Harvard economist Roland Fryer is undertaking an impressive experiment in education reform: paying students for performance. According to Scientific American:
Can educators find ways to encourage students to engage in the kind of effortful study that will improve their reading and math skills? Roland G. Fryer, Jr., an economist at Harvard University, has experimented with offering monetary rewards to motivate students in underperforming schools in New York City and Dallas. In one ongoing program in New York, for example, teachers test the students every three weeks and award small amounts--on the order of $10 or $20--to those who score well. The early results have been promising.
As Fryer explained back in 2004, "for years white parents have been giving their kids money for As, now we are trying the same system for black kids." He also notes that preliminary findings show that no other change in education policy increases student test scores so much per dollar invested.
Financial incentives for students are a possible solution to a crucial problem in education: students must be motivated to do the work despite their generally short time horizons. Most of the benefits of a good education won't accrue to children until years after the fact. Yet children and teenagers have notoriously short time horizons and many are unwilling to work hard today for rewards that they can't enjoy until many years later. Fryer's financial incentives represent one possible way to give students more immediate rewards for studying hard. As he points out, middle and upper class parents have often used such rewards for studying for their own children, so the idea is not completely novel.
Like Fryer (see link below), I have a special personal interest in this subject. Similar to him (but with much less excuse) I was a terrible student for much of my school career. Although I knew that good grades were important for getting into college, this was too distant a reward to motivate me very much. What turned my situation around was high school debate. If I worked hard on a debate topic for 2 or 3 weeks, I could win a prize at a tournament at the end of that time. And I could go to as many as 10 or 12 tournaments each academic year, which meant getting as many as 10 or 12 prizes, and (more importantly) the prestige that went with them. Although tournament trophies (like Fryer's $10 cash prizes) are trivial in value compared to the long-term benefits of education, they were an immediate reward that provided quick gratification to my teenage mind. Over time, learning to work hard on debate issues also led me to study harder in other classes.
It would be wrong to generalize from my potentially atypical experience. But if Fryer's experiment continues to produce good results, it might more generally validate the theory that paying for performance works in education as well as in other areas of life.
Obviously, it might be better if students loved learning for its own sake or if they were willing to work hard just for long-term rewards. Unfortunately, however, much of what students need to learn in school is not likely to be interesting to all students, and I highly doubt that we can persuade the average child or teenager to radically alter their short term orientation.
For more information on Fryer and his research, see here.
NOTE to GMU students: To head off the inevitable question - no I won't be instituting this policy in my law school classes. I hope that by the time students get to GMU Law, they have longer time horizons than I did when I was in high school!
I remember being rewarded for my grades up to and through high school. The transition from studying as a means to monetary compensation to studying for my future benefit hit me very late, not till college. The positive reinforcement of money was effective, though the negative was much more of a motivation (that has some obvious obstacles in public school). In high school I knew where I would be going to college my junior year and I pretty much had a sure shot - same goes for undergrad - once senior yr rolled around I had less motivation because I already had my law school selected. The period between high school and senior yr of college was where I truly hit the books in an ex ante fashion... well then, and of course now.
One of my coworkers grew up in Afghanistan, where beatings for poor performance were standard procedure. He said beatings were remarkably effective in stimulating a drive to succeed...
First off, I wasn't entirely serious. Secondly, what you are suggesting does not at all follow from what I suggested. You're saying that the bottom of the class is beyond hope. I'm saying that they can improve if they're properly motivated.
I think it's a legitimate concern that an all-or-nothing cut-off can't be used to motivate most students. You'll have a large number of students who are already above the standard and therefore won't be motivated to improve or the standard will be high enough that it will be out of reach for a large number of students. If the program is used on any significant scale or with any significant variation in the achievement level of students, it's going to be very difficult to find a payoff structure that motivates everyone and is not prohibitively expensive. A system with both carrots and sticks is far more flexible. If you can think of a better idea for a stick than a literal stick, I'd love to hear it.
David Schraub
Walt Whitman HS Debate (Congress and LD) '04
A payoff for improvement rather than meeting a fixed standard works well for some people e.g. swimmers who strive to get personal records, but have no chance of winning a meet. I paid one child for better grades until he started to get A's regularly ... worked for him.
The stick can be tied to lack of improvement. The easiest system is to retain the student in a group studying whatever he didn't learn. Forcing the non learners to take summer school works too. The only problem is a few kids can't learn very well and they become identified publicly.
Education is the most important opportunity that a young child has. Anything that may help him take advantage of it, should be offered.
