2
Study Sessions and Sausage Biscuits
By Deborah Lehmann —
Georgia schools have a new way to get students to study for the state graduation exam: free pizza, soda and Chick-fil-A sausage biscuits. According to this article in the Florida Times Union, administrators in a number of high schools say the treats are both an incentive to focus and a reward for attending test-prep sessions.
On top of the snacks, one school mentioned in the article will allow juniors who attend every study session to take five days off during their senior year of high school. All this to make sure a large percentage of students pass Georgia’s high school exit exam.
It’s been working. The article says schools that offer free food and other rewards have seen high scores, and 70 to 85 percent of students in those counties passed the test on their first try last year.
The principals who are ordering pizzas and letting kids skip class probably do care about student wellness. But I’m sure they also care about keeping their schools running, and the money they need to do that comes from meeting state and federal education mandates. A few sausage biscuits don’t look like such a bad thing when they get students to study.
Those sausage biscuits, by the way, have 590 calories, 41 grams of fat, 80 percent of the daily value of saturated fat and 1250 milligrams of sodium.
Anybody else think we need some new standards for evaluating U.S. public schools?
April 6th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
Whatever happened to students who were motivated to attend school and study and do well, simply because of the intrinsic value of an education? We have created an entire generation of students who act like trained dogs. Apparently, they have been conditioned to perform only if they know they are getting a “treat”. Very sad state of affairs, indeed. The adults of today have passed down to their children unhealthy emotional attachments to food. Everything is rewarded with food these days, it seems. -And not good, whole food, but junk foods that are calorie dense and nutrient poor. No wonder there is so much “disordered eating” in the world. Unbelievable.
May 27th, 2009 at 10:18 am
And this is why cholesterol studies are done in the South.