How Rewards Program Works
To spark interest in learning, the D.C. school system is offering monetary rewards to middle-school students at 15 schools.
14 Schools Named to D.C. Program to Motivate Students With Cash - washingtonpost.com
D.C. officials yesterday identified 14 schools where about 2,700 middle schoolers will be eligible for up to $100 a month in cash awards for good test scores and behavior.
The incentive program, called Capital Gains, is a joint venture of D.C. schools and Harvard University. It is aimed at heading off the downward academic spiral that many children experience in the middle school years.
The schools include middle schools (Hardy, Eliot-Hine, Hart, Jefferson, Kelly Miller, Garnet-Patterson-Shaw and Stuart-Hobson) and newly consolidated schools that serve middle schoolers as well as pre-K, kindergarten and elementary students (Brightwood, Browne-Gibbs-Young, Burroughs, Emery, Langdon, Takoma and Whittier).
The selections were made without regard to geographic balance, said Roland G. Fryer, a Harvard economist and principal investigator for the school's American Inequality Lab, which studies issues of poverty and race. Fryer said he built an algorithm that included the 28 District schools serving middle school students and generated about 30,000 possible combinations that gave him two blocs of 14: one to receive the cash incentives, and a control group that would not.
Fryer said the two groupings he selected were the most evenly balanced based on several criteria, including size and level of academic achievement.
"We wanted to make sure that the treatment and control groups were as alike as possible," said Fryer, who leads a similar program in the New York City schools.
The pilot program will be tried in one school in each of Wards 1, 7 and 8; three schools in each of Wards 4 and 6; and five schools in Ward 5. Schools in Wards 2 and 3 were not included.
The schools include middle schools (Hardy, Eliot-Hine, Hart, Jefferson, Kelly Miller, Garnet-Patterson-Shaw and Stuart-Hobson) and newly consolidated schools that serve middle schoolers as well as pre-K, kindergarten and elementary students (Brightwood, Browne-Gibbs-Young, Burroughs, Emery, Langdon, Takoma and Whittier).
The selections were made without regard to geographic balance, said Roland G. Fryer, a Harvard economist and principal investigator for the school's American Inequality Lab, which studies issues of poverty and race. Fryer said he built an algorithm that included the 28 District schools serving middle school students and generated about 30,000 possible combinations that gave him two blocs of 14: one to receive the cash incentives, and a control group that would not.
Fryer said the two groupings he selected were the most evenly balanced based on several criteria, including size and level of academic achievement.
"We wanted to make sure that the treatment and control groups were as alike as possible," said Fryer, who leads a similar program in the New York City schools.
The pilot program will be tried in one school in each of Wards 1, 7 and 8; three schools in each of Wards 4 and 6; and five schools in Ward 5. Schools in Wards 2 and 3 were not included.
14 Schools Named to D.C. Program to Motivate Students With Cash - washingtonpost.com
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Delighted -- or Deflated -- by Dollars - washingtonpost.com
The District's experimental program to pay 3,300 middle school students for good grades and behavior is filled with valuable life lessons about hard work, thrift and showing up on time, its supporters say.
And on yesterday's first payday under the "Capital Gains" plan, kids at the 15 eligible schools cashed in. They earned a total of $137,813 from the initiative, a joint venture of the District and Harvard University. Students can earn a maximum of $100 every two weeks. The average award yesterday was $43.
Unfortunately, students at Shaw at Garnet-Patterson got a lesson officials hadn't planned on: Your check might not be as hefty as you expected.
Although students received credit for reaching achievement targets in reading, math and science, a computer error shorted them on attendance and behavior. Dena Iverson, a spokeswoman for Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee, said the problem appeared to be unique to Shaw, but at least one other school, Whittier, also reported problems. Iverson said the students will get the money they are due in their next check.
Shaw Principal Brian Betts did his best to make it a teachable moment.
"Mr. Betts once had a job where he didn't get paid for four weeks," he told teacher Brian Diamond's sixth-grade homeroom as he distributed the checks.
Reactions varied widely, with some students bounding down the school steps on 10th Street NW near U Street, waving checks at each other and shrieking: "What d'you get? What d'you get?"
