Typical, investing in students where it makes no sense.

- If you invest in the worst math students, you may raise their performance from abysmal to barely passable. For you investment, you have gained a future cashier who still cannot reliably make change.

- If you invest in the best math students, you prevent them from being bored and turned off of math. You have gained potential scientists, engineers and managers who can contribute substantially to society and the economy.

This incentive - paying students who are lousy - is exactly wrong. "Hey, if I goof off, I'll get paid". Why is our educational system so obsessed with helping the worst students, rather than the best? The incentive ought to be: if you want extra attention, work hard to prove you are one of the best.

The argument against:

after the teachers removed the prizes (they told the students' they had to be fair to the rest of the students in the school), the students' interest in math "plummeted to a level below where it had been during the pre-reward baseline period

We want students to understand that there is a financial reward for doing hard, crappy things that they otherwise wouldn't want to do. That's how real life works, and we're supposed to be preparing these kids for adulthood.

So who cares if their interest plummets after you remove the monetary incentive? My interest in my job plummets after you remove the monetary incentive. Do hard stuff outside of your comfort zone? Get paid. It's a great message.

Paying people to learn the basics is insane. SO glad my money is going for this! Yay for the Dept of Ed! If it weren't for them, it would only be DC people whose money went for this. I'm sure glad they fixed THAT little mistake.

Objections are based on the premise that schools exist for the benefit of students. They are jobs programs for union members.

Like the lady at customer service said, "don't let the name fool you: once I quit trying to serve customers my talk time got a lot better."

I know first-hand that bribery can be quite successful. In the olden days of Sunday School, my class was offered a silver dollar (real silver, this was a long time ago) to memorize the ten commandments. I did it, and one of the boys did it. But it was like the math class mentioned above. My interest went as far as the money did.

But you can't just pay them to show up for school and hope for the best. I worked for a guy who had restaurants scattered around the country. At one of them, the manager offered his workers a much larger salary then normal, with the belief that if they started with more than other restaurants, somehow they would automatically be worthy, or become worthy, of their salaries.

Didn't work out all that well. I don't think he ever understood why.

This is a job for people called parents. My dad hammered this into me.

If these are inner-city kids in D.C., many or most are probably black. In the black community, 70-some percent of kids are living with unwed mothers, no daddy.

I worked for a guy who had restaurants scattered around the country. At one of them, the manager offered his workers a much larger salary then normal, with the belief that if they started with more than other restaurants, somehow they would automatically be worthy, or become worthy, of their salaries.

Didn't work out all that well. I don't think he ever understood why.

Posted by: Pricklypear at August 2, 2012 8:00 AM

Leon Festinger did a famous experiment regarding this in the 1950s. (For those who don't know, he proved that all too often, it's our actions that mold our attitudes rather than the other way around.)

http://globalchristiancenter.com/systematic-theology/cognitive-dissonance-theory.html

Excerpt:

Festinger conducted an experiment to test his theory of dissonance. He asked college students to do a boring and tedious task for one hour. Some were paid $1, and others were paid $20. Afterward, the students were asked to tell a confederate that it was an enjoyable exercise. To determine their feelings on the exercise, the students completed a questionnaire about their experience. As Festinger predicted, the students who were paid $1 rated the exercise as more enjoyable than the students who were paid $20. They did this because they had the internal need to conjure a better reason for doing a menial task for virtually no reward. The students who received $1 had a greater attitude change than the students who received $20 because they had a greater amount of cognitive dissonance. The latter group did not need a change of attitude because the amount of money they received was sufficient justification for their actions (Franzoi, 2000). According to Franzoi (2000), "...when people engage in a counterattitudinal behavior without receiving a large reward, they should experience cognitive dissonance" (p. 172).

(end)

Note that the idea of "the students who were paid $1 rated the exercise as more enjoyable than the students who were paid $20" goes against the average person's idea of common sense. Just goes to show that common sense isn't everything.

"So who cares if their interest plummets after you remove the monetary incentive? My interest in my job plummets after you remove the monetary incentive. Do hard stuff outside of your comfort zone? Get paid."

Exactly. I'm going to give my son merit pay based on his performance when he starts going to school. While hes in school that's his job and he'll be paid accordingly.

Amy "Do we start paying women to get married, too?"

Well unfortunately we are effectively paying them to not get married. First remove that one.

Hmm $5.25 an hour and all I have to do is tank my regular tests and pass them in the summer.

Chalk me up with a random guy.

"internal need to conjure a better reason for doing a menial task"

There is the nub of the matter, right there. Instead of being bribed, the pupils need to conjure up reasons to try - competitiveness with other students, impressing the teacher, maybe even some future goal ("if I learn math, then I can take physics and then I can be a scientist)." Something beyond the here and now.

But how you do that without parental guidance is beyond me. God bless the child that's got his own inner drive.