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Should Kids Be Bribed To Do Well In School?
theodp writes "Harvard economist Roland Fryer Jr. did something education researchers almost never do: he ran a randomized experiment in hundreds of classrooms in Chicago, Dallas, Washington, and New York to help answer a controversial question: Should Kids Be Bribed to Do Well in School? He used mostly private money to pay 18,000 kids a total of $6.3 million and brought in a team of researchers to help him analyze the effects. He got death threats, but he carried on. His findings? If incentives are designed wisely, it appears, payments can indeed boost kids' performance as much as or more than many other reforms you've heard about before — and for a fraction of the cost."
It's how we motivate adults at work so why not kids in school?
If it turns out to be a better use of resources and we turn out students who do better in school then it can't be all bad.
What does that teach them? Don't do anything regardless of what it is unless you're "bribed".
That said I know I will get flamed for saying that, but I think it instills an attitude of don't anything unless you get paid, loses touch with what education is and should be.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
An even better question: who the hell sent this guy death threats?!
pay them not to get pregnant! pit greed vs. breed.
So the children of rich parents should do better in school than those of poor parents? Purely because they have more money?
I'm not advocating one way or another, but it's the first question that popped in to my mind when I read your post.
I can see two main arguments for this and one against.
(+) "If it works, then why not?"
(+) "It's capitalism, comrade!"
(-) "But it's against our ideals, people should learn for the sake of learning!"
Frankly, I'm up for anything which improves the effectiveness of our education system at this point as long as it doesn't constitute an outright human rights violation. The system is broken. If you can prove that X provides significant gains, then we should at least look into it.
In Soviet Russia, bribes school YOU!
*ducks and runs from thread*
"A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book
While I generally feel the government shouldn't be in charge of raising our kids, they ARE in charge of educating them (if your kids go to public school).
Also, unlike so many other government programs and tax breaks, this actually helps out poor families more than rich families. If little Delray can make money by studying, he's less likely to go "hang" with a bad crowd and steal money. He even has a chance to help provide himself with a better life now AND later.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
http://outcampaign.org/
Jocks.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
What in the hell is wrong with this world when people get death threats over an issue like this?
death threats REALLY?!
*shakes his head*
Blatantly behaviorist. Extrinsic motivators are easily extinguished. We need to find and nurture intrinsic motivators. Unfortunately, this is hard, and the educational establishment is looking for easy solutions. Go read "Punished by Rewards" by Alphie Kohn
If done right, this might not be a bad idea. The traditional education system in the US has changed a lot in the past 50+ years:
Adding another carrot to the arsenal can't be too bad, given all the problems students face now.
Our current education system is failing. Its very evident by looking at any national ranking charts that compare countries. We need to do something before things crash. And believe me, when it crashes it will affect YOU. Crime, the economy, poverty, health care. What wouldn't be fair would be you reaping the benefits of education without paying for it. Public education (yes, even the crappy system we have now) helps EVERYONE, those without children, those with children in private school, the elderly who's children have already finished school, EVERYONE.
The experiments so far indicate that paying students for results improves only the results paid for. Pay for attendance, you get attendance. Pay for grades on quizzes, you get grades on quizzes. End of year scores don't improve much, if at all. And when the money stops, so does the improvement.
You might want to read the article. It states quite clearly that paying kids for books read increased standardized test scores on reading and that these were long term gains
Its called 'pay for performance'
(I think that bribe is not the correct term here.)
It's a job; you get paid if you accomplish what you're told to do. You don't get grounded if you fail to perform, you just stop getting money.
Dilbert RSS feed
The thing I love about this is someone actually did science in education. That's extremely cool. Normally education comes down to one person arguing with another with little to no evidence, and the whole things just winds up being an argument that's really about values, political opinions, or personal opinions, but purports to be about outcomes. "Thing Y won't work because thing Y is "bad" or "Thing X won't work because it conflicts with my religion and/or political viewpoint" or "Thing Z will work because I think it will". From a scientific viewpoint these could all be viewed as untested theories. That's not necessarily bad.. but continuing to argue about them and not doing the experiment is... well stupid.
