Using Cell Phones to Reach Students

New York City is experimenting with a new campaign that would use cell phones to help motivate students, most of them minorities and from poor families, in two dozen schools. The pilot program will include mentoring and incentives for high performance, like free concerts and sporting events and free minutes and ring tones for their phones.

According to the New York Times, every student in each of the schools will be given a cell phone. The effort, officials said, will use text messages — developed by an advertising agency and sent over the phones — that promote achievement.

Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein said the project was the city’s first attempt to bring about change in the culture and behavior of low-performing students after years of efforts focusing on school structure and teaching.

The plan was recently approved by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. Details about costs are still to be worked out, Education Department officials said. Klein said he expected several companies to donate discounted phone service and tickets to events. He said the effort was spurred in part by the results from focus groups performed by market research firms for the Education Department.

That research found that black and Latino students from some of the city’s most hard-pressed neighborhoods had a difficult time understanding that doing well in school can provide tangible long-term benefits. The city will try to enlist hundreds or even thousands of adults to mentor students.

The mentors will call students periodically to encourage them to study or to congratulate them for doing well on a test.  The program would begin in January and involve 10,000 to 15,000 students at four city charter schools run by the Knowledge Is Power Program and 20 schools run by New Visions for Public Schools, a nonprofit group.

— Teachers of Color