In Chicago, greed for grades sends terrible message

"Greed is good-greed is right, greed works." Gordon Gecko in "Wall Street", 1987.

"People lost their homes because of greed." Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, 2008.

If greed is the culprit in the nation's financial chaos as Mayor Daley has scolded, then why is he supporting the Chicago Public Schools endorsement of greed?

I'm talking about the "Green for Grades" program that pays cash bounties to students who get good grades.

It really should be called Greed for Grades, because that is precisely what it teaches students.

On Friday, the first $265,000 in cash was paid out to Chicago students for "good" report cards. A total of 1,650 students were paid off.

In a city and state where pay-to-play government is accepted and expected, bribing students with a few bucks could be considered vocational training. Do the hand over plain white envelopes to students in washrooms like City Hall bagmen?

The new Greed for Grades program is under way at 20 Chicago high schools. Straight As net a student $4,000 in cash during high school. Even a mediocre performance, straight Cs, yields $1,600.

As in English, math, science, social studies and gym are each worth $50 for freshman and sophomores, every five-week reporting period. Bs pay $35. Cs are worth $20.

Students who can't remember how it works might think of it as Win, Place and Show, although they receive half of their wager now and half at graduation.

Mayor Daley blames suburban parents for forcing city officials' hands. "Wealthy parents in the suburban area - they give their kids a car. They give them a trip to Hawaii. They send them around the world. They take them to Florida. They take them to California," explained the mayor.

I hope my kids don't read this. They'll wonder why we didn't implement the Suburban Students Incentive Entitlement Program.

"These (city) kids don't even get out of their homes for many, many years," he said, inferring that well-performing students should use their grades payments on a vacation to Waikiki Beach.

Perhaps Mayor Daley should encourage in-the-money students to travel to the Cayman Islands that offer secret, offshore bank accounts.

"There are a lot of poor kids. Some of them have nothing," said the mayor. "Some don't even have parents. They're lucky to get Christmas gifts. They're lucky they get a hug once in a while."

Mr. Mayor, unless students have managed to clone one another in science class, they all have parents. Whether each and every parent is available and involved is always the question.

As you might expect, the brains behind the Greed for Grades program are not to be found in Chicago. A Harvard professor dreamed it up. Children in New York and Washington, D.C., also are being used as test creatures to prove his point: teenagers perform better with a pot at the end of the rainbow.

Whether this is a good idea depends on what you believe should be in the pot at rainbow's end. Gold or good sense? Currency or judgment? Green backs or grey matter?

There is opposition to Greed for Grades. The best quote I've read comes from Bob Schaeffer of an education watchdog group, the National Center for Fair and Open testing.

"Bribing kids for higher test scores - or paying teachers bounties for their students' work - is similar to giving them steroids," Schaeffer says. "Short-term performance might improve but the long-term effects can be very damaging."

For almost half of the students, it doesn't matter anyway. Forty-nine percent missed their first chance to get in the money by flunking a class in the fall marking period.

Thankfully, the program is privately funded. It would be unsightly for the mayor to offer nice financial packages to students who are already getting free public educations, at a time when he is slashing the city budget and work force.

There is no precedent for Greed for Grades and nobody asked Chicago residents if they thought it was a good idea.

The Illinois Constitution doesn't prescribe it. Article 10 states: "Education in public schools through the secondary level shall be free."

It doesn't say: "Chicago public school students who don't goof off shall be rewarded with thousands of dollars in cash bribes and encouraged to go on tropical vacations."

Nor does it say anything about whether such gratuities should be taxed, even though those receiving payments might be considered "professional students." Hello IRS?

Finally, no one dares to speak of the most terrifying aspect of Greed for Grades: if Chicago students become accustomed to obtaining cash for doing their jobs, there might be a glut of candidates for aldermen.

Or worse yet. They may all grow up wanting to be governor.

• Chuck Goudie, whose column appears each Monday, is the chief investigative reporter at ABC 7 News in Chicago. The views in this column are his own and not those of WLS-TV. He can be reached by e-mail at chuckgoudie@gmail.com.