11 November 2009

Want a higher score on your test? Got 20 bucks?

Struggling with ways to raise cash for technology, [Rosewood Middle School in North Carolina] came upon the idea of selling extra points. A $20 donation earned a student 20 test points – 10 extra points on two tests of the student’s choosing. A $30 donation bought the test points and admission to a 5th-period dance; a $60 donation purchased students test points, the dance invitation, and a “special 30-minute lunch period with pizza, drink and the choice to invite one friend to join them.”
This scheme was cancelled, but only after a local newspaper made it public.

7 comments:

  1. Wow. I had students from Central America offer me $5 to raise their grade, apparently a common practice where they came from. I really hate that we're doing it here.

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  2. Shame on that school.

    CCL

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  3. What's the problem?

    This is an elegant, innovative, market-based solutions that simultaneously solves the problem of schools freeloading on taxpayer dollars and declining test scores. These entrepreneducators should be congratulated, not pilloried.

    You'd have to be a fool and a communist to think otherwise.

    The Raleigh News & Observer should be charged with restraint of trade and closed down.

    The idea that grades, success and prosperity should be based on merit is a liberal absurdity which has held this country back for far too long.

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  4. Thirty-five to forty years ago when I was teaching at Indiana University, I had students on several occasions ask me to raise their grades because they were pre-Med or just because. Even one student who did no assignment and was zero-flunking asked me not to flunk her. None of them, however, offered anything but tales of woe. No grades were ever changed.

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  5. Lorin --

    Nice troll post

    CCL

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  6. I think Lorin was using tongue-in-cheek humor rather than trolling.

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  7. My high school had an annual fund raiser for charity as part of our school's Spirit Week, and my calc teacher ingeniously (as I thought) would win the homeroom challenge by allowing each of his students to add one full grade level (from a B to an A, for instance) on one test, two quizzes, and 5 homework assignments per student.

    If I recall correctly, he asked for $25/test, $15/quiz, and $5/homework assignment.

    I admit it was cheap to do, but I certainly appreciated the better grades and charities got a nice boost from the scam.

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