Richard Feynman talked about this 25 some years ago in one of his books. IIRC his main point was how teaching is ruled by "method of the day" as if it's just fashion, but very rarely does anything bother to find out what actually works.
So, now we have a good reason to suspect that some form of rewards for learning actually do seem to work. That doesn't mean the values argument is invalid, but it certainly does show the values argument for what it is and not a hidden attempt to discredit the validity of the outcome.
AccountKiller
Disclosure: I am a teacher with science degrees (and no education degree, but some coursework and experience in science ed research). You are correct, and, what's more, the article lacks any sort of detailed methodology and statistical analysis. Something smells fishy here. In addition, it's bad science to think that because you did one experiment of randomized trials that you have some sort of real discovery. (Yes I did RTFA and know he had many test sites, but it's one experiment) The experiment is virtually useless and lacks any real, strong validity unless and until another experimenter can re-create the results.
Psychological studies have shown that the field of psychology is full of shit.
The word, “bribe,” has two very different common meanings.
The first is a payment to somebody to do something illicit. It might or might not be something the person objects to doing, but it is something against the rules. A border agent might or might not think smoking pot is a good idea, but if you pay him to look the other way while you drive your “plant tissue samples” across the border, that’s a bribe.
The second, and the usage implied here, is a payment to somebody to do something they don’t want to do but which isn’t illicit. It’s especially applied to things that most people think the person should want to do without compensation but, for whatever reason, the person isn’t interested. If you offer to pay your spouse to fold the laundry, that’s often considered a bribe.
But, clearly, almost all paid work falls into the second category. While the work I do isn’t objectionable and pays well, there’s simply no way I’d do it unless you paid me (and paid me well). There are other things I’d rather do for money, but they don’t pay as well. And there are still other things I do and would do that either don’t pay or that I have to pay to do.
So, unless you think your boss is bribing you to go to work, or unless you’d happily give up your paycheck but still continue at your job, it is most hypocritical to call what’s described in this article a bribe. You might wish that students would put in maximum effort even if they don’t get a cash reward, but your boss wishes the exact same thing of you.
Whether or not paying students is an effective end economical method of turning them into honorable and effective citizens is a valid topic of discussion, but such payments are most emphatically not bribes.
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
'as a taxpayer, i don't think it's fair that i'm already paying for your child's education,...'
You're not; you are paying back the cost of your education. That is being invested in the education of the current students, who will, in turn, pay it back.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
I think you've missed the point of the parent--this system of payments makes school analogous to a job in the sense that rather requiring students be intrinsically motivated or concerned about their future positions in the workforce, the primary incentive to input effort into education is money.
Studies show that adding pay to a task decreases the internal perceived motivation for that same task. Actors conclud, subconsciously, that money is why they did it. Hence they are less likely in the future to do it unless they are paid again. Perilous to do this with the pursuit of knowledge.
Of course in a typical public school, there are already serious problems with busywork versus genuine pursuit of understanding. In that context, payment might be the right thing to do, because as others have noted, payment is indeed what humans expect in exchange for busy work.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
f their parents aren't expected to be capable of motivating their children, then why should society be expected to be capable of doing it?
i don't want to pay children to do what they are expected to do, when they aren't penalized in the same form for not doing it.
Move away from the emotional aspects of it and consider it this way:
Let's start with the premise that you want to see our schools do a better job educating our kids.
You have proposal A, with a cost of X and an effectiveness of Y .7Y
You have proposal B, with a cost of 2X and an effectiveness of
So long as it's not something inappropriate for children, is there any reason not to pick proposal A?
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
Jocks.
They're useless eaters anyway.
After all if we didn't waste so much time and energy worshipping celebrities and overpaid athletes, both of which are wealth sinks anyway, we might get ahead in the world. Then how the hell is the government going to justify all these gigantic social spending programs?! Clearly we couldn't let that happen, we can't afford it!
...do you understand how much money can be made stealing, or the more lucrative drug dealing?
Yes, do you? Read the chapter of Freakonomics entitled "Why Do Drug Dealers Live With their Parents". It has some good numbers to show making more than minimum wage working as a crack dealer is sort of like playing basketball for a living... that is to say, you can make a lot of money, but any individual almost certainly won't.
but the effectiveness is never clearly defined. what is stopping teachers from giving all students an A as long as they cut them in on the bonus money?
