It Pays to Stay in School. Literally.

The animated Mr. T used to bark at the children watching: "Don't be a fool. Stay in school." Back in the day, this was good enough reason to take education seriously. Otherwise, Mr. T would find you and rip off your face.

Now it seems, in Arizona at least, it takes more to keep kids in school. Specifically: money. Cash. In what they are calling a "pilot program", 175 Tucson students are being given $25 per week to stay in school, stay out of trouble, and get good grades. The program is designed to target low-income students at risk for leaving school without a diploma. Several students interviewed by a Tuscon television station indicated that the monetary incentive would make a difference in their lives. If the program is successful, one wonders if students from poor economic backgrounds who went to high school in the past (say, 1987-1991, in Hamilton, Ohio) could file for back payments? Lets see, $25 a week works out to about $900 annually, or $3600 for the four years of high school. At a modest 4% interest rate, compounded monthly, that works out to over $6,800. Enough to buy me one of those new iMacs, and then some!