Why you would give credence to such a pathetic, intellectually lazy, and potentially dangerous idea as tying scholastic performance to immediate tangible rewards is beyond me. This article is exactly why Slate can be such an aggravating publication so much of the time. Raw, steaming, maggot infested garbage like this often sits right next to truly good writing, and no one ever seems to notice or care. I will try my best to go easy on Mr. Kahlenberg as he has obviously experienced some extraordinary head injury recently, but please forgive me if I lose my patience as this goes on.

So you have some kids who perform poorly on standardized tests. They have crappy teachers and schools, siblings and friends who deal drugs and carry guns, parents who either don't have the time for them or simply don't care, and the kids are in bad shape physically because vegetables are simply an unaffordable luxury for them. Maybe I don't get it, but it seems to me that these problems are a bit more entrenched and complicated than to be solved by simple, immediate incentives like cell phones and cash. Call me crazy, but I think we can do better in addressing some very dire needs.

Kahlenberg acknowledges in his article that the legitimate prospect of attending college is a major incentive for those who are lucky enough to afford it. Rather than focusing on implementing real, robust efforts to make this prospect less "abstract" for those from disadvantaged backgrounds by really working with the programs designed to do exactly that (College Summit comes to mind), Kahlenberg would rather that we offer the poor kids some toys and let them go about their merry way into economic and intellectual oblivion. This isn't just a crappy idea for practical reasons. It is a betrayal of democracy.

If there is one virtue that every American can hold in the center of his heart, it is that the circumstances into which you are born should not determine your station in life. Somehow, however, Kahlenberg and Bloomberg obviously don't share this notion. Have we really gotten to the point where we are no longer interested in making college a viable option for every student? Is the economic gap between the rich and the poor so large now that we have given up on the idea that the prospect of a better life and the virtues of a complete education can belong to everyone, not only those who find themselves on the more verdant side of the wealth chasm? People who come from backgrounds in which education is undervalued need to be given opportunities to see its potential, not placated by gifts for doing what they are told to do without being offered any solutions for the big problems. Plans like this lead to an ethic of robotic materialism at the direct expense of intellectual curiosity. Maybe Kahlenberg doesn't think there is a difference between these two things, but I sure as hell do. We need to focus on serious solutions for these kids, not childish rewards.

Lazy, easy fixes that don't let students understand the virtue of education and the power of effort other than for an infantile reward are not solutions at all. They are white flags of surrender.