Learning doesn't always come easy. Although there are people who simply love to learn intrinsically, some students if not most need a more extrinsic motivation to show up every day and succeed in school. While such external motivation usually includes stickers in grade school, rewards from parents or praise from teachers, one man Harvard economist Ronald Fryer decided to up the ante in a recent study. He and his team of researchers recently chose to take the reward system one step further designing an ambitious experiment to offer cash to students in low socio-economic districts to discover if a monetary reward could lead to higher achievement test scores. While I believe the idea of money as an incentive to learn is somewhat objectionable, I applaud Fryer for taking steps to find a way to bridge the abhorrent income--based learning gap in this country.
A recent headline story in Time magazine, "Should Kids be Bribed to Do Well in School? (April 8)" detailed the experiment and its results. (I should mention first that "rewarded" would make a more accurate title bribing connotes eliciting illegal or immoral behavior). In a yearlong study, Fryer used $6.3 million to enroll 18,000 kids across four cities in different reward programs to measure the effect of motivating students with cash, testing to see if it would result in a change in performance on end of the year achievement tests. Each city tested a different reward system.
In New York City, for example, students were paid $25-50 for taking a practice achievement test. Students in Chicago were given between $20-50 for grades at the end of a term. In Washington, D.C., Fryer paid students on the basis of a portfolio of metrics, including behavior and attendance with the possibility of receiving $100 every two weeks. Lastly, in Dallas, students had the opportunity to earn the leastonly two dollars if they could successfully complete a reading quiz on a book that they had read.
Although, as one might suspect, the results varied in each city, they were different in a way that is surprising it was the students who earned the least who improved the most. In New York and Chicago, where students were paid substantial amounts, there was no noticeable difference between the control and experimental groups. In D.C. students could earn up to $2,000 but only improved marginally. In Dallas, however, students only received an average of $14 and saw a dramatic increase in student reading achievement scores. The program increased students' grades and reading test scores as much or more than reducing class sizes or implementing a Head-Start early-education program, both of which "cost thousands of dollars more per students." While these results seem encouraging, many critiques of the implications of the study have been put forth.
Many psychologists argue that paying students money to achieve will have negative effects on student's intrinsic desire to learn studies have shown that by rewarding intrinsically pleasing behavior, the desire goes down once the reward is removed. While there is a danger in this, Fryer brings up a compelling point in defense of his study essentially, that he is willing to try anything and everything to find a way to bridge the income-achievement gap.
If we can find a way to get kids interested, even for the sake of money, perhaps they will discover that learning isn't all that bad. For example, I hate math because I never learned how to do it well. But if someone paid me to take classes, I would and once I discovered the many fascinating aspects of mathematics for myself, I may have continued to find enjoyment and interest long after the reward was removed.
Maybe it is wrong to give kids money to learn. But in our society where learning achievement gaps are so vast, we have to examine every potential solution and work as Fryer has, even against much protest, to do anything at all to remedy the situation. Science and progress have always depended on examining controversial ideas. While parts of Fryer's study may be controversial or statistically insignificant, he did discover a simple way monetary rewards might relate to test scores. That may not seem like a big deal, but it is a significant step in finding ways to improve education in this country. And that, I think, warrants our attention and praise.
