Leading Mama

The Business of Education

At a time when family budgets are shrinking and unemployment is on the rise, more and more schools are paying students for academic achievement. In Chicago, financial incentives are offered as part of “Green for Grades.” In more than 100 Texas high schools, the nonprofit group Advanced Placement Strategies pays up to $500 to kids earning top scores on AP English, math and science tests. 

Have I lost touch with reality or does this seem like a really bad idea to you, too?

 

Psychological research consistently shows when you pay people to perform tasks, they lose interest in them. It’s as if they think to themselves “If she’s got to pay me to do this, it must be really boring.” Kids paid to color pictures decide they aren’t so fond of coloring anymore. Professional athletes lose touch with the thrill of the sport when they’re overpaid and under pressure. What’s worse, when external incentives disappear, most people stop doing what you paid them to do.

 

Remind me – what makes the cash-for-grades exchange a good idea?

 

Business leaders might compare this practice to incentive systems for employees. There are several similar systems in business practice – profit sharing, working on commission, bonuses for exceptional performance.

 

Since school funding depends on student test scores, the practice of paying students for grades amounts to an educational profit sharing plan. Sort of – but not really. In profit sharing programs, employees typically share in the company’s profits as a group, not as individuals. Profit sharing programs encourage employees to work as a team for the good of the organization. One employee’s success is irrelevant if profits are down across the board. Everyone has to achieve or no one does.

 

WashingtonD.C.’s “Capital Gains” incentive system and other programs nationwide reward individual performance. These programs amount to work on commission for students. The more good grades they post, the greater their individual financial rewards. Other students’ success is irrelevant. And no work means no pay.

 

I know it’s tempting to believe financial incentives will motivate kids to stay in school and get good grades. But if school is work, and education is business, then we know paying people more can’t make them care. And it can’t make them stay where they don’t want to be. 

 

Nearly a quarter of all American’s change jobs each year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Though 89% of managers think their employees quit because they could make more money elsewhere, only 12% of employees leave for more money. The #1 reason people quit their jobs is BAD MANAGEMENT. 

 

Bad bosses fail to involve people in decision making. They fail to appreciate employees’ contributions. And they fail to develop employees’ talents and abilities. One study found workers are almost four times more likely to leave because their skills are not being used and their careers are not being developed than because of salary.

 

Before paying another poor student to earn a passing score on the state-mandated math test this year, maybe educators need to re-think what truly motivates students. Just like adults, kids appreciate opportunities to contribute to something bigger than themselves. They like being part of a team. They want to make a difference in the world. Not later – NOW.

 

Kids’ enthusiasm for learning new skills (animation, photography, auto mechanics) and developing talents (art, music, athletics, drama) is automatic. We don’t have to pay them to play baseball. We don’t offer incentives for drawing or singing or photography. Because learning is incentive enough.

 

Unfortunately the intrinsically satisfying nature of learning is undermined by teach-the-test academics. There’s no room left for exploring what is interesting to students. No time for group projects and service learning. Education has been reduced to assembly line production – no room for creativity remains.

 

If assessment-centric decision making, educational inequity, and an inability to see how education matters in life have de-motivated students to the point we must pay them to learn, we’ve got a problem no amount of money can fix. Really.

 

Parallels in the Motherworld

As I’ve been working on writing, I’m doing a lot more reading. Everything from Parents to Office Solutions, from the Toastmaster to The Sun is on my reading list these days. And I’m having a blast reading like a writer – paying attention to tone, length, use of authoritative sources, quotations, bulleted lists, anecdotes and visually evocative wording.

 

A publication that recently caught my attention is Motherwords, a Boston-area parenting magazine chock full of mom’s first-person essays on life in the trenches (so to speak). Actually, some days it sounds kind of blissful to lie down in a trench while the bullets fly over head. At least I’d get to lie down, right?

 

In Motherwords, you won’t find the usual how to choose a pediatrician or when to allow kids to use cell phones kinds of parenting advice. Rather, you’ll feel the burning frustration of parenting teenagers who know they know more than you and laugh as you read toddlers’ outrageous escapades, thankful for once it is someone else’s unruly teenager and not your own Play-Doh-eating toddler.

 

Sarah Teres, Motherwords’ Publisher and Editorial director, made a statement in her last editorial column that caught my attention. She wrote, “I’ve noticed that when I see my children going through a new stage of life, there is something in my own life that mirrors it.”

 

Teres’s comments resonated with me because right now I’m focused on finding my voice as a writer – getting the words out in a way that both makes sense and sounds like me, rather than someone else. At the same time, my son is finding his voice – getting words out in a way that makes sense and doesn’t sound like the sound effects track from a movie about aliens.

 

Classic Carsonisms such as “yeesh” and “whuzzat?” persist, but he’s added “no” for nose and “mow” for mouth and started using them when we aren’t pleading “Can you say nose?” like the desperate parents of a boy who isn't meeting the developmental milestone for language. This week he approached a fellow toddler at the playground, touched her nose and said (with great pride) "no." That seems like a good start to me.

Perhaps it’s coincidental that our own life issues overlap with our kids’. Perhaps there’s no coincidence at all and the perceived parallel is nothing more than a priming effect.

