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High marks pay off
“Student incentive programs … try to offer some kind of reward for students doing well,” says economist Eric P. Bettinger. He studied a program in Coshocton, Ohio. Students there can earn up to $100 for good scores on state exams. Bettinger says the program helped kids do better on math tests. Math is a subject where a lot of studying in a short amount of time will result in better grades quickly, he says.
In the Atlanta area, some students are paid $8 an hour for attending after-school lessons in math and science. The 40 students are in eighth and 11th grade. These kids also qualify for a bonus if they improve their grades and test scores. The money comes from a foundation that wants to help motivate kids. Money might not be the best way to motivate students, but “it is a possible answer,” writes the foundation’s board president, Jackie Cushman. More than 200 schools in New York City have student incentive programs. In one of these programs, students receive free cell phones. Good grades and attendance earn students minutes and ringtones for the phones. If students don’t earn points, though, the phones won’t work. The program is working, says seventh grader Sherilyn Calvo. She told the New York Daily News, “We always pay attention, but we’ll pay attention more if we have motivation.”
Katelyn V., a WR News Student Reporter who wrote about the topic earlier this year, thinks incentive programs are a good idea. “I still think kids should get paid,” she says. “It’s good for a kid to have their own money.” Katelyn believes kids should work hard in school with or without rewards but thinks the programs will encourage kids who struggle in school. “Sometimes [school is] just really hard for some people.”
Education is its own reward
Some experts worry that kids who expect money for their efforts will have a hard time getting motivated on their own. For instance, if students only work hard on their science projects to get money, they might not get truly interested in the subject or what they have learned.
The money itself can cause other problems. The programs in Coshocton, the Atlanta area, and New York City all use money from private foundations. But a student incentive program in Baltimore used city money, and that caused problems. Some residents complained that the city’s money could have been better spent improving town programs or paying teachers higher salaries, for example.
Other critics say the programs just don’t work. One Massachusetts high school gives kids $25 for every term they have perfect attendance. But during the first year of the program, there were more absences. What happened? Officials believe that when they created the reward for coming to school, they also took away some punishment for being absent. Once students knew they definitely wouldn’t get the reward, they were out of school even more.
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But for the time being, supporters say, student incentive programs are one way to get results. “If we could think of a magical treatment that could make it where a person could see that working really hard today would make life easier for them 10 years from now, that it would give them cool things and a cool job and a cool life, we wouldn’t need this program,” says Bettinger.
www.usmint.gov/kids
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