TheDownPayment directed me to this NY Times article about a proposal to give NYC students cell phones in exchange for good grades.  As the article points out the proposal runs counter to official NYC Board of Ed policy banning cell phones in schools.  This initiative is being spearheaded by Roland Fryer, the Harvard Economist who also advocates paying students for doing well in school.  Since neither of these proposals have been implemented I can not offer a full judgement.  Still I can not help wonder what will/might happen if parents in wealthier school districts start asking for similar rewards for their own children, and to what lengths might they go to have such a policy instituted across the board.  We have already seen what happened with Affirmative Action and its legal precedents were more deliberate than these ideas being considered by the Board of Ed. I hate to say this, but I guess we will just have to wait and see what happens.