The New York City program that pays students for good scores on AP exams yielded "mixed results," according to the New York Times. Education Trust President Kati Haycock, commenting on the program's philosophy,??gets the article's last words:
"Frankly, rich kids get paid for high grades all the time and for high test scores by their parents," Ms. Haycock added. "So this isn't so different."
Yes it is. Rich kids, as Haycock notes,??are paid by their parents, each of whom has obviously made a personal decision that handing out money for grades or test scores is a fine idea for his particular family situation. (Lots of rich kids, it must be written, are not paid for grades--not because their parents can't swing it but because their parents??find it, for one reason or another, an unhealthful practice.) We should resist the flawed idea that because some parents have the means to do for their children X and do it, X is somehow a right to which all students are entitled and one the government should provide. (This caveat does not apply to vouchers, through which government relinquishes authority and does not assume it.)