 

Priming refers to the fact that exposure to one stimulus makes us more aware of other similar or related stimuli. For instance, when you’ve just read an article on the dangers of bisphenol A in plastic baby bottles and you’re feeling really good about breastfeeding (despite waking up 8 times each night to nurse the little sucker) you suddenly notice your toxic food storage containers, your poisonous Nalgene water bottle, and the hard plastic rattle your kid loves to chew. When you’re trying to remember the last time the dog went out to poop, your toddler’s brown leather booties cause a complete freak out until you confirm their not-so-poopy status.

 

What do you think? Do you notice issues in your own life that mirror the stages of your kids’ development? If so, do you think it’s coincidence, priming, or a more meaningful pattern? Let’s hear your voice on this.

Ready, Set, Fail

As I scanned the business headlines this morning, an article entitled "How to Recover from Failure" caught my eye. The piece shows how entrepreneurs and political leaders get their wits about them and move on, despite massive, and often very public, failures.

In the sentimental closing section, Vice Presidential candidate Joe Biden even credits his mother with teaching him to stand up to challenges and fight back when all seems lost. Moms and dads everywhere should pat themselves on the back helping children "get back on the horse" over and over again. Teaching kids to fall gracefully and  to get back up again is, after all, a big part of parenting.

As I've been studying and practicing freelance writing, I wondered how people prepare themselves for failure. I know, it sounds defeatest to go into something expecting to fail and preparing for "the worst," but I can't help it. I've sent articles and queries to several national consumer magazines in the past month and that little devil on my shoulder shares his doomful doubts from time to time. He says things like, "That was a mistake," and "They'll never take you seriously." If he were real I'd strangle him.

A fellow student in my online writing class asked yesterday "Do I have to post my work?" The instructor replied that no, she did not have to post her work, but recommended she do so. I'm sure the student on the other end felt she was being encouraged to fail. Worse, it would be public (virtually public, anyway). I had asked a different question. My question was "Can I post some of my queries here for you and my classmates to read and make comments?"

I call it the READY, SET, FAIL approach. Here's why you should try it:

• Because risking public failure cements your commitment to the venture. I've met with many would-be entrepreneurs in my role as business consultant. Some brought me beautifully written, well-researched business plans. Others' plans were scribbled on the backs of gum wrappers. Some hadn't written a formal plan but positively burst with ideas when I asked how I might help. What they shared was a belief that their ideas were worth pursuing and the courage to commit to them.

• Because until you put your work out there, you can't get feedback on it. You've probably heard that Thomas Edison failed on the first 1,000 attempts make a lightbulb but he didn't lose hope. Rather, he says he learned 1,000 times how not to make a lightbulb. This is part truth and part mis-truth as Edison did not actually invent the lightbulb (it predated him by 50 years). Edison worked to identify a suitable filament for incandescent lightbulbs, one that would allow them to burn brighter and longer. What he did say was this:

 "After we had conducted thousands of experiments on a certain project without solving the problem, one of my associates, after we had conducted the crowning experiment and it had proved a failure, expressed discouragement and disgust over our having failed to find out anything. I cheerily assured him that we had learned something. For we had learned for a certainty that the thing couldn't be done that way, and that we would have to try some other way."

Thomas Edison interview, published January 1921, American Magazine.

• Because regret is a worse fate than failure. Studies of elderly people are revealing in this regard. When asked about their lives, few people say they wish they could change what has happened to them. Keep in mind, BAD things happen to people. They fall out of love, lose their jobs, and suffer debilitating injuries. But they seldom wish they could change these things. It seems tragedy has forged their character and to undo what's been done is unthinkable. What they DO regret is places they didn't go, projects they didn't pursue, relationships they let die over time.

So it seems wise to adopt the READY, SET, FAIL approach. Put yourself out there and see what happens. Remember, failure isn't the worst thing that can happen. Regret is. Commit to improvement and be persistent. When you fall, dust yourself off, figure out what you've learned, and lead on. Now, that's success.

Are You My Monkey?

    In the classic children's book entitled "Are You My Mother?" a baby bird who hatched while his mother was away asks a dog, a cow, and even an airplane "Are You My Mother?" As a mom, I appreciate the sweet repetition in the story. I don't even mind reading it (over and over) to my son. But when life imitates literature, I get a little bit crazy. 

    Recently my son has become an intensely anxious little mama's boy. Don't get me wrong, he has ALWAYS been a mama's boy -- after all, his dad was gone on deployment for the first 13 months of his life. But in the last 10 days, my son started clinging like a monkey. One of Harry Harlow's monkeys, to be exact. (Remember from Intro Psych that Harlow studied attachment in baby rhesus monkeys raised with wire or cloth-covered surrogate mothers. His monkey subjects became fearful and timid, not wanting to try new things.)

   

  My previously courageous little monkey freaks out if I leave the room. He follows me everywhere, like a dog expecting a treat. When I take him to the gym, he sits down in the doorway and wails. I coax and cajole him all the way to the play room, and then I leave him. He curls up on the floor, head in his hands, and sobs. Just like Harlow's baby monkeys. Unlike those monkeys, as I leave the room a caregiver picks him up and cuddles him, ensuring him I'll be back.

    This is enough to give me a complex. I wonder what turned my son from an adventurous, sociable flirt into a needy, anxious little monkey? Maybe the enormous changes in our lives this spring/summer have finally caught up with us. Maybe my son is just going through a phase (but at almost 18 months he seems a bit old for stranger anxiety). I'll never know.

    What I do know is he's MY little monkey. And if I can't get to the gym for a workout, I'll do my leg extensions with a 25-lb. toddler anxiously clinging to my leg. And that will be workout enough.