Perfect Attendace = Free Car

[Alydar]

http://www.wickenburgsun.com/article...ews/news02.txt

Dunno... is this such a good idea? Perfect attendance does not really reward academic acheivement. Rather, getting perfect attendance rewards the school and school administrators. Schools get their major state funding based on student attendance, and I believe here in Ohio the figure is at about $46.50 per day per student. I dunno though, I think this is a bit way too much.

[Aristotle]

I agree. Perfect attendance is really overrated and this reward system is just silly.

[Khirmint]

Awhile back, I heard of a US state that was giving full scholarship money to any student that got a B average through HS. I thought that was awesome. They were paying for this with money from the lottery. Anyone know if thats still going on?

And why schools are given money on attendance is beyond me.. how about rewarding something that matters, like GPA?

[Deokoria]

There are a few states that have programs like this, but I believe the trend started with the Georgia HOPE scholarship. I know that Arkansas and Kentucky have similar versions and that Illinois was trying to enact this as well.

I've never been a big fan of rewarding people just for showing up. However, in addition, I am very against penalizing students for absences as well. It's what is learned that counts, and that should be reflected in the grades.

[Aristotle]

HOPE was started in Georgia by then Governor Zell Miller. It was one of the more brilliant political creations I've ever witnessed.

The Georgia Lottery pays for it, which means a lot of money that should have been better spent in the first place ends up going somewhere useful. If you know what kind of money gets spent on lottery ticket, then you know what I mean here.

The HOPE Scholarship was such a success that the federal government is trying to duplicate it on a national level.

As noted, this was merit based. You had to have a B average or better in high school and then you had to maintain it in college.

The scholarship then paid for tuition, books, and a stipend if you went to school in state.

The only downside has been problems with grade inflation recently as people game the system. This is a shame as it hurts an otherwise perfect system.

[Kendi]

Simple solution. Stop allowing the inflation of grades. From what I've seen, a lot of kids use honors, AP, and IB type courses to inflate their GPA... not for the reason intended, which is to learn more advanced topics. I mean, I've worked with college freshmen who took AP chemistry and AP bio who knew significantly less but have a much larger ego about it (and about getting an A on the test) than freshmen who took standard chemistry in high school. You get to deal with alot of grade-centric students as a grad student instructor at UC Berkeley...

I think an "A" should be an "A". A "B" is a "B". And an "F" is an "F". It shouldn't matter if it is a regular class or an honors class. The point of the honors class shouldn't be the inflated grade, it should be the chance to actually learn something in a setting that otherwise bores you.