Sure, it's called campaign contributions, big corporations, unions and other organized self-interest groups do it all the time. Don't have enough money to compete with them? Tough luck, sucker. Capitalism at its finest. Democracy not so much.

Don't our politicians get enought "bribes" or perks from lobyists now to do what the lobyists want not what the voters thought they heard them say what they would do?

China has a system like that. If you do not make a certain score you do not go to the next level of education. Most make it to high school but not all. Even less make it to university. The university you can attend is dependent on your score. Those who do not score well go to trade uiversities those who score well go to business or science or political universities.

PhiloPhool you are so right. This BS that everyone can be anything they want to be. Is just that BS. It started as a good idea just got out of control. Taken too literal if you will. Some people are just not equiped for academic education. About 40 some years ago our local elementary school boutght into the everyone gets rewarded idea. Thats when all this BS got out of control. So at this point we have people with college that are really only qualified to do factory work on a production line. Just read a piece about that very thing the other day. Saying Americas new manufacturers need college grads to operate their production lines. So at this point I would say that that is true. Not because of their education. But their lack of a real education. These folks are being churned out as educated. That did not even make the grades to get to a college level

An interesting observation. What is the ultimate goal of attending elementary school, middle (or junior) high school, high school and a college or university? Too many people have a simple response, "TO GET A DIPLOMA". Wrong, Wrong, Wrong. The diploma is not, nor it should be the goal. The purpose is to get an EDUCATION (training to be a useful member of the society and the nation in which one lives). This include many different skills from knowing the history of the nation, being able to think, to read and understand (along with logically challenging some things which need to be challenged), having math skills which helps with logical thinking (one major univesity at one time admitted students at 14 if they were excellent math students based on the idea that their thinking process would allow them to understand university level teaching), science skills to understand about life and the things that are important about it and lots more (this does not include finger painting, having teachers discuss professional sports instead of the subject matter they are paid to teach, etc. or bash political leaders with whom the disagree) How do other people know that you have learned and mastered these skills. You have been presented a DIPLOMA. Without this true education, a diploma should not be awareded to anyone, but educators seem to think a person will be permantently "harmed emotionally and doomed to a life of failure" if they are not awarded a diploma regardless of their being educated or not. That is the worst thing that can happen to a person, to let them believe they are qualfied to go into the world prepared to meet its every day challenges just because they have a DIPLOMA WITHOUT AN EDUCATION.

What correlation would those state scores necessarily have to the grades you should assign for actual performance in your class, unless indolence and sloth would lead you to not grade the documents at hand? Could it be that you merely wish to punish those who don't boost _your_ teacher review by doing well on those official tests? Grade the materials at hand, and don't be lazy!

I teach in Texas. We had them the last week of school.

Tennessee: We didn't receive ours until the second or third week of June.

I am a teacher and this is a bribe. Perhaps he needs to develop his teaching skills as opposed to resorting to bribes.

I wonder what your entitled generation will do after you and the illegal aliens have finally bankrupted Welfare.What ever happened to getting the hell over yourselves and sweating for your living?

It went out the window when we stopped having to struggle to live. The life's struggle now is to make sure I have all my wants rather than have all my needs. When that happens kids don't learn to work for their needs and spend all of their money on their wants. Then when they don't have the time/money for the needs like food water shelter they end up angry at why these things haven't been handed to them.

As for the teaching comment... you are probably not a very good teacher not to realize that kids don't have very good long term strategic planning skills. That usually comes with life experience. This goal gives them a short term deliverable to accompany long term goals. If you truly are a teacher you should have heard at least one of your kids say I will never use Calculus or American History, what they don't understand is that these things help you build a repository of skills that will help you with the things that you will use later in life, like college. Everything for a kid is long term strategic planning since the average grade school kid (or high school kid for that matter) doesn't see any immediate benefits from the work they are putting in. This allows them the short term gratification as well as the long term development that they need. I could probably write an essay on this type of stuff because I come from a long line of teachers in my family and I have put actual time and thought into the idea of bribery used to promote kids education.

Did you miss class when they were teaching capitalization?

self-empowered schmuck.

Excuse me Sir, but school and college were a lot easier back then than they are now. The education system is so competitive that the effort that was sufficient for you isn't sufficient for us (the students) now. Do you realize that a lot of the stuff we learn in our sophomore year of high school was what our parents first studied in graduate school? We'll be lucky if we can get in to any of the colleges we want to, let alone afford it. We bust our butts in the classroom every day. The teacher wanting to make his students' experience more memorable isn't bribery. It's him recognizing that there is a ton of pressure on these kids, and that they're growing up into an adult world where things are pretty bad. He just wanted to give them something to laugh about an remember. He wanted to help motivate the kids who saw how competitive education is becoming and were overwhelmed by it. So next time you insult an entire generation of people, maybe you should take a minute to step into THEIR shoes. Stepping into your old shoes doesn't cut it anymore when you're comparing these two generations.