the pen is more powerful than the sword

Paying students for good grades

April 25th, 2010

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Capital gains, incentives, etc.

For the past few months, my “policy discussion group” in grad school has been eating, drinking, and sleeping on the issue of the “unsatisfactory reading levels of homeless children”.  Believe me when I say we have been fully immersed in this topic – our current reference list as of 7:55pm on 4/25/10 is four pages long.  We have been pouring over journals, magazines, websites, and government publications, trying to learn more about 1) this issue and 2) crafting informed policy proposals.  After starting with a rather broad focus, we decided to narrow our focus to homeless children in Washington State.

Our final project is to craft a policy proposal that could reasonably be submitted for implementation.  We were to propose two different policy responses:  one from a “constrained” view and the other from an “unconstrained” view (see Thomas Sowell’s A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles for more on constrained/unconstrained visions of society”).  I ended up working on our “constrained” proposal – paying homeless students for positive behavior and academic achievements.

Paying students for behaving or getting good grades is not a new phenomenon (albeit, it may be novel…and very appealing to students.  I would love to still be paid for good grades.  Oh, wait.  Is that what scholarships are all about?).  I remember my mother giving me $5 for every “A” I got on my report card in 4th grade.  When she realized I was most likely going to be a straight-A student for the rest of my academic career (this epiphany happened at the end of 5th grade), she stopped paying me.  It was a sad day, but I wasn’t the only one in my class who had parents who tried to motivate them through cash payments or plain old special activities and items.  I knew this kind of motivation was going on, on a small scale, but I had no idea until now it was being considered and implemented on a district-wide scale, and had, in fact, been implemented for some time.

TIME magazine recently published an article entitled Should Kids Be Bribed to Do Well in School?, examining the different programs and experiments being conducted in different cities.  One of the largest studies is being conducted in Washington DC – 14 schools in collaboration with Harvard economist and researcher Roland Fryer and Harvard’s Education Innovation Laboratory.  Students in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade earn up to $100 every two weeks ($1500 per year) for various criteria: attendance, homework completion, and other achievements.  Similar programs exist in New York, Chicago, Dallas, and Atlanta (similar, but not the same).

It seems to be working so far.

In January 2010, CBS News conducted a survey as part of the “Where America Stands” series that found that most Americans oppose paying students for good grades, behavior, etc.  The poll also found that older Americans (65+) strongly oppose the practice, but parents who had children in K-12 tended to support it more.  The article doesn’t really state why such opposition exists, but the biggest critique of incentive programs always seems to end up on one thing:  paying students will kill their intrinsic motivation to learn for the sake of learning.

I’m not sure I agree, and I think there is a bit of hypocrisy present in telling students they should learn for learning’s sake without the possibility of tangible rewards.

Should you be working for working’s sake, and your employer not give you a paycheck?

“Well, that’s different!”  I’m not so sure.  We are told to aim for “A’s” in school…why?  So we can get into a good college/university.  We want to graduate from those universities with degrees…why?  So we can get a job…a well-paying job (at least we hope.  I ended up a teacher.  I must have missed the memo about well-paying jobs).  Every little motivator counts, and when it comes to money, the motivation increases dramatically.

And what’s so wrong about money?  Why do we feel differently when the motivator isn’t money?  No one questions a teacher who promises the class a special field trip if they behave all semester.  Or if a professor says they will cancel a quiz if everyone performs well on a project.  Or if a parent says they will start saving up as a family for a special vacation if their kids do well during the school year.  But why the (almost) hostile reaction when money is involved?

Back on track…

Of course, when the money starts dwindling (you aren’t being paid enough or at least what you think you’re worth), you look for other options…or quit altogether.  Sure, some students may stop working hard if the monetary incentives decrease, but here’s something I’ve noticed about students in my years (albeit few) as a teacher:  students who want to learn and want to do well tend to do so regardless of the motivators placed before them. I don’t know why.  Maybe their parents instilled a great work-ethic in them, maybe they already have intrinsic motivators (self satisfaction) to keep them going, but overall, I think it’s a choice.  Students make a choice to do well, we make a choice to be good employees, and those choices can distinguish us from the rest regardless of the situation.

So, should students be paid for good grades?  I don’t know yet.  My current opinion is that it depends on the situation.  I see the pros and cons, and my opinion may change in the coming months and years.

What do you think?

Related Articles and Sites:

• Baltimore Schools to Pay Students for Gains on State Graduation Test
• Capital Gains Program Promises Cash for DC Students
• City Will Stop Paying the Poor for Good Behavior
• Giving Students Cash for Grades
• Improving Academic Achievement: The Effect of Financial Incentives on Elementary Student Test Scores (PDF)
• Rewards for Students Under a Microscope
• The Education Innovation Laboratory at Harvard University

Posted in Education, In the News, Observations on Life