Citation please.
Stick with the numbers. If it's more effective and costs less, while still being within the realm of morally acceptable, why not consider it as a viable option? That being said, I'd like to see more test groups before opening it up to something as strong as "we should implement this all over".
You can't choose your parents, that's why civillised countries provide free education for children, free (or subsidised) medical care and a small amount of money for food and clothes if the families are very poor.
Parents have a great responsibility to their children, but as we all know, many irresponsible and incapable people have children.
Stick Men
A job is better than prison which is the closest analog to the current school system.
Students are expected to work extremely hard for an extremely long time with no short term payoff(indeed with short term penalties) and the only possible payoff being far enough off that the time could be measured in significant fractions of their entire lifespan so far.
Some kids manage this.
Many don't and that's a failing of the system and not just the individual.
No, it's more subtle than that, if you give them money to get good grades, it doesn't improve their standardized test scores at all. As someone else said, bribing them to get good grades is just bribing them to kiss up to the teacher.
BUT when they paid the kids to do things that you need to do to learn, like read, or attend class, the standardized test scores improved, even after the bribes stopped. This is great stuff to know. To continue all we need to do is figure out what it takes for kids to learn, and give them money to do that. Of course, there should be studies to see how well it works out in the long term, too.
Which is the greatest thing about this, it marks a change in education, for the better. How often have you heard people spouting off about, "the best way to teach kids is this!" for some ideology or another? How often have you heard of them actually running real experiments to test their theories? Not often enough, that's for sure. Hopefully we get more of this.
Qxe4
the free availability should be motivation enough. it was for me.
I think the projection of self onto the societal-level of decision making gives us policy that only works for a few people. This is especially the case when you apply yourself as (presumably) an adult as a decent model for today's children. Their situation is invariably different from yours and using your own childhood as a model for a wide swath of today's youth is probably not going to match up to the needs and expectations of today.
While teaching 9th grade science in the 1970's I decided to see what would happen if I started paying $5 for the highest grade on weekly tests.
Kids who were normally making C's and D's suddenly began getting A's and taking the $5. The kids which normally got A's didn't do as well.
I was accused of being a Communist. My response was that they were working for money, why can't their kids.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Present your argument in formal logic, then. I'll take your side if it's sound :).
It's easy to say "should".
They real question is what gets the best results.
Your argument seems to be based entirely on your own ego.
As the guy in TFA put it.
"Kids should learn for the love of learning,"
"But they're not. So what shall we do?"
In Montessori there are no grades, but rather detailed itemizations of proficiency in each exercise combined with qualitative evaluations by the guide.
Although not trained in Montessori, the author and speaker Alfie Kohn is famous in the Montessori community for his book "Punished by Rewards" and others. See his YouTube, "It's bad news if students are motivated to get A's".
paying kids for books read increased standardized test scores
It also instills the value that you shouldn't read unless you're being paid to. This is a well known downside, covered in most behavioral / developmental psychology degree programs.
A similar drawback exists for standardized tests themselves as well as technical certificate testing. The testing rarely translates into significant real-world problem solving abilities. As with pay-for-study the instruction becomes valued for it's immediate result and tends to have a negative effect on learning. See also research on deferred gratification and planning horizons.
In short, like deficit spending, it trades a small short-term payoff for a relatively large long-term handicap.
it was for me.
And thus the entire problem with trying to inject rational and evidence based thinking into the system is summed up perfectly.
The people who do well are the people who succeed in the current system.
The people people who succeeded in the current system no matter how poor the current system is believe that only they and people like them ever *should* succeed or do well.
and so we see clouds of vitriol like the above.
"You have proposal A, with a cost of X and an effectiveness of Y You have proposal B, with a cost of 2X and an effectiveness of .7Y"
I threw away my mod points to reply to this, but I thought it was important.
