Under an Ohio bill aimed at preventing absenteeism, students as young as 5 years old would be able to receive wages for attending class.
Under the pilot program, the state will give selected kindergarteners and ninth-graders $25 in cash every other week for just attending nine classes out of 10 days in a two-week period.
Students who maintain 90% annual attendance will receive $150 at the end of each quarter and $700 at the end of the year.
One of the bipartisan bill's sponsors argued that the cash would be a good incentive to combat truancy, which has skyrocketed in Ohio even before the coronavirus pandemic. According to the State House Press Office.
“We went from 15% pre-pandemic to more than 31% in this most recent school year, which equates to nearly a third of 9th graders spending their entire high school year missing more than 10% of their school years. “This is the biggest problem we face in education,” said U.S. Rep. Dani Isaac Thorne, D-Cincinnati.
Co-sponsor Rep. Bill Seitz (R-Cincinnati) told the Ohio House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee that other motivational methods are insufficient.
“So we've tried pizza days, we've tried playground time, we've tried all kinds of antics. Nothing seems to work,” Seitz was quoted as saying.
“Now let's talk about the immediacy of paying in cash. Cash is king. Cold, hard cash. We trust in God and everyone else pays in cash.”
Approximately $1.5 million has been set aside for pilot programs in fiscal years 2024 and 2025 targeting at least one rural district and one urban district.
The program offers $250 to graduating students from select schools and up to $750 to graduates with high GPAs. According to Columbus News Agency.
Other students in the control group did not receive cash.
If successful, and with support from Congress, the program could be expanded throughout the Buckeye State.
At least one Republican on the committee was skeptical.
Rep. Josh Williams, who earned his GED after failing to graduate high school, said he supports creative ideas to improve attendance and grades, but said the proposal goes too far.
“Why do we pay our children to abide by the law? We have a 'no-miss-from-school' law. You cannot be absent from school. You may be subject to criminal charges and punishment. Parents, your child needs to be enrolled in school. If you don't send your children to school, you could be prosecuted and punished,” the Sylvania state lawmaker was quoted as saying.
“Will this set a precedent for children as young as kindergarten to pay to comply with the law in the future? In other words, we will pay rapists not to rape them. Are you planning on reaching that point?”
Seitz countered that there aren't enough truancy officials to keep on top of the problem, noting that high school dropouts waste state money in other ways.
“Kids today want more or less instant gratification. You can't say, 'If you do all this, I'll give you a lollipop at the end of the year.' The way we designed this with monthly cash payments of $25 provides some level of immediacy,” Seitz said.
He also suggested that the quality of the pizza provided to students as part of the stipend may not have been good enough.
“Maybe that pizza isn't as good as it should be. I don't know.”
In Ohio, black students are twice as likely to be chronically absent than white students.
