Students as young as five could be paid to attend class under a proposed Ohio law aimed at combating absenteeism.
Under the pilot program, the state will make a $25 cash transfer every two weeks to select kindergarten and ninth-grade students just for attending class nine out of 10 days in a two-week period.
Students who maintain a 90% attendance rate for the year will earn $150 at the end of each quarter and $700 at the end of the year.
One of the sponsors of the bipartisan measure argued that the cash would be a good incentive to combat truancy, which has been on the rise in Ohio since before the COVID-19 outbreak, according to The Statehouse News Bureau.
“We increased from 15% pre-pandemic to over 31% this latest school year. That’s nearly a third of our ninth graders who spend their first year of high school missing more than ten percent of their school days. This is the number one issue we face in education,” said Rep. Dani Isaacsohn, a Cincinnati Democrat.
Co-sponsor Rep. Bill Seitz, a Cincinnati Republican, told the Ohio House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee that other motivational techniques have failed.
“So we’ve tried pizza day and we’ve tried playground time and we’ve tried all kinds of foo-foo stuff. It doesn’t seem to work,” Seitz said, according to the report.
Chronic absenteeism in Ohio has jumped to more than 30% since before the COVID-19 outbreak, officials said. Ty Wright / USA TODAY NETWORK
“So let’s talk about the necessity of payment in cash. Cash is king. Cold, hard cash. In God we trust, everything else pays cash.”
About $1.5 million has been allocated for pilot programs targeting at least one rural district and one urban district in fiscal years 2024 and 2025.
The program will also offer students $250 for graduating from select schools, and up to $750 for graduates with a high GPA, according to The Columbus Dispatch.
Other students in the control group will not get cash.
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If successful, the program could be expanded throughout the Buckeye State if it gets the support of the legislature.
At least one Republican on the committee is skeptical.
Representative Josh Williams, who earned his GED after failing to graduate high school, said he supports creative ideas to improve attendance and performance — but the proposal goes too far.
“Why would we pay children to follow the law? We have a law that says ‘You can’t skip school. You can’t skip it. You can be criminally charged and punished. Parents, your children must be registered in school. If you don’t enroll your children in school, you can be prosecuted and you can be punished,’” the Sylvania lawmaker said, according to the report.
“Is this going to set an example to our young children as early as kindergarten that we will pay you to obey the law moving forward? I mean, are we ever going to get to the point where we pay rapists not to rape?”
Seitz countered that there aren’t enough truancy officers to keep up with the problem, and pointed out that high school dropouts cost the state money in other ways.
“Kids today want, more or less, instant gratification. You can’t say ‘Well, if you do all this, we’ll give you a lollipop at the end of the school year.’ The way we’ve designed this with a monthly cash payment of $25 provides a level of immediacy,” Seitz said.
He also stated that perhaps the quality of pizza offered to students as an incentive was not enough.
“Maybe the pizza is not as good as it should be. I do not know.”
Chronic absenteeism is reported to be twice as common among black students as among white students in Ohio.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
