Rosewood Middle School in Goldsboro, North Carolina needs money, so it decided to sell the one thing that it knew parents and students would pay for.

Grades.  I’m not kidding.

$20 will get a student 20 test points, 10 extra points on two tests of the student’s choice. Susie Shepherd , the school’s principal, approved the brain-dead scheme after a parent advisory council came up with the idea as a new way to raise funds.

Well, it is that.

I can’t believe I’m writing this.

Let’s see: in how many ways is this concept ethically offensive?

1. The program rewards cash over hard work and achievement.
2. The program thus teaches students to believe that they can use money as a substitute for merit.
3. The program gives wealthier families’ kids an advantage over less affluent kids.
4. It is trains children  for bribery, and endorses it.
5. It creates cynicism in the students about the integrity of grading and the educational system.
6. It devalues education, learning, and grades, while elevating the status of material resources and the principle of quid pro quo.
7. It sends the message that society values money over education.
8. It will encourage students to offer cash to teachers later, in college, when such attempts at bribery will get them disciplined.
9. It promotes lack of respect for the judgment of school administrators.

Well, that last one isn’t so bad.  They might as well learn it now.

The school district, not happy with the uproar that news of the scheme created, ordered Shepard to end the cash-for-grades program. Incredibly, she  still defends the  idea, arguing that giving extra points on two tests won’t make a difference in a student’s final grade. Ah! Getting undeserved points on a test, enough to turn an F into a D and a B into an A,  is okey-dokey as long as it doesn’t affect the final grade. So I suppose the same is true of hard study to do better on a test—who cares, as long as the final grade is the same? We get it—it doesn’t matter what a child  learns or how a child is  treated, or what values a school conveys . All that matters is that last grade.  No, really, we do understand—we understand this: Principal Shepard is approximately as worthy of being entrusted with the education of middle-schoolers as Richard Heene.

Stopping this jaw-dropping program was a start, but if the district administrators don’t take the next step—sending the Rosewood School’s administrative staff, including Principal Clueless,  of to the unemployment rolls, then they are as hopelessly untrustworthy as Susie Shepard.
The lack of funds is a serious problem for a school. The lack of common sense, integrity,  basic values and the brains God gave a mole rat is worse. Ethics Dunces should not be teaching children.