With some groups of students, you could probably even eliminate the teacher and see grades shoot up right away:

"Here is a stack of books. Read them and understand in six months, and here is what you will get in return."

The biggest problem in education is not that the teachers aren't paid enough or that school aren't nice enough inside or that there aren't enough books or computers. The problems is that students are not motivated to learn and don't read enough. Every year their reading comprehension goes down, rich or poor, because they are exposed to too much leisure time that involves passive activities like video games, movies, and TV. They will have to learn reading comprehension skills at some point and if they are already so far behind by the time they reach high school, why not provide them with the ultimate incentive to learn it on their own?