To the Editor:
Re “Next Question: Can Students Be Paid to Excel?” (front page, March 5), about a program to reward teachers and students for test performance at P.S. 188 on the Lower East Side of Manhattan:
I was a student teacher at P.S. 188 and am familiar with the school’s focus on state tests. I was shocked that educated professionals would support an initiative to pay students for test scores.
As a middle-school English teacher who constantly strives to help students realize that reading and writing are a larger part of life than a short state test, I detest the concept of rewarding their performance with money. Poor students who do basic academic work because it results in cash are merely being coached to perform, and the people really benefiting are school professionals and politicians.
This initiative sends the message that learning for learning’s sake is obsolete. Paying students for test scores reduces the teaching of English to a transaction, one in which a teacher sells students methods of fooling test graders.
This is not an education.
Julie Edmonds
New York, March 5, 2008