Others sat quietly and studied the pale green checks with "Harvard University" in boldface across the top. Sixth-grader Kevin Sparrow-Bey, who took in $20, said he was annoyed by the assumption that he and his classmates have to be paid to take school seriously.
"I can do the work," said Kevin, 11, who said he gets B's and C's. "It don't change nothing."
Shaw teachers and administrators said the program has had a limited impact so far: A downward spike in tardiness is the most noticeable change, but what it does to grades will take longer to determine. They also said that until yesterday, the program was pretty much an abstraction to many students. As awareness of the system spreads, officials expect the payouts to grow. By next month, the money will be electronically deposited in individual bank accounts, they said.
Betts said that when students begin to see the money every two weeks -- and the direct relationship between what they are paid and what they do in school -- the effect will be more widespread.
"That's when the power of this program will surface," Betts said.
Unfortunately, students at Shaw at Garnet-Patterson got a lesson officials hadn't planned on: Your check might not be as hefty as you expected.
Although students received credit for reaching achievement targets in reading, math and science, a computer error shorted them on attendance and behavior. Dena Iverson, a spokeswoman for Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee, said the problem appeared to be unique to Shaw, but at least one other school, Whittier, also reported problems. Iverson said the students will get the money they are due in their next check.
Shaw Principal Brian Betts did his best to make it a teachable moment.
"Mr. Betts once had a job where he didn't get paid for four weeks," he told teacher Brian Diamond's sixth-grade homeroom as he distributed the checks.
Reactions varied widely, with some students bounding down the school steps on 10th Street NW near U Street, waving checks at each other and shrieking: "What d'you get? What d'you get?"
Others sat quietly and studied the pale green checks with "Harvard University" in boldface across the top. Sixth-grader Kevin Sparrow-Bey, who took in $20, said he was annoyed by the assumption that he and his classmates have to be paid to take school seriously.
"I can do the work," said Kevin, 11, who said he gets B's and C's. "It don't change nothing."
Shaw teachers and administrators said the program has had a limited impact so far: A downward spike in tardiness is the most noticeable change, but what it does to grades will take longer to determine. They also said that until yesterday, the program was pretty much an abstraction to many students. As awareness of the system spreads, officials expect the payouts to grow. By next month, the money will be electronically deposited in individual bank accounts, they said.
Betts said that when students begin to see the money every two weeks -- and the direct relationship between what they are paid and what they do in school -- the effect will be more widespread.
"That's when the power of this program will surface," Betts said.
DC students cash in on good grades, behavior - ...
Students at 15 D.C. middle schools have received their first reward checks for good grades and behavior.On Friday, students earned $137,813 from the Capital Gains program, a new venture between the District and Harvard University. Under it, students are eligible for up to $100 month for attendance, doing homework, good behavior and receiving good grades.
The average award totaled $43, and was distributed to 3,006 students.
At one participating school, Shaw at Garnet-Patterson Middle School, teachers say they have seen less tardiness from students since the program started. They say noticeable changes in grades will probably take longer.
Institute will test educational theories in NYC - Examiner.com
A newly created research institute at Harvard University will test educational theories in partnership with school districts in New York City, Chicago and Washington, D.C.The creation of the $44 million Education Innovation Laboratory is slated to be announced Thursday.
The institute is funded by the Broad Foundation and will be led by Harvard economist Roland G. Fryer Jr., who took the job after resigning as part-time chief equality officer for New York City public schools.
Fryer tells The New York Times that the institute aims to test educational theories using data-driven techniques of science and business.
Research will initially focus on incentive programs, such as New York's cash for good grades experiment that began in June 2007.
Harvard Professor and Broad Foundation to Test Education Theories - NYTimes.com
Roland G. Fryer Jr., a Harvard economist, has often complained that while pharmaceutical companies have poured billions of dollars each year into studying new drugs and Boeing devoted $3 billion to develop the 777 jet, there has been little spent on efforts to scientifically test educational theories.
Now Dr. Fryer has quit his part-time post as chief equality officer of the New York City public schools to lead a $44 million effort, called the Educational Innovation Laboratory, to bring the rigor of research and development to education. The initiative will team economists, marketers and others interested in turning around struggling schools with educators in New York, Washington and Chicago.
