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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.
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
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
Maybe the threats were from the teachers who felt it was THEM who should've been bribed to teach better
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
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 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
...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?
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.
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.
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.
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."
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
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.
...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.
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
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
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?