I can understand attaching incentives to a whole grade or school but to individual teachers, I simply can’t see how this wouldn’t be massively abused.
Update: given to students! Interesting idea but still increases incentive for students to cheat.
Update: given to students! Interesting idea but still increases incentive for students to cheat.
A legion of motivated kids would also help root out bad teachers. Right now, kids probably like a lazy teacher - less work for them. If your payout, as a student, is based on standardized tests - you're probably going to be upset with a teacher who isn't teaching you much.
There would be corruption and cheating to balance against - but I think it's possible to strike a balance that's much better than our current system.
And punishing them if they fail.
And punishing /their teachers/ if they fail.
Do you really want to raise the stakes on something that's already stressful enough for a huge portion of the population? "If you don't get a B or better, your little brother won't get to eat" doesn't lead to disciplined focus for many people...
In our current model people care about getting more money and benefits to district administrators, union officials, and companies that provide education services, but people obviously don't care about educating students well.
I think that yes, like you describe, offering substantial amounts of money would produce substantial motivation. Better, it would produce motivation exactly where needed. The poorly family in generational poverty knows they can get 20k a year if their kid studies well. The poor family pressures their kids into studying a lot and doing well in school. Yes, that's hard on the kids but the consequences are that they're well educated and their families get needed support.
By contrast, the idea that we shouldn't pay students because their families might pressure them into doing well is a false kindness. You would make school a little easier but doom the children to generational poverty all so the bureaucracy consuming our exorbitant education budget can continue to be rich.