Kids Score 40 Percent Higher When They Get Paid For Grades - A large number of schools participating in a pay-for-grades program have seen test scores in reading and math go up by almost 40 percentage points. The Sparks program will pay seventh-graders up to $500 and fourth-graders as much as $250 for good performance on 10 assessment tests. About two-thirds of the 59 schools in the program improved their scores by margins above the citywide average. "It's an ego booster in terms of self-worth. When they get the checks, there's that competitiveness -- 'Oh, I'm going to get more money than you next time' -- so it's something that excites them," said Rose Marie Mills, principal at MS 343 in Mott Haven. Critics, who are unaware that most college students don't become liberal arts majors, argue that paying kids corrupts the notion of learning for education's sake alone.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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This seems like it should be common knowledge. If as adults, we get paid more for better performance at our jobs, then as long as we expect students to treat going to school as their "job" we can expect that if they get more for their work, they will produce better quality work. The students at this middle school are most likely in the range of 11-14 years old, and telling them that the good grades they get now will pay off for them on 10, 12, or even 14 years is presenting them a concept they can't grasp. After all, how many kids can be expected to envision a point in time that is as far ahead of them along the road of their lives as they've already come. Offer that same kid 10 or twenty bucks for good test scores, and they've got an immediate, tangible goal in mind at which they can shoot. Its no different than a manager telling an employee that if their project meets its deadline, the employee gets a $10,000 or $20,000 bonus.
Pay special note to the last sentence of the original post, though. Critics "argue that paying kids corrupts the notion of learning for education's sake alone." I have news for these critics. Very few people learn for the sake of education. Yes, some of us take things apart to satisfy a curiosity out of how that thing works and yes, there are people who learn purely for the sake of learning. However the vast majority of us did well in school, whether that was elementary school, high school, or college, because we understand that doing well in school results in that bigger payout later on in life. We can grasp the concept that getting a bachelors degree results in a larger lifetime income than a high school education alone does, or that obtaining a masters degree produces a higher lifetime income than only obtaining a bachelors degree.
These kids who did better on standardized tests when they were paid for it either can't project that far into the future to get to that reward point, a very likely scenario given the impoverished nature of the schools that showed improved results, or they realize that the standardized test scores have no implication on their overall life, and do well enough to graduate. Nailing the tests provides no tangible benefit beyond the "good enough" point.
We had a similar situation in the Electrical Engineering program from which I matriculated. The professor had a reputation as a "no pass" filter (as opposed to high-pass, low-pass, or bandpass filters). As a result, since this class was the first class in a mandatory two-part series, and a D grade was redeemable by earning a C or better in the second part, most students took the philosophy that a D stands for "done"; getting a 4-credit D instead of a 4-credit A over the course of 180 credits works out to a hit of 0.066 on your overall GPA; not necessarily negligible, but tolerable.
One comment on Slashdot, to which I replied, said something along the lines of "so does this mean that these kids are really 39.6% smarter than we thought they were?" Definitely. But there's a flip side to this thinking as well. Given that in this sort of school district the teachers are likely teaching the test contents and only the test contents in an effort to keep test scores up, then assuming that the only thing that has changed for these kids is the financial incentive, the argument that the problem with public schools is the teachers has been removed.
Think about it. If the material being taught without a financial incentive is identical to the material being taught with financial incentives, then the problem can't be the material and it can't be the teaching. Its got to be something else. It would be very interesting, and very easy, to set up an experiment with students from this district comingled, with the only difference being that some are being paid based on their standardized test results and some that aren't. I've got my hypotheses as to what the results of this experiment would be.
Gives new meaning to the concept of "pay for performance" doesn't it?
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