One of the schools I went to as a child had a "Gold Card" program that was basically a incentive program to get good grades. Instead of handing out cash (which is the wrong approach, i'll explain in a bit) for good grades you would earn free items at local businesses. I remember a local video store allowed a few free video game rentals, a fast-food place gave free french fries and the local movie theater gave a free movie ticket. When you're a kid and can only think of video games, food and movies these were great incentives, and the businesses made up the money by getting free advertising and the parents usually ended up buying more than what was given away free i.e. I never went there and only ate fries.
The reason handing out $$$ for good grades isn't the answer is because it's not realistic. First, what happens to these kids when they go to college? The colleges aren't going to hand them hundreds of dollars to show up or get good grades. Second, what happens when they reach the real world? Sure, you're paid your salary to do C work, but if you're asked to do a bit better your boss doesn't give you an instant raise. If you're a cashier at Walmart and your boss asks you to clean up aisle 10 because a kid puked, you do it, but these kids are going to think they should get extra $$$ because the boss asked them to do a little extra.
I think the kids who have parents that paid them for good grades growing up did well later in life because the parents had the money to make sure they did well. They could afford the good colleges and the extra tutors or other resources, the computer to type papers on and access the internet or a car to get to the library in. I don't think paying low income children to do well in school is going to turn them into college graduates.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
what the hell?
This program is an evidence based experiment.
That's not ignorance.
Ignorance is throwing round rhetoric about how you think the world should and shouldn't be based on nothing but your own self importance.
I wonder if paying you to read the article might have gotten a better result for reading comprehension.
AccountKiller
How does that describe slavery any more than most jobs?
"Someone else provides the workers money (which buys the food and home). Those providers have expectations of the workers. No further motivations should be expected let alone required."
You are right (except for the dangerous part). perhaps someone should do a study on it. Hey wait, that's what started your whole rant in the first place.
Hmm...
currency = work ethic
fiat * currency = fiat * (work ethic)
;)
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
What?! You mean we can stop worshiping people that can hit/catch/throw balls? We should stop caring about far removed people who are famous for pretending to be other people? What a mad idea! Next you'll be telling us that war kills people, there is no god, and men watch porn. It'll lead to mass chaos!
Yes, I'm a proud Ahmurkin
SSC
He thought it was unfair that
#1 he had to pay for children's education
AND
#2 he had to pay for incentives so that children would take advantage of #1
For the entire statement to evaluate to TRUE (that is, it was unfair), both terms must be true. Therefore, you cannot short-circuit the statement unless the first statement is false. So, if we're saying that he doesn't need to pay for children's' education then it can be short circuited. This has nothing to do with the current conversation and wasn't really suggested which means that the only thing that matters is the second term. I may be pedantic, but I'm also right...
the long term effects of paying children money for marks in school is not clear, and in many ways seemingly dangerous.
The compensation is deferred, but we already do pay students to do well in school. I had a full ride plus in college; that was a direct result of doing well in high school. I am a physician now, and the very good income I make is only available to people who did very well in school. "Study hard and you'll get a scholarship to college and a good job afterward" may be a lot more indirect than "Here's some cash, kid" but it pretty much only tested whether I was able to handle delayed gratification - otherwise it was very much paying me for doing well in school. This proposes to push that payment scheme down to kids who can't do decades-long delayed gratification, i.e. most of them., in order to improve their outcomes from education.
I don't think that's the case. Money is not an end in itself, it's a form of delayed gratification. It's not bad, but it doesn't trump all other kinds of motivation. When these other motivations apply, the money factor becomes irrelevant, and can be the source of serious mistakes in understanding.
Food, sex, etc. are stronger motivators than money for most people.
Your whole family still benefits greatly from living in a society which strives to educate its members (which is also easier to efficiently do en masse as far as specialised knowledge/equipment/etc. are involved; gives benefit of socialisation; doesn't mean typically one parent being out of workforce)
One that hath name thou can not otter
...so you think the world is fair?
Of course not, but it is our duty as humans to make it as fair as we can and certainly if you don't care about fairness why should we care what you think is fair with regard to your taxes? You can't bitch and moan about how you don't think said taxation is fair and expect anyone to listen if you ignore the unfair things said taxation is addressing.
Who knew that sufficiently motivated kids could get good grades? What a stunner. It's absolutely mind boggling.