Those who talk about beatings etc. ought to move out of the nineteenth century (or maybe they need some sense beaten into their skulls.)
Perhaps in addition to the carrot of financial incentives for good grades we ought to consider the following "sticks" for poor performance: (1) extra hours of school during weekdays for poorly performing students; (2) extra weeks of school during summer vacation, etc. for the same; (3) weekend school classes for the same; (4) Public boarding school for the worst students, the worst absentee students, and the most disruptive students; (5) Strict enforcement of child labor laws and a requirement that students receive a minimum GPA before they are granted a work permit.
The advantage to these "sticks" is that they are negative reinforcers favoring academic performance whose effects are: (1) immediate; (2) relate rewards and punishments directly and immediately to academic performance; and (3) affect adolescents not just in monetarily, but more importantly in the relative prestige granted by peers. Particularly among African-American and Hispanic students, making academically productive students the ones with free time and cash resources, is critical if these students' role models are going to become academic performers rather than pimps, drug dealers, and low-life rap stars and sports figures.
My experience parallels Ilya's. I was very smart. School was totally boring. I nearly wound up repeating 6th and 7th grades. Then I won a competetive science competition and gained some status. I discovered that I could use my intelligence to win science and math contests and cash in with prestige among my peers. I wound up a Westinghouse semifinalist with a guaranteed slot in a good university.
Beyond personal anecdote, the clinical and field research demonstrating that adolescents have: (1) extremely short time horizons; (2) very high internalized discount rates; (3) extremely over-optimistic assessments of probabilities of good things happening to them; and (4) a sense of personal exceptionalism, e.g., "I don't need good grades, I'm going to be an NFL draft choice.", is overwhelming. No one with any knowledge of this field -- I have done occassional work on issues that include adolescent substance abuse and criminal behavior -- doubts this.
Many times, she will want to go see a movie...and will not have the money. So she sits in front of a music stand and plays her pieces over and over until she reaches $10. Her playing is incredible. At first, she didn't like it, but now she has a skill that no other 11 year old has and she is very proud of it.
Since she was doing so well, I added to other instruments to her instruction. She does not get paid for practicing piano or clarinet, but she likes them both and sees the pay-off at the end.
The motivations for achievement are the possibility of getting out of the "high school" environment as soon as possible, and the ineligibility to drive or work until you did. (There would also have to be minimum age requirements for driving and working because some bright students would achieve the middle level academically as young as 11 or 12. But these young students could then study on a community college-like campus, probably more safely than at a four-year school, for the next year or two. And we would probably allow driver's licenses and work permits for 18-year-olds, whether or not they completed the middle years program, but if they're still working on it, they couldn't drive to the high school-type campus.)
Many people object to the "international" requirements of the IB curriculum, and perhaps an American testing service could develop and publish something more politically acceptable. There's a lot of international precedent for levels like these: O-levels and A-levels in the British system, the two school certificates in the Australian system, and even the "SAT II" and "Advanced Placement" exams that ETS administers here.
The plan has carrots and sticks. It measures student achievement, and probably even saves money by motivating students to get on with things faster.
Hey. I never got money for my As. I want reparations.
Of course, in some ways the ones at the bottom of the class were the "worst of the best" because only 25 kids were selected to take algebra so I'm not sure if this type of motivation would have any effect on the bottom of a more represetnative class.
Try this.
There are 30,000,000 African-Americans (A-A) in the United States. To the extent that a significant proportion of them exist in an underclass based on A-A considerations (discrimination, cultural factors, whatever), it affects everyone else. You and other libertarians are affected by crime generated by an underclass, by a poorly trained and motivated work force doing your work, by their importation of drugs into society (your kids may come to use them), and by other such social ills. This is aside from the non-economic impact on quality of life generated by having a lot of alienated and disaffected A-A people around. The same would be true of any minority many of whom are easily identifiable by their physical characteristics. Please note the chronic and acute problems in the French slums.
Many A-A children live in circumstances in which almost all adults lack education and in which education is hnot highly valued. If they can be motivated to greater academic achievement, they would contribute more to the overall society. The additional hope is that the social ills would encourage identification with and assimilation into the broader society.
(Of course, the mutual interdependence of everyone in society leads to a critique of libertarianism as a principle for public policy, but that is another issue.)
Very small children may naturally have much shorter time horizons than adults, but when you see this in older children the number one culprit is television.
no other change in education policy increases student test scores so much per dollar invested.
Actually, throwing away the television costs nothing and would probably produce a greater return. Even better, why not use the money saved from the cable bill to pay for better grades? This approach may be the most cost-effective of all.
