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Should Kids Be Bribed To Do Well In School?

Posted by timothy on from the hey-kid-look-at-this-shiny-future dept.

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."

10 of 706 comments (clear)

  1. Why Not? by WrongSizeGlass · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Why Not? by HungryHobo · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I'm not sure if many people read TFA but an interesting result:

      Schools in Dallas got the simplest scheme and the one targeting the youngest children: every time second-graders read a book and successfully completed a computerized quiz about it, they earned $2. Straightforward -- and cheap. The average earning would turn out to be about $14 (for seven books read) per year.

      And in Dallas, the experiment produced the most dramatic gains of all. Paying second-graders to read books significantly boosted their reading-comprehension scores on standardized tests at the end of the year -- and those kids seemed to continue to do better the next year, even after the rewards stopped.

      The cheapest program produced the best results.

      One clue came out of the interviews Fryer's team conducted with students in New York City. The students were universally excited about the money, and they wanted to earn more. They just didn't seem to know how. When researchers asked them how they could raise their scores, the kids mentioned test-taking strategies like reading the questions more carefully. But they didn't talk about the substantive work that leads to learning. "No one said they were going to stay after class and talk to the teacher," Fryer says. "Not one."

      We tend to assume that kids (and adults) know how to achieve success. If they don't get there, it's for lack of effort -- or talent.

    2. Re:Why Not? by Firethorn · · Score: 5, Insightful

      However, as an intentionally child-free taxpayer, I really do hate paying for other people's sprogs.

      View it as an investment into the future to ensure that there's doctors and nurses and taxpayers to take care of you in your retirement.

      --
      I don't read AC A human right
  2. Re:a better question by JoeInnes · · Score: 5, Interesting

    An even better question: who the hell sent this guy death threats?!

  3. /Obligatory by The+Wild+Norseman · · Score: 5, Funny

    In Soviet Russia, bribes school YOU!

    *ducks and runs from thread*

    --
    "A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book
  4. Re:No by Kr3m3Puff · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It teaches them the way the real world works. Do adults do their jobs because "they are supposed to" or "out of the kindness of their own hearts." The real world pays you for the work you perform, why preclude children from that, just because we can.

    If it works and it is more cost effective then other types of reform, then more power to them.

    --
    D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M.
  5. "Bribe"... by Schraegstrichpunkt · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

    --
    http://outcampaign.org/
  6. Behaviorism run amok by dbc · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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

  7. Re:a better question by HungryHobo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  8. Re:a better question by demonlapin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.