If you want less of something, you punish it.
If you want more of something, you subsidize it.
The State of Washington’s legislators have not yet learned this very simple lesson.
Teresa Jackson is raising three grandchildren by herself on a fixed income, and saving money for their college education is nearly impossible.
But now Washington state is stepping in to help low-income students like Jackson’s grandchildren go to college.
A new scholarship for low-income middle school students comes with a promise that if grades are kept up through high school – at least 2.0 – the state will pay for college. Kids need to keep out of trouble with the law, too – no felonies.
“This is my only opportunity,” said Jackson, who at 61 is taking care of two teenagers and a third child in elementary school after their mothers – Jackson’s daughters – developed substance-abuse problems.
“We just barely make enough to survive. And saving up for college is impossible. It’s a burden off my shoulders,” Jackson said.
The College Bound scholarship is part of a recent string of initiatives by the state and universities trying to usher low-income students to a college education.
Christened “College Bound” by legislators, the state began rolling out registration for the scholarship this year. The only stipulation is students need to be under the free-or-reduced lunch program. The deadline to enroll is June 1 for eighth graders.
Students who enroll must continue to meet low-income criteria when they apply for college admission.
Yes, the story is heartbreaking. It is also the exception, rather than the rule.
Basically, you need to stay poor and dependent upon the state for at least four years, and your child/children can’t rob a bank, rape or murder anyone before they graduate, and they get a free ride into college?
Keeping a 2.0 GPA should be able to be done by an average child in their sleep. Not committing criminal acts, not just felonies, is just something every decent citizen should be able to do for their first 18 years. Hell, these are even easier qualifications than the ones required to be able to join the military.
So now the state wants to take my tax money to “encourage” kids to be just barely decent citizens, all the while telling the parents that if they try and better themselves, increase their own education, get a better job, etc., that their child’s future will be in the balance?
Whatever happened to kids working your way through college?
Has the state given up on the parents and are hoping the college funds reward will sink into the kid?
Yeah, what about good, OLD, work-study. Why not just expand THAT idea, which has proven successful over the last FIFTY years.
Yep, got it in one. The adults have already proven themselves incompetent at managing their lives, but maybe we can save the next generation.
The program is, indeed, a very nice reward for the kids. It is also a very nice disincentive for the parents to try to do better by their kids. And I find it awfully disrespectful to us taxpayers who have to pay our’s and our kids’ own way, while handing a huge reward to those incompetent parents who need do nothing to earn that reward, except continue to be incompetent parents.
Handbasket for sure ……….
“Up” to 2.0. Heh. If either of my kids gets a B I’m on their asses.
We’re subsidizing substance abuse. Wait– isn’t substance abuse (other than alcohol) illegal? So, we’re subsidizing illegal drug use, then? But wait again– didn’t outlawing certain drugs mean that they’d go away and that our country would become a good and happy place? And wait, yet again– aren’t free markets the key to prosperity, or has that idea been proven wrong somewhere and I just failed to read the study?