Make child tax credits contingent on your child maintaining a C average.

It seems that the #1 factor that determines a student's success is parental involvement. It's true that some students will always struggle through school, but if you can't get your kid to maintain a C average through high school, you suck at parenting, and the government shouldn't give you any money for your piss-poor effort.

My cooperating teacher was recently telling me about our school's open house at the beginning of the school year; nearly all the honors students' parents came to see her. Only three parents of non-honors attended. I've talked to a few other people about this and it seems to be the norm. And it obviously goes far beyond after school meetings. Ensuring homework gets done, enforcing study habits, enforcing adequate sleep, etc... Most poor-performing students' parents (barring special needs children) just don't give a shit.

I can't fathom how a parent could be so negligent as to not keep up with their kids' grades. I assume they just don't appreciate the value of an education. Regardless, most people do appreciate the value of money. Hence my proposal.

I thought about making welfare contingent to decent grades as well, but decided against it for two reasons; 1) taking services away from an already struggling family is not conducive to good grades at school. Plz to read Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. 2) Although I'd say the majority of underperforming students come from poor families, there are also plenty of well-off students whose parents suck. The child tax credit would cover them as well.

I know that there would be some problems with this; primarily that this would 1) probably lead to grade inflation and 2) lead to an even greater number of parents having their kids classified as special needs when they shouldn't be (I won't get started on this, but suffice it to say, it's already out of control).

Thoughts?

[Edited on October 3, 2005 at 12:53 AM. Reason : welfare]

10/3/2005 12:52:47 AM

A C average?

I think that's too high of a standard.

10/3/2005 5:14:07 AM

How many people whose children have below a C average actually pay taxes?

10/3/2005 8:23:31 AM

EVERY shitty student comes from a poor family

and they are also all black

10/3/2005 8:25:07 AM

sounds like a great way to increase domestic violence and child abuse....

10/3/2005 8:26:23 AM

Quote :

" sounds like a great way to increase domestic violence and child abuse.... "

GOD DAMNIT BOY YOU GON GET GOOD GRADES

10/3/2005 11:57:51 AM

^ How it should be

10/3/2005 12:45:57 PM

we dont need any more grade-buying, which is exactly what that will cause. most of it wouldnt be directly between the parents and schools, but I'm sure some government organization would form to buy grades unfairly.

10/3/2005 1:40:43 PM

so if most kids that do bad in school come from poor families, you want to punish those families by taxing them more?

10/3/2005 1:55:10 PM

If you're capitalist, you want to tax them more. If you're communist, you want to tax them less.

10/3/2005 2:12:20 PM

people would complain that it is an unfair policy that discriminates based on race

10/3/2005 5:09:25 PM

also: too many parents do their kid's f'ing homework already. this is more of a problem in families where there's at least one parent who has the time to do this. you all knew the kid whose dad did his science fair project every year.

10/3/2005 5:12:17 PM

My parents never did my hw. They really couldn't have from the 6th grade on. I guess I'll have to pretend to be stupid so my kids will do their own work.

10/3/2005 5:48:56 PM

i hope that all of you complain when a professor curves

10/3/2005 5:50:13 PM

Meh, I've decided I don't like the idea.

It'd be too difficult to implement, and it'd be yet another layer of bureaucratic bullshit for teachers to have to deal with.


New idea:

5:1 student-teacher ratios and $85,000 starting salaries! Yaaaaay!

10/3/2005 6:24:37 PM

racism

Black leaders would find a way to paint this as a racist measure

10/3/2005 6:57:25 PM