Edutopia - August/September 2008 - (Page 56)

Greenbacks for By Fran Smith Cash and prizes boost student performance—but is the means worth the ends? Grades eventh graders at New York City’s Junior High School Ashanti, ties cash rewards to ten citywide math and language 123 have big plans for the cash they’re earning for assessments that occur during the year. Each fourth grader their scores on math and reading tests. By early June, receives $5 just for ⇒nishing the test and up to $20 per test, Krizya had racked up $252 and was going clothes scaled to the score. Seventh graders earn double, for a maxishopping. Ashanti has banked $277 so far. “I’m saving it so I can mum of $500. go to a good college,’’ he says. There are other reward programs as well. For instance, the Krizya and Ashanti, along with more than 5,200 fourth and New York–based Million Motivation Campaign, which won seventh graders in ⇒fty-eight city public schools, are part of the prestigious 2008 Cannes Lion Titanium Award honoring an ambitious experiment to test whether paying students for the most “innovative and groundbreaking idea” in advertising grades improves their performance. The question is gaining ur- and communications, gives kids Samsung U740 cell phones as gency around the country as school districts dangle all kinds a carrot—ironic in a city that has famously and controversially of rewards to achieve various goals, from raising test scores to banned cell phones in schools. boosting attendance to improving behavior. Many of these proStudents at seven middle schools received the phones in grams are privately funded and targeted at struggling schools February, and they collect talk minutes, ringtones, and music and low-income students. downloads by meeting certain benchmarks, such as turning in In Texas, students and teachers at schools earn money for ev- homework and participating in class. As the program expands, ery score of 3 or higher on an Advanced Placement exam. In a pilot schools will use the phones to communicate with students in a project this year in two suburban Atlanta high schools, students messaging campaign designed to rebrand achievement. earned $8 an hour to attend study sessions in math and science. All this, of course, raises unsettling questions: Should we New York City, with the nation’s largest public school sys- pay kids to behave in ways that we used to expect based on their tem, is also using incentives for educators, dedication, discipline, and commitment to mostly in the form of bonuses for principals future success? Whatever happened to the PROVE IT and teachers. It’s all part of an aggressive intrinsic love of learning and the school’s Check out Cornell University researcher effort to turn the schools—1,456 of them responsibility to inspire it? C. Kirabo Jackson’s intriguing pay-forserving 1.1 million students—around. The On the other, more pragmatic hand, performance research study, “A Little Now for a Lot Later” (CHERI WP 107), at New York City Department of Education why not try anything to promote academic ilr.cornell.edu/cheri ventured into pay-for-performance for stusuccess? Especially in a country where the dents beginning this year with two pilot average seventeen-year-old African Amerprojects developed by Harvard University economist Roland G. ican student reads at the same level as the average thirteenFryer, who is working pro bono as the department’s chief equal- year-old white student, and in a neighborhood where a couple ity of⇒cer. hundred dollars represents a small fortune and a hard-earned Spark, the program that has been so lucrative for Krizya and investment for college. S 56 EDUTOPIA AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2008 http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/cheri/

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Edutopia - August/September 2008

Edutopia Contents Up Front Feedback Dispatches Sage Advice Ask Ellen Head of Class Cool Schools Design: Building on Disaster What's Next Full-Service Schools In the Trenches Moral Aptitude Serious Gaming Behaveyourself.com Media Is the Message The Way of the Wiki A Match Made in Cyberspace Hail to the New Chief Rise of the Robots Disrupting Class As Others See Us Heart & Soul Pop Quiz: Moby

Edutopia - August/September 2008

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