Students as young as five could be paid to attend class under a proposed Ohio law aimed at combating absenteeism.
Under a pilot program, the state would provide biweekly $25 cash transfers to selected kindergarten and ninth-grade students just for showing up to class nine out of every 10 days over a two-week span.
Students who maintained a 90% attendance rate throughout the year would receive $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 school truancy, which has increased in Ohio since before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to The Statehouse News Bureau.
“We went from 15% before the pandemic to over 31% in this most recent school year. That’s nearly a third of our ninth graders spending their first year of high school missing more than ten percent of their school days. This is the number one problem we face in education,” said Rep. Dani Isaacsohn, D-Cincinnati.
Co-sponsor Rep. Bill Seitz, R-Cincinnati, told the Ohio House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee that other motivation techniques have not been enough.
“So, we tried pizza day and game time and tried all kinds of foo-foo things. It doesn’t seem to work,” Seitz said, according to the report.
Chronic absenteeism in Ohio had skyrocketed to more than 30% since before the COVID-19 pandemic, officials said. Ty Wright/RED USA TODAY
“Let’s talk then about the immediacy of a cash payment. Cash is king. Hard cash. We trust in God, everyone else pays cash.”
About $1.5 million has been set aside for the pilot program targeting at least one rural district and one urban district in fiscal years 2024 and 2025.
The program would 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 would not receive the money.
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If successful, the program could be expanded across the Buckeye State if it gained support from the legislature.
At least one Republican on the committee was skeptical.
Rep. Josh Williams, who earned a GED after not graduating high school, said he supported creative ideas to increase attendance and performance, but the proposal went too far.
“Why are we going to pay children to comply with the law? We have laws in place that say, “You can’t skip school.” You can’t be absent. You may be criminally charged and punished. Parents, your children must be enrolled in school. If you don’t enroll your children in school, you can be charged and punished,’” the Sylvania lawmaker said, according to the report.
“Will this set a precedent for our young children, starting in kindergarten, that we are going to pay them to follow the laws in the future? I mean, are we going to get to the point where we pay rapists not to rape?
Seitz responded that there are not enough truancy officers to stay on top of the problem and noted that dropouts cost the state money in other ways.
“Kids today want, more or less, immediate 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 the $25 monthly cash payment provides a certain degree of immediacy,” Seitz said.
He also noted that perhaps the quality of the pizza offered to students as an incentive had not been sufficient.
“Maybe the pizza isn’t as good as it should be. I don’t know.”
Chronic absenteeism is reportedly twice as common among black students as white students in Ohio.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn