I would like to comment on the Illinois State Board of Education’s attempt to use the newly proposed Prairie State Achievement Exam in determining whether a young driver receives a good student discount from an insurance agency.
The good-student insurance discount is a reward for sustained academic performance over time. The ISBE is proposing that students now be rewarded for a two-day effort. Although on the surface this would appear to give students an incentive to take the tests seriously, it would also have at least two undesirable consequences:
1. It would penalize good students (i.e. students who work hard consistently and maintain a certain grade point average) who, for whatever reasons, may not do well on the test. This includes students who may not be feeling well, who are upset and who are not good test-takers.
2. It would reward those students who, by virtue of their intelligence, perform well on the test but who do not apply themselves in school. Good test scores are not always an indicator of good students.
The good-student discount is an incentive for high school students to act responsibly once they have earned their driver’s licenses. Replacing this reward with one that encourages only a short-term effort would be a mistake.