Backed by the Broad Foundation, founded by the billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad, and other private groups, the research is intended to infuse education with the data-driven approach that is common in science and business, Dr. Fryer said. He compared the current methods of educational research to the prescriptions of an ineffective doctor.
“If the doctor said to you, ‘You have a cold; here are three pills my buddy in Charlotte uses and he says they work,’ you would run out and find another doctor,” Dr. Fryer said. “Somehow, in education, that approach is O.K.”
In its first year, the research group plans to focus on incentive programs, including controversial ideas like giving students cash for good test scores, an approach that Dr. Fryer has tested in New York since June 2007.
Each of the three school districts working with the institute will use a different plan to encourage high achievement, with researchers tracking the effect of each on student performance.
New York schools plan to continue Dr. Fryer’s experiment of paying students in the fourth and seventh grades up to $500 a year for doing well on reading and math tests. A separate Fryer initiative, which rewarded 3,000 New York middle school students with cellphone minutes for academic performance and classroom behavior, was discontinued because the city did not raise enough money from private donors to pay for it this fall.
Conclusive evidence about the effectiveness of such programs has been scant, and Dr. Fryer said officials are still examining the data on last year’s cash incentives. He said he hoped that the cellphone idea would gain traction in other cities.
Dr. Fryer said the new institute would be able to identify what works so that educators across the country could prioritize their spending.
“We will have the willingness to try new things and be wrong — the type of humbleness to say, ‘I have no idea whether this will work, but I’m going to try,’ ” he said.
The Broad Foundation, based in Los Angeles, has pledged $6 million to fund the institute for three years, and the school districts are expected to front half the cost of any projects they launch with the Education Innovation Laboratory. Organizers are seeking other foundation grants to cover additional costs.
Mr. Broad has been a generous and aggressive advocate of education issues, with mixed results. He has invested in charter schools, run training programs for urban school leaders, and he finances a prize that awards districts for narrowing the achievement gap among income and ethnic groups.
Mr. Broad’s collaboration with Dr. Fryer, 31, began on Christmas Eve when Mr. Broad called Dr. Fryer to congratulate him on earning tenure from Harvard, the youngest black professor to do so.
Mr. Broad asked Dr. Fryer to come up with “the next big idea” in education, and Dr. Fryer began consulting with companies that market to younger people. By summer, the idea for the Education Innovation Laboratory had been hatched.
“We’re looking for people that want to run an urban district that is not satisfied with the status quo, that recognizes that you need reform, you need change,” Mr. Broad said, “and recognizes how far America has fallen behind other nations in public education.”
Do Financial Incentives Work for Students? - City Room Blog - NYTimes.com
New York City, which has the largest public school system in the country, is in the forefront of a movement to pay for performance, even at the student level, Jennifer Medina writes. More than 200 city schools are experimenting with incentives, and at more than a dozen schools, students, teachers and principals are all eligible for extra money, based on students’ performance on standardized tests.
So far, the city has handed out more than $500,000 to 5,237 students in 58 schools as rewards for taking several of the 10 standardized tests on the schedule for this school year.
Nationally, school districts have experimented with a range of approaches. Some are giving students gift certificates, McDonald’s meals and class pizza parties. Baltimore is planning to pay money to struggling students who raise their state test scores.
Critics of these efforts say that children should be inspired to learn for knowledge’s sake, not to receive money, and question whether prizes will ultimately lift achievement. Anticipating this kind of argument, New York City was careful to start the student experiment with private donations, not taxpayer money.
eduwonkette: Do Financial Incentives Work for Low-Performing Kids? Some Economists Say "Not Really."
Do Financial Incentives Work for Low-Performing Kids? Some Economists Say "Not Really."
For the early risers yesterday morning, there was a panel called "Student Incentives in Action: Experimental Evidence from Offering Money for Educational Achievement." Roland Fryer and Ceci Rouse, originally scheduled to present, were no shows, but there were three other papers presented: the first by Case Western's Eric Bettinger called, "Paying to Learn: The Effects of Financial Incentives on Elementary Test Scores" (policy brief available here), a second by Josh Angrist, Daniel Lang, and Philip Oreopoulos, "Lead Them To Water and Pay Them to Drink: An Experiment With Services and Incentives for College Achievement," and a third by Angrist and Victor Lavy called "The Effect of High-Stakes High School Achievement Rewards: Evidence from a Group Randomized Trial" (the latter two are available here).