All this study does is point out the obvious. What it doesn't do is show how to teach students how to find reasons within themselves for getting good grades. As lack of self-motivation is the real problem standing between most kids and realizing their personal potential(both grade-wise and in life) that's where the studies should focus.
I remember Algebra class in high school. It wasn't all that hard, but I hated it as no one ever told me what it was good for, and I couldn't visualize any use for it. I ended up dropping it because I would have gotten a D in it, while I pulled straight A's in Geometry with hardly any effort on my part. The difference? My interest level. My internal motivation. I loved pulling out my Geometry book and going to Geometry class. I hated pulling out my Algebra book and going to Algebra class, even though I liked the teacher.
A decade later I entered a college technical course which required algebra skills for the electrical theory it taught. I aced both math and electrical courses as I finally finally saw what algebra was used for, and became motivated as I found electrical theory fascinating.
In my late 40s I went back to school again and aced math classes related to electronics that the college said I had no business even taking with my math background. Those classes combined algebra and trig, which I'd never studied at any level in school, but yet I breezed through them with minimal effort. My total exposure to trig before those classes? A small, and I mean small, trig textbook written in the late 1800s. It was approximately 4"x6" and about.5" thick, including the hard cover that I had spent maybe 4 or 5 hours total reading, but it made sense to me
We need to study how to motivate, how to get kids to understand how the skills taught in school will affect their life after school. Once they understand those things they will apply themselves as it's in their own best interest and they will recognize it. They aren't stupid, they're just taught more about political correctness, and that the world owes them, in school these days than they are about real life, how they can succeed, and what that success will mean to them in quality of life after school.
This study shows short-term motivation works. But what we really need is to understand how to encourage long-term motivation in our kids. Teaching them that they are entitled to the government taking care of them from the cradle to the grave isn't motivational in the least. It's demotivational, if that's actually a word. It teaches them that they can get by with the least effort possible, and that's a recipe for disaster-in-the-making for our country's long-term future. Why? If our kids aren't self-motivated to succeed, our country will fail right along with them.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
You might want to read the article. It states quite clearly that paying kids for books read increased standardized test scores on reading and that these were long term gains
Which actually makes a lot of sense. Reading is a skill, which must be developed by practice. If the children read more, they develop their reading skill more, and that higher skill level will provide an advantage to them in the future (potentially, for their entire life).
The problem isn't that children don't "love to learn". They do. It's natural for them. The problem is that children don't "love to learn" the subjects that adults think are important. If paying them as a mean to direct their learning in the direction we want it to go works, then I say go for it.
Don't tell me to get a life. I had one once. It sucked.
should these questions be left to be answered and executed in private by the parents of kids?
yes.
This is currently at "-1 Flamebait". What a failure of moderation. The question posed by this summary is "Should kids be bribed to do well in school?" The post to which I reply states an opinion that the parents should be the ones who decide whether this is the best way to raise their children. That's flamebait? Really??
An instant, dismissive attempt to censor what is obviously a valid, honest opinion only lends credibility to that opinion. So good job, mods. Your childish reaction to this tells me only one thing: that a person who is not so puerile and emotionally overreactive views this differently than you do. Anyone with some understanding who might have entertained the idea of both views being merely different but equal now knows that yours is inferior. Anyone who can't see that for themselves would have already agreed with you anyway, so you truly have wasted your time and your mod points.
As I've heard it said, you might chronologically be an adult but that doesn't mean you've grown up. If you want to try growing up a little, perhaps instead of wasting mod points you can explain why parents should not be the ones who ultimately decide these matters.
Incidentally, I have plenty of karma. Do your worst. Waste your points on me. I'd be happy with that, since you might have otherwised use them to censor someone who doesn't have plenty of karma. I'd suggest "Offtopic" but feel free to be creative.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
You don't like how your taxes are spent?
Welcome to society, where everyone doesn't like a program or two that their tax money funds.
You mad
What? Providing for my kids and sending them to school is the same as slavery? Just in case you did not notice, most slaves were not sent to school during the day, but to work. School benefits the child, not the parent.
