With text message plan, DOE reforms officially absurd

Posted by Philissa at 6:25 AM

Is there any idea that wild and crazy Roland Fryer won't try? Last week the word was that he was arranging to give kids cell phones whose minutes would be dependent on school performance. This week's plan, according to the Times, is to have famous people, such as Jay-Z and LeBron James, send poor New York City kids text messages telling them to stay in school. Really. Because a rap artist who dropped out of high school and a basketball player who skipped college for a multi-million-dollar professional contract are the perfect figures to teach kids about the long-term benefits of doing well in school.

Even getting past the obvious ironies, this plan just seems weird. I have questions about why the program will roll out in KIPP charter schools, where students already have someone at home who recognizes the value of doing well in school enough to enter them in the lottery and make sure they are in uniform for each 9-hour day. And I'm not sure Fryer needed a focus group to find out that "reaching [teenagers] through a concerted campaign of text messages or through the Internet was far more likely to be effective than a traditional billboard and television campaign" — any parent or 9-year-old could have told him that. Finally, I wonder whether it's crossed Fryer's mind that one way to increase "demand" for education would be to make school enjoyable — by bolstering the quality of teaching, reducing the number of tests kids must take, and encouraging creativity in the classroom.

I don't think there's anything wrong, necessarily, with what's essentially a 21st-century version of this 1990 public service announcement. I just don't get it.

The text messages will start transmitting in January. I can already imagine one unintended consequence that could be a boon for DOE officials and cash-strapped parents. If their cell phones start spewing motivational messages, many kids might feel incentivized to leave their phones at home.