Cash for class: Asheville summer program pays students to combat COVID academic slide

The collared shirts and ties weren’t typical summer school attire, but this wasn’t a typical summer school. Along with the whiteboard, math equations, and reading assignments, this program had a pay day.

Not for the instructors, though they were compensated too, but for the teenagers being tutored.

Located at Asheville Mall, the youth group My Daddy Taught Me That (MDTMT) pays Asheville-area boys $10 an hour to attend summer lessons. With 17 students and ten hours of classes a week since June, the program has paid out more than $9,000 so far.

The goal is to get the boys, who are Black and between the ages of 12 and 18, to treat academics like a profession as they seek to make up for their disrupted school years.

“I think this is a radical idea,” said Greg Hall, a program instructor. “It gives them some incentive like ‘Hey, this is your job,’ and when you’re on the job you have to produce. I think it’s a great way to get them back into academics.”

While students wear casual clothing most days, every other week ends in “About My Business Fridays,” where the boys sit one-by-one before the program director, Keynon Lake, and demonstrate the knowledge they’ve gained over the prior two weeks. Lake keeps these student-led evaluations relaxed but direct.

Each boy walks him through a two-page rubric, with academic objectives on one side and social-emotional standards on the back. On a recent Friday, he probed students for details on a reading about the life of John Lewis, their work multiplying fractions, and their behavior.

“I don’t have to worry about you academically”, Lake told a student named Chris. “My question is, how are you going to step up to be that leader? I see that potential in you.”

Lake told Chris he wanted his response on the next evaluation, in two weeks. Lake then handed over Chris’s compensation, two $50 bills and a $100. For dressing in professional clothing, students earned an additional $50.

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‘Two summers’

Lake developed the summer program through a partnership with the Asheville City Schools Foundation, a nonprofit supporting the city’s school district. The community foundation Dogwood Health Trust funded the students' stipends.

In previous summers, Lake facilitated paid-job training programs, exposing MDTMT members to job trainings with area professionals: electricians, carpenters, computer programmers, landscaping, car detailers and more.

After COVID-19 ended in-person instruction in March, Lake figured his boys would most benefit from academic lessons this summer.

“They had two summers,” he said. “The layoff with all the virtual learning last semester and now the summer. We know that kids of color struggle with the summer loss. So, going back, we asked how can we make sure that we have kids who are not struggling.”

In Asheville, academic disparities between white and black students loom large. In the 2018-19 school year, white elementary middle students in ACS scored around 60 points higher than their black classmates on reading and math state assessments. This divide is North Carolina’s largest, and one of the country’s widest, too. Race-based disparities also persist between white and black students in the surrounding Buncombe County Schools as well as the state overall.

In recent weeks, both districts announced they would begin the school year with little in-person instruction, furthering concerns the gaps may widen.

Research shows virtual learning has put many students at risk of falling further behind, called the COVID slide, with lower-income and students of color experiencing greater effects of disrupted school years. The consulting group McKinsey and Co. warned black students could academically fall three months further behind their white peers during virtual learning.

“We’re not supervised like we are at school,” said Tonne Fair, 15, a MDTMT member entering his sophomore year at Erwin High in Asheville. “You’re not as motivated.”

Elijah Cox, 13, is a rising eighth grader at Francine Delany New School for Children, an Asheville charter school. He learned of the summer lessons two weeks before they began.

“At first, I really didn’t want to do it,” Cox said. “But then I went, and it wasn’t bad, so I just came every day. And you get paid a lot.”

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Beyond this summer

Incentivizes for academic performance are rare but not novel. Nonprofits in New York City, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., have paid students for strong grades. The NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies partner with Tennessee’s Shelby County Schools to reward game tickets and team gear to students with improved attendance rates.

“It does make sense,” said Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works, which works to reduce chronic absenteeism. “You’re helping kids notice what they are showing up to and what they’re not. Each time you get a paycheck or you don’t.”

Copland Rudolph, executive director of the Asheville City Schools Foundation, said the payments can compensate for missed work opportunities.

“One way right now we can fortify these kids to be the next innovators and leaders in our community is to make sure that they can have some financial support participating in this kind of programming rather than get a traditional job,” she said. “You can say Black Lives Matter, but I think it’s important to put that money in to the hands of our students of color, our educators of color, our providers of color.”

The MDTMT program is set to run for eight weeks, but the Asheville City Schools Foundation is coordinating with Lake to extend in-person lessons -- and payments -- into the upcoming school year. They are exploring how to expand the program to local girls, too.

At the classroom in the mall, Fair and Cox appreciated being back in physical spaces, with an instructor and friends nearby.

“I don’t like online school,” Cox said.

In addition to fractions, both boys said they’ve cherished learning more about Black history than they did in their regular history classes. Plus, they welcome the money. With his summer earnings, Cox purchased a new pair of Air Jordan shoes. Tonne on the other hand is saving his payments, around $600 so far, for a car.

Brian Gordon is an education and social issues reporter for the USA Today Network in North Carolina. Reach him at bgordon@citizentimes.com or follow on Twitter @briansamuel92.

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