D.C. Tries Cash As a Motivator in School
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V. Dion Haynes and Michael Birnbaum, Washington Post, August 22, 2008
D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee announced plans yesterday to boost dismal achievement at half the city’s middle schools by offering students an unusual incentive: cash.
For years, school officials have used detention, remedial classes, summer school and suspensions to turn around poorly behaved, underachieving middle school students, with little results. Now they are introducing a program that will pay students up to $100 per month for displaying good behavior.
Beginning in October, 3,000 students at 14 middle schools will be eligible to earn up to 50 points per month and be paid $2 per point for attending class regularly and on time, turning in homework, displaying manners and earning high marks. A maximum of $2.7 million has been set aside for the program, and the money students earn will be deposited every two weeks into bank accounts the system plans to open for them.
The system has 28 middle-grade schools. Rhee will select the schools to participate in the pilot program.
{snip}
Costs of the incentive will be split almost equally between the school system and Harvard’s American Inequity Lab, which studies poverty and race issues. The program, Capital Gains, will be run by Roland G. Fryer Jr., an economics professor with the lab. Fryer also operates a pilot program in New York City public schools.
In justifying the program, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) said the city has spent an inordinate amount on a school bureaucracy over the years that has failed students. Instead, he said, why not direct some of the cash to the students.
{snip}
A cash-incentive program that pays high school students as much as $500 for earning a 3 or more on an Advanced Placement test has been launched in Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Kentucky and Virginia.
A study of the program released yesterday by a Cornell University economist said the incentive resulted in higher scores and an increase in the number of students attending college.
Alfie Kohn, an independent researcher whose book, “Punished by Rewards,” details the downside of such programs, said incentives “undermine the very thing you’re trying to promote by getting them hooked on the rewards.”
{snip}
District middle-schoolers, often trapped in violent and academically weak campuses, typically flee the system in higher proportions than other groups, school officials said. Thirty-six percent of the city’s middle-grade students are proficient in reading, and 33 percent are proficient in math, Rhee said.
The schools need to focus on “how we can ensure that students are engaged, that they are invested in their education,” Rhee said. “I think it’s incredibly important to make sure students take ownership of their learning.”
{snip}
“The kids unquestionably love it. Whether that is translating into higher performance, I can’t tell you for a fact” until a report is released in October, said David Cantor, spokesman for the New York Department of Education. The program, funded by private donations, cost $400,000 last year.
A program in Virginia is paying students for passing AP scores at 14 high schools in rural and high-poverty areas across the state.
{snip}
[Editor’s Note: Read about a similar New York program that has recently been discontinued here.]
(Posted on August 26, 2008)
Comments
Has it come to this, paying kids to behave and study?
Why can Catholic schools always shape up kids without begging them or paying them?
Could it be that the problem may lie with the school administration and teachers? Throwing money at this problem will only encourage more recipients, aka hustlers.
Posted by at 5:56 PM on August 26
Of course, it failed in NYC, so DC wants to do it. The more an idea has failed, the more likely it is that the left wants to do it. Especially if the idea involves spending money on non-whites.
Posted by Question Diversity at 5:59 PM on August 26
If it doesn’t work this time, don’t give up. It could still prove a valuable program elsewhere. Like in districts with a greater number of whites.
Posted by Mr. Pibb at 6:02 PM on August 26
From the article;
“…For years, school officials have used detention, remedial classes, summer school and suspensions to turn around poorly behaved, underachieving middle school students, with little results….”
From Charles Murray’s new book Real Education:
“…The changes we can expect in academic achievement in the lower half of the ability distribution are marginal, no matter what educational reforms are introduced…”
And:
“…Maybe we can move children from far below average intellectually to somewhat less below average. Nobody claims that any project anywhere has proved anything more than that…”
I just received the topic of the ‘targeted professional developments’ I am mandated to attend this year. And this year’s topic is…..How to close the achievement gap between White/Asians and blacks/hispanics.
Do you think anyone at the professional developments will be open to Charles Murray’s research as to why the achievement gap is inherent AND intractable.
Murray writes that until IQ and ability differences are accepted as the inflexible facts that they are, nothing in the educational system will change—and educational romanticism and fantasy will continue (unabated, I might add, at the cost of trillions of wasted dollars).
Bon
Posted by at 6:13 PM on August 26
From the article;
“…For years, school officials have used detention, remedial classes, summer school and suspensions to turn around poorly behaved, underachieving middle school students, with little results….”
