Go 2 Tutors, an outlet covering all things education, reported that the San Antonio [Texas] Independent School District announced that they would in fact raffle away a brand new Toyota Rav 4.
Students must have a minimum cumulative attendance rate at the end of the school year of 70% or greater to be eligible for the grand prize drawing for the car.
Allowable excused absences will be in accordance with ADA State law exemptions to the compulsory attendance requirements; all unexcused absences will determine each student’s attendance percentage for awarding of ticket(s).
There are multiple ways a student can earn a ticket for entry into the drawing. Opportunities to earn tickets will occur at the close of each 9 week grading period. Attendance metrics will be based on the student’s attendance during the full 9-week period. Students may earn multiple digital tickets by meeting one or more metrics for each 9-week period.
The school district said in a press release
Other schools in the U.S. are doing prize giveaways, not necessarily car-sized but still something to try and sweeten the deal for kids to attend class more regularly.
The Hickman Mills C-1 School District in Kansas is offering gift cards for good attendance, raffling off students name’s every three months for the chance to win a $50 gift card. A student also has the chance of winning a new bicycle at the end of the school year if their attendance is impeccable.
Go 2 Tutors wrote:
For the long-term, it is unknown for now whether or not these incentives will prove successful. But as attendance rates continue to alarming decrease, district leaders know how important it is to try out new things. Last year, many districts reported drastic data on student attendance.
Major cities seemed to suffer the worse. In New York City, more than 40% of the nation’s largest district was marked chronically absent. This means that this group of students missed at least 10% of the entire school year.
Some education experts are doubtful that these monetary rewards will be enough to reverse the growing trend. They believe there is a sinister root cause keeping kids at home that needs to instead be addressed. Barriers like at-home family issues, negative school experiences that may arise from bullying, and other extreme factors may be at play, and offering up gift cards, and even cars are not likely to indefinitely curb the issue.
AUTHOR COMMENTARY
If this type of ridiculousness is happening in these schools, then you know it is going on in many other places as well. Good attendance used to get your name announced during the morning announcements, and have your geeky picture plastered up on the school walls. Now it’ll get you a car perhaps!
Schools are not in the business of educating: they are in the business of making money at your expense, whilst dumbing you down and making you ready for corporate America, to push papers and be too dumb to question anything the media says.
Schools are going by the wayside. They are too costly and parents simply cannot afford it, neither can the states or the schools themselves. These actions are vain.
My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not.
Proverbs 1:10
[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).
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“Enroll in such-and-such college or university and we’ll give you $20,000, pay for your first five semesters, and get you a new car with free room and boarding. Also, because you’re Phi Theta Kappa, you’ll be made valedictorian and have the option to be a foreign exchange student in Japan.”
Me: no thanks, not interested. As far as Phi Theta Kappa is concerned, I’m taking the Apostle Paul’s advice and regarding it all as dung.
I’d like to know how we went from teachers complaining about not being able to afford a new car every five years to active teachers on the payroll being broadcasted in food lines on the evening news to now students being entered for a drawing of a new car if they have good attendance.
Personally, I’d be in favor of going back to the one room schools, or perhaps a school with three or four rooms for the bigger cities. Homeschooling is also a very good idea if the parent actually wants to take the time to train up their kid. Unfortunately I think that most parents are too lazy to even investigate the kind of education their children are getting, much less to educate the child themselves.
And… if / when you die from the mandated vaccinations we (The Schools) won’t be continuing your enticements, ugh we mean education
Yes, I forgot about that part, Kevin G!
The colleges and universities are going to require the jabs for enrollment.
Thus, I pass.
Raffles. Indulgences. You couldn’t get more pagan corrupted Romish Babylonian, if you tried. Cup of Borgia ….and worse (the dead are the better off…Isaiah 57 KJB) delivered through syringe & needle for transfer-the-wealth ‘medicine’ and rip-off gambling & self-destructive doctrines of devils porn & lying vanities for ‘entertainment’.
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This does NOT mean that God’s people should glorify ignorance & illiteracy & ‘feelings’ like any good pagan subject however. The best way is to spend lots of time in the Book, then proving all things by it.