It’s an age-old parental tool. When brandished with precision, it can, on occasion, generate a small victory in the war of attrition known as parenting.
It’s called bribery.
Parenting, when you break it down, is often about saving children from themselves. Even if it means inducing children to bring home better grades or to do chores by offering cash rewards, you do what you have to, sometimes.
Roland Fryer, a young Harvard University professor who studies racial inequality in American schools, has been arguing that school systems should integrate a similar idea: Provide cash incentives to students to improve their grades and stay in school.
Such experimentation with monetary enticement has not yet been tested in a controlled environment, so there is no way of knowing if it would work, but there is a movement afoot to find out.
With Colorado’s recent flattening CSAP scores and high levels of dropouts among low-income students, time is running out for another generation of kids.
The old ideas have consistently failed them and new ones are worth listening to, however wacky they may sound.
Recently, a Tucson-area high school offered 75 students from low-income families such a program. The students will receive $25 a week if they stay in school and 100 bucks for hitting the honor roll. In some Dallas-area schools, students are offered $2 for every book they read.
Professor Fryer has persuaded New York City to test his program with fourth-graders and seventh-graders. Those taking mandatory standardized tests will get more money for high scores. The cap will be $25 for fourth-graders and $50 for seventh-graders.
Will this kind of skewed reward system be creating an incentive for other kids to moan, groan and demand payment? Is it fair that low-income students are rewarded for something they should want to attain on their own?
No. It’s not fair. Hey, life’s not fair. (Another great lesson for kids.) Just ask the low-income student.
But when we whittle away all the statistics and test scores, Colorado’s education problems are found predominantly in Colorado’s Latino and low-income communities. So treating them differently just makes sense. Or does it?
Alan Gottlieb is a Colorado education policy expert and writes for the Schools for Tomorrow blog and Headfirst Colorado magazine.
“I actually think the idea is idiotic,” he says off the bat. “Without a spark of intrinsic motivation, you’re not going to find the results. The problem is that school can often be so unengaging, and bribing students to check back in seems an easy way out of a tough problem.”
If only it were easy. The question, I suppose, can be framed in a different way. Are we more concerned with outcome or process? What if students lack “intrinsic motivation”? Isn’t the most important thing keeping them in school? Perhaps a love of learning will kick in later. Isn’t it at least worth a small-scale experiment to see?
We can’t blame teachers all the time. They can only be engaging to a point. Siegfried and Roy couldn’t have made my algebra class fascinating.
Fifty bucks, though …
“I think the kids we’re talking about are at risk for various reasons,” says Gottlieb. “Engaging them, at least, convincing them that there is some practical use for the things they learn in school is important. … There are some things you need to know to be a functioning member of society that aren’t used in your daily life. But we need to have some sense that … school is time spent valuably.”
Maybe 10 bucks would convince them?
Now, obviously, there will likely be moral and ethical questions regarding a policy that entails throwing money at students for learning.
Sadly, idealism hasn’t gotten the job done. Perhaps simple economics will.
“I don’t think it’s a moral problem as much as it is a cop-out,” explains Gottlieb. “I think people tend to do better when they have an intrinsic motive. But it’s important to keep kids in school, obviously, so if there is some data that illustrates that this kind of plan actually keeps kids in school, well, then I suppose it’s worth talking about.”
David Harsanyi’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at 303-954-1255 or dharsanyi@denverpost.com.