Payment for A's? Don't make me laugh. I don't actually think there was ANY incentive for getting higher than a B. Failing was unacceptable, but being too brainy was questionable for a whole different set of reasons. I went for the A's anyhow, partly in a spirit of rebellion against the sports obsession that the people around me all had.
Throwing away the television is one of those "cures" which only seems plausible because parents can attempt to set priorities for their children that they'd never set for themselves.
The parents would never throw away their *own* television--because they recognize that a balance needs to be set between productive activities and nonproductive activities and completely removing a class of nonproductive activities makes sense from a cost/benefit point of view, but not from a human point of view.
(And isn't it funny that you never see anyone say "completely doing away with football would cost nothing and produce a good return"?)
After reading the piece and the comments, I can only say that people have very strange views about what motivates students. Maybe someone should ask the kids about this instead of pontificating from a safe distance.
Perhaps I could have been more clear that I meant discarding television generally in the home, not removing only a spoiled child's personal television set. But surely complete removal of TV was implied by reference to the savings in the cable bill? At any rate, if parents find that they, or their children, tend to waste time watching TV, it is prudent to deal with a shortage of self-control in this area by removing the temptation altogether.
Furthermore, The brain does reshape its structure and functioning in response to stimuli, so it seems wise to remove anything unnecessary, such as television, that tends to produce short attention spans.
Instead, a straight-A report card would allow a student to take some financially-rewarded extra assignments. If the student isn't getting straight-A's, they shouldn't be spending their time getting money (although I suspect one could design a good program where extra assignments could make up for grades botched in the past). Of course, these assignments should be both genuinely challenging and educational beyond busywork. My experience with public schools is that the "genuinely challenging and educational beyond busywork" requirement is more than they can handle.
Full disclosure: I slept through elementary school getting A's and B's, and started on an algebra text in 6th grade at my mother's insistance. By 8th grade, I stopped caring about grades, and ended up needing a "no video games until your next report card comes with straight A's."
Prizes make sense for motivating good academic performance - look at the Nobel prizes, Pulitzers, prizes for the church in Florence (Brunelleshi's Dome) in the Renaissance.
Caveats - what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If we have a "pay for performance" system for undergrads and below, should we have a similar structure for the teachers and professors? Does the tenure system undercut the idea of pay for performance? Do contracts with teachers' unions need to be shaken up a bit?
Second, should we encourage Universities to be more sports blind in admissions?
Perhaps offering scholarship money for basketballers or footballers should be fine, so long as equal money is offered for debaters or computer scientists, or nanotechs, or geneticists, etc. - sort of like Title IX for scholars (or geeks, if you prefer).
I see more and more advanced education in the high schools. Also US colleges will get more and more focused on "pinnacles of expertise" for all four years. As the next recession emerges more clearly, the US idea of "finding" one's niche while in college will give way to the English system of knowing that one will study economics (or law or biology, etc.) from crossing the college threshold.
Students CHOOSE to succeed or fail, or at least choose the actions that lead to success or failure.
Maybe, we should pay the students serious money for good test scores (like $400 for an A, $300 for B, etc.), and let them tip their teachers based on how much they think the teaching contributed to their success. Merit pay all around!
This answers part of my objection, but only part.
You seem to be saying that children should watch no TV because TV is useless and takes up time that could be spent on something useful. If so, that same reasoning applies to a host of adults' and childrens' activities. Taking that to its logical extreme means kids should be forced to stay in their room and study during every waking hour.
So I don't think you mean what you're literally saying. But I *do* think there are some hidden premises here--that for some unexplained reason, TV is orders of magnitude worse than other nonproductive activities--that are carefully being left out.)
This was hilarious. Race baiting even when unnecessary and when it serves no apparent purpose. What -is Race baiting is in Harvardites blood-they can't not do it?
Steve
American University Professors DO have such a system. The fact that tenure is only awarded to top researchers is one such prize. Moreover, raises and bonuses are earned by professors post-tenure by further publication. Most importantly, really big raises are a function of receiving outside offers from other good universities, which offers are presumably influenced by one's reputation and publication record. In some cases, the top professors in the university can earn as much 4x or 5x the salaries of the least eminent members working in the very same departments.
Or he could be saying that TV is uniquely designed to reduce attention span and dispense caustic pop culture that devalues education.
Or he could be pointing out that neurological research has shown that TV viewing in the first two years of life negatively impacts brain structure needed for verbal reasoning.
How about, "if you ever want to drink, drive, vote, own guns, or breed you have to pass the exam?"
Motivator, AND societal protection mechanism.