Bettinger's study was based on a randomized experiment where students were paid for performance on periodic math, reading, writing, social studies, and science tests. These incentives increased test scores only in math, but not in any other subject. And the kids who gained the most from receiving the incentive were those already performing at higher levels, not the lowest performing students. Here's the kicker: The study was multi-year, such that some students were given incentives in one year and not in the next. Advocates of incentives argue that while students will react to the cash at first, when the incentive is taken away, they will learn "for learning's sake." Yet Bettinger found no carry over effects when the incentive was taken away, writing, "This may suggest that the existence of external motivation has a negative effect on the intrinsic desire to learn." What's worse, kids reverted back to their initial achievement level, suggesting that the incentives affected not permanent learning, but short-term effort.
Bettinger also shared two funny stories about how teachers used the cash as motivation: in one case, a teacher had the kids chant "Show me the money!" In another case, a teacher hung a giant $100 bill in her classroom. For writing practice, kids were asked to write about how they would spend their money.
In the other K-12 paper, Angrist and Lavy found that offering financial incentives to pass a high-stakes test in Israel improved outcomes for girls, but not boys. The effects on girls were largely driven by an increase in passing rates among those who had a relatively high chance of passing these exams to begin with.
Taken together, these studies don't bode well for the current drive to improve outcomes for the lowest performing students by paying them.
EconEdLink | Incentives Influence Us!
Incentives At School
- Stickers for turning in homework on time.
- Note home to parents for misbehaving in the lunchroom.
- Good grades for studying.
- No recess if class work is not finished.
- If you lose a library book, you can't check out new ones.
- Field trips for classes that behave well.
- Can you think of two more incentives at school?
CHARMING, JUST CHARMING: Hmmm
It used to be that parents taught children that obtaining an education was the duty of the children...their job..something that they had to do just as the parents had duty to the children children had duty to parents and getting an education was one of those duties. Children were not 'paid' to learn although they might get their butts kicked if they did not learn.
When parents base an allowance on school performance that is between the parents and the kids..none of my business. However, when a school system pays children for learning I do have a problem with it. My tax dollars are providing a FREE education for these kids and I resent the idea that I will have to pay them to learn.
But that is not the problem. The problem is that children should be taught that learning is an obligation..an obligation to society, their country, their parents and most of all to themselves. Good teachers attempt to make learning fun and interesting...but for some students some subjects will not be fun nor interesting even if taught by Saturday Night Live. And this is where that obligation to learn must come into play.
But no matter how much money a kid gets in the final analysis kids whose parents are interested in the kids education see to it that the kid gets an education. Parents who see the public school system as free babysitters and lunches..and maybe even breakfast..most times could give a damn whether little Sh'nana and Sha'quile learn to read..or not...and the taxpayer just keep paying.
Fixing D.C.'s Schools (washingtonpost.com)
For decades, the District's public schools have resisted scores of reform plans and multiple changes in leadership to remain among the most troubled in the nation. The Post examined why the problems have been so difficult to solve.
More about this series
PART 1: The Overview
Chapter 1: The Breakdown
Chapter 2: Reform's Checkered History
Chapter 3: A Philadelphia Story
PART 2: The Consequences
Whatever Happened to the Class of 2005?
Multimedia: Cardozo Class Photo
PART 3: Stealing Student Funds
Stolen Dreams
Student Fund Paid for Meals, Strip Club Visits
How a 'Fundraiser' Ate Up Nearly $50,000
PART 4: One Teen's Struggle
Chapter 1: Will Jonathan Graduate?
Chapter 2: For Jonathan, It's Fourth and Goal
PART 5: Lessons in Spending
A Reading Program's Powerful Patron
A $2.9 Million Payout, With a Few Shortcuts
PART 6: A Teacher's Test of Faith
Lessons in Reality
Multimedia: Teachers, In Their Own Words
PART 7: Why the Boilers Failed
The Price of Neglect
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