Buy a better grade for 20 bucks!

OK, fellow parents, we all know that our schools are in budgetary hell. Teachers have wish lists: They need donations of hand sanitizer, tissues, paper, stuff that used to just appear magically in the classroom. Parent organizations are hard pressed to find new and creative ways to raise money for the basics. (Please, not another brochure for gift wrap and other dust collectors that will crowd the already overflowing closet/dumping ground!)

So here’s a novel idea being peddled by the Rosewood Middle School in North Carolina. Sell better grades! Holy Einstein! What a moneymaker that will be. For a mere $20, parents can buy their kid 20 extra test points. That’s the difference between an A or a B or, as the case may be, a D or an F. Sally passes! Johnnie makes the honor roll!

I can practically smell those freshly-minted Jacksons changing hands.

Seriously, what are they thinking? Buy a better grade for twenty bucks?? Why not just up the ante and sell the whole shebang? A hundred gets your kid an A in the subject of his or her choice. A thousand: Straight As. Give more, and your kid gets the run the school.

These are tough times, but the folks on the parent advisory council need to put away whatever they are smoking and come up with a better solution. Selling grades? Overtly? The lesson here is that money can buy anything. Are these kids even going to think twice about buying term papers when they’re in college?

Maybe the coffers of the advisory council will grow fat after this fund-raising effort. But it’s sure to backfire. Some parent who doesn’t make a donation is going to sue the school for unfair grading practices. And all the money collected for $20 grades isn’t going to cover the cost of the lawyers needed to settle the case out of court.

Or maybe they’ll come to their senses and go back to selling candy. Or gift wrap — the green kind. They can market it by saying that everyone who buys will not only be raising money for the school, but will also be curtailing a whole bunch of nitpicky blog posts criticizing them for even contemplating selling grades.

Whoops, too late for that.