Cash for Grades?

The National Math and Science Initiative, a non-profit group sponsored (primarily) by Exxon-Mobil, is offering $100 checks to students at a Connecticut public high school for each Advanced Placement test that they pass this year.

Apparently this is supposed to create an “incentive.” Sarah Brodsky has written about cash incentive programs before, so I refer readers to her post on the matter.

Personally, I thought that the incentive came from the fact that a passing grade on an AP test exempts the student from college coursework (about $412 per credit hour on average at a four-year public university, by my count), but I guess Exxon-Mobil has to find something to do with that $34.5 billion of cash it has on its balance sheet. …