Slavery is a horrible institution that is rightfully banned. It irks me when people compare working for wages or going to school to slavery.
Anarchists never rule
For the last year and a half of undergrad I had a job working at the local television station. For $5 an hour (about 1.5x minimum wage, pretty good at the time) 40 hours a week - I was doing pretty good for myself. The position essentially boiled down to watching TV 8 hours a day (it was a little more technical than that, but the technical part became second nature and I was basically watching TV 8 hours each day.)
When I graduated and got a 'real job' and went off into the real world ... I stopped watching TV. Nobody was paying me to watch TV, so why would I watch TV for free? Seemed stupid to me for people to watch television for hours at a time, for free.
Envision the practical applications of this theory - paying someone briefly for undesirable behavior, then stop paying them - they won't do that any more.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
Perhaps the teacher's union? Maybe they are worried about losing a chunk of school funding to the kids...
Jocks have always been a PITA for everyone that was *not* at Jock themselves. That said however, Jocks are nothing more than geeks of the human body.
Funny that computer geeks have no problem programming and performing other advanced mental tasks, yet inflict serious damage and neglect the health of their own body. Try using those brains to drop the weight and improve your cardio. If the Jocks can do it, no reason you can't too.
Life is not for the lazy.
Teachers Unions
Parents' belief that they know what's best for their children is usually egotism.
What's our responsibility when they're clearly wrong? (i.e. the vaccination-autism conspiracy theorists)
To protect parental rights? To protect the children themselves? To protect the rest of us?
Determine the goal before you look for a solution and you're more likely to find it.
Funny that computer geeks have no problem programming and performing other advanced mental tasks, yet inflict serious damage and neglect the health of their own body. Try using those brains to drop the weight and improve your cardio. If the Jocks can do it, no reason you can't too.
Exactly!
And if computer geeks have no problem programming and performing other advanced mental tasks, no reason jocks can't do it too!
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Music is good for more than just entertainment. It can be used to engender in people a feeling of beauty or the sublime. It can be used to train and teach people, make them better people. It can be used for relaxation, a sleeping aid, meditation, or even an aphrodisiac. Heck, it can even be used for subliminal messaging.
Uhm, no, it doesn't. You can have a heartfelt opinion that raping children is a nice, cheap form of entertainment or that Hitler destroying the Jews was the greatest accomplishment of mankind. Nobody is going to take you more seriously if you're moderated down for it or outright censored.
As far as "valid?" Valid is the opinion.
Interesting. Personally I think that somebody who judges people based on an opinion they're supposing based on a moderation choice rather than one that person has even expressed is a self-important moron. And judging by your other posts in this thread, that's exactly what you are. You are consistently smug, insulting, dismissive and superior, with an obvious belief that anybody who doesn't agree with you not only has a lesser opinion, but is a lesser person; a lesser intellect.
In fact, this entire post rings hollow. Perhaps you should go back and apologize to some of the people you were rude and insulting to first and then talk about valid, honest opinions. Or does this sort of thing only work one way for you?
I wouldn't be surprised at all.
You don't even know these people. You don't even know who these people are, much less why they may have moderated it the way they did. What if it is just a valid, honest opinion that he was trying to start a flamewar? Never even crossed your mind, did it? You just decided the person who was moderated down was right and these mods most be puerile, childish, emotionally overreactive, dismissive, unthoughtful, immature so-called adults. All things you've said in the course of, what, 200 words or so? About people you know nothing whatsoever about, including their own views on the actual topic at hand which you nonetheless saw fit to assume and lambast in their absence?
Oh, please, get over yourself. You're not that important. Drop the fucking "I ARE TEH MARTYR!!" crap. If people want to mod you into oblivion, it's because you deserve it. And hey, guess what? They have FOURTEEN MORE MOD POINTS to moderate whoever they please whichever way they please for whatever reason they please. You know this. You're a self-important ass, but not stupid; so I see no conclusion but that you're trying to puff yourself up.
And before you go ahead and guess my own opinion incorrectly, I actually agree with you. I think his post is absolutely worthless, wishful thinking not worthy of even acknowledging -- but it's not flamebait. Surprising, huh?