From Charles Murray’s new book Real Education:
“…The changes we can expect in academic achievement in the lower half of the ability distribution are marginal, no matter what educational reforms are introduced…”
And:
“…Maybe we can move children from far below average intellectually to somewhat less below average. Nobody claims that any project anywhere has proved anything more than that…”
I just received the topic of the ‘targeted professional developments’ I am mandated to attend this year. And this year’s topic is…..How to close the achievement gap between White/Asians and blacks/hispanics.
Do you think anyone at the professional developments will be open to Charles Murray’s research as to why the achievement gap is inherent AND intractable.
Murray writes that until IQ and ability differences are accepted as the inflexible facts that they are, nothing in the educational system will change—and educational romanticism and fantasy will continue (unabated, I might add, at the cost of trillions of wasted dollars).
Bon
Posted by Bon at 6:13 PM on August 26
Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee definiely looks North Asian, but with her timely plan, along with the Asian hysterics about Mickey Rooney’s fifty-year-old impersonation of an Asian, I’m beginning to doubt Professor Lynn’s theory that the Chinese have an average IQ of 105.
Posted by Nordic at 6:26 PM on August 26
This amounts to one of the most stupid ideas out of washington or any other place that would think of PAYING STUDENTS TO LEARN OR GO TO SCHOOL…they still haven’t gotten the message which is…..”you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink” especially if they are too dumb to know it’s really water!!
Posted by lydia at 6:40 PM on August 26
As usual blacks will figure out a way the to cheat the system to win the loot the cash do not deserve.
Posted by Tony Soprano. at 7:22 PM on August 26
Blacks and mexicans may be dumb but not that dumb. Earning a couple bucks in a war zone where they must carry a gun or knife for protection isn’t really worth the effort, especially when they can work for a drug dealer and earn both cash and protection.
Posted by Flamethrower at 7:37 PM on August 26
And what will be the lesson here? Act out, shout down teachers,
throw things, write on the walls, beat up weaker kids….and
you can extort money from the system to stop doing it.
And what happens when this extortion money stops coming in?
Posted by at 7:41 PM on August 26
Yeah, okay, give them money to come to school. They can buy more drugs and guns that way.
Posted by at 8:00 PM on August 26
“D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee announced plans yesterday to boost dismal achievement at half the city’s middle schools by offering students an unusual incentive: cash.”
They’re treading on uncertain ground here. I mean, if they make the payments too large we will next be reading about mnassive fraud among the black faculty wherein they passed out high marks to anybody for half their cash.
No program for blacks has remained fraud-free. This one won’t either.
Posted by ice at 9:14 PM on August 26
The cancer spreads . . .
Posted by Reader-1 at 10:38 PM on August 26
I wonder if any of these underperforming students would be willing to threaten or assault teachers who reported poor marks that would lower the monthly reward?
Posted by e pluribus unum at 11:31 PM on August 26
Why bother them with chump change when they can more easily make better money by selling dope?
Posted by at 11:48 PM on August 26
I think D.C. should first start a program where they pay Marion Barry not to smoke crack.
Posted by Madison Grant at 2:06 AM on August 27
The foolishness would be funny if it weren’t so sad. Now we must pay Africans to go to school and behave. What’s next, paying Africans not to commit crimes?
Posted by Cliff Yablonski at 8:02 AM on August 27
Imagine there are white students in DC schools, and imagine they actually do the work assigned and get paid money. Imagine they get paid MORE money than the Africans since they did the work….well, well, well, will this be called an “cash gap” and become the next problem?
Is it really going to be “cash” and where will it be kept? By whom and accountable to whom? It might work if they gave out sneakers or Apple I-tune rap song credits, or food-stamps mamma can use at the local liquor store.
The cash will vanish and the “grades” will go up and everybody is happy except the employers who have to deal with these ignorant Africans or the colleges that are forced to accept them on Affirmative Action demands.
The joke never ends. I am so tired of these games we have to play due to the presence of Africans in this white created nation.
Posted by at 12:57 PM on August 27
Liberal “solutions” always fail, and when they fail, liberals always demand more of the same failed solutions, which then fail…
Posted by at 4:21 PM on August 27
Why bother them with chump change when they can just go on welfare and foodstamps.
Posted by Dave at 10:22 PM on August 27
This is quite possibly the worst plan I have ever heard of in education — and boy have there been some bad ones over the years — not least of all because it will be next to impossible to ever repeal.
The black students will almost immediately develop a sense of entitlement to the money, and will quickly figure out how to do the least amount possible to earn cash from the school, or how to gain it through threats, corruption or violence. By the time the school system realizes it has essentially set up an extortion racket for students, it will be unable to abolish it for fear that students will react in rather unpleasant ways.
Posted by Dave at 1:57 AM on August 28