Paying for A's? Schools are giving cash incentives a try.
Can students be paid to excel in school?
School districts nationwide have seized on the idea that paying for performance is one way to improve failing schools. New York City, with the largest public school system in America, is in the forefront of this movement, with more than 200 schools experimenting with various incentives. In more than a dozen schools, students, teachers and principals are all eligible for extra money, based on students’ performance on standardized tests.
Each of these schools has become a test to measure whether, as Mayor Mike Bloomberg argues, cash rewards can turn a school around. Can money make academic success cool for students disdainful of achievement? Will teachers pressure one another to do better to get a school-wide bonus?
Thoughts
Market forces?
Submitted on March 6th, 2008 by AnonymousIf this program is going to be implemented than all children should be paid for going to school.All children should be paid to get there on time.All children should be paid to take a test.All children should be paid to pass that test. All parents should be paid to be parents.So in our market force economy ,how are we supposed to pay for all children and parents to be doing what they are supposed to be doing?Why shouldn't I be paid for volunteering at my children's school 3-4 times a week every week? Why shouldn't I be paid to make sure my kids are on time?Why shouldn't I get paid since I make my kids take school seriously and work hard?Why shouldn't my children be paid for working hard and being honor roll students?Why shouldn't my children be paid for aceing tests because they studied?Where should we stop with this market force program?Why should some kids get it and others not? Why should some parents get paid and some not?
Isn't that market force discrimination?You are teaching some kids and parents, that to do what you should be doing since it is a service that is provided for free by the tax payers why don't you just act dumb and be bad parents,the government will come around and hand out free money for you failing.What happens at the end of this horrible experiment paid with tax money for a free service already paid for with tax money,Do we get a refund?
Why should some who are not paying alot in taxes and are already getting free and low cost services be paid to do something that is already given to them for free?This is assinine.Plain and simple.
If this trend continues I will be expecting checks in the mail for my children and I for our efforts we put into the school system and taxes paid into the school system every year.My children succeed for one reason,they have parents who parent.If your going to pay the parents who don't parent,you better start paying the parents who do.Between the two who's children do you think are going to make better members of society?
Re: Welfare?
Submitted on March 6th, 2008 by Joel...or you could see this as market forces at work. If you're say, 11, it might be tough to think in long-enough terms -- this will help prepare me for college and a good job -- to work extra hard to get that "A" grade. A short-term incentive, then, builds into preparation for the long-term real world. After all, we don't expect people to work for an abstraction, do we? No, they get paid. Perhaps this just gets people into training for that mindset early.
Another welfare program.
Submitted on March 6th, 2008 by AnonymousJust what America needs another welfare program.Pay the parents to get their kids to school,pay for the kid to take a test,pay the parents and children to do what is supposed to be done?This is the stupidest program I've seen to date.I'm astounded that this is going on.How about we take that money and open orphanages and tell the parents you either start parenting or you child gets taken away!Then send the parents to intensive parenting training to get their children back.Some may say this is a crazy idea,but if you think about it ,Why should the tax payers pay parents to parent?Why should the tax payers pay for teacher to perform their jobs they are already getting paid for?This is teaching children and parents you can do what you want until we get paid for doing what we should.What a lesson.More children growing up being taught to ,Keep your hand out at all times.
The Problem With Payment
Submitted on March 5th, 2008 by Chuck_JohnsonTyler Cowen talks about this issue in more detail with his own daughter.
He discovered that using cash incentives to pay his daughter were a poor means of incentivizing behavior.
Here's a summation of his argument in a review for The Washington Post.
I have my problems with Cowen -- he's too Keynesian for my tastes -- but he's got some interesting observations.
Chuck Johnson is a student at Claremont McKenna College. Feel free to contact him.