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Does paying for grades work?
C. Kirabo Jackson has a new study and his conclusion is a qualified yes:
...the incentives produce meaningful increases in participation in the AP program and improvements in other critical education outcomes. Establishment of APIP results in a 30 percent increase in the number of students scoring above 1100 on the SAT or above 24 on the ACT, and an 8 percent increase in the number of students at a high school who enroll in a college or university in Texas. My evidence suggests that these outcomes are likely the result of stronger encouragement from teachers and guidance counselors to enroll in AP courses, better information provided to students, and changes in teacher and peer norms. The program is not associated with improved high school graduation rates or increases in the number of students taking college entrance exams, suggesting that the APIP improves the outcomes of high-achieving students rather than those students who may not have graduated from high school or even applied to college. Nonetheless, APIP may be an exceptionally good investment. The average per-student cost of the program, between
$100 and $300, is very small relative to reasonable estimates of the lifetime benefits of attending and succeeding in college.
Here is a recent article on the topic. My intuition is that this works best for unmotivated students, where there is no intrinsic motivation to undermine.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on December 26, 2008 at 05:34 AM in Education | Permalink
Comments
I look forward to having more otherwise unmotivated students in my classes :)
Posted by: Jeff Smith at Dec 26, 2008 6:42:15 AM
If that were true, wouldn't you be more likely to see the improvement at the low end rather than among the high-achievers? There are plenty of smart-but-lazy kids out there, to be sure, but my sense is that the "high-achieving" group is typically at least moderately intrinsically motivated.
Posted by: Julian Sanchez at Dec 26, 2008 10:46:06 AM
The program involved paying for scores on Advanced Placement exams, which can often qualify for college credit, and typically follow AP courses that are significantly more demanding than typical American high school classes. Thus, the kids who enroll in AP classes at all (or who would hope to reach the qualifying scores for rewards) have relatively high ability and motivation and are unlikely to drop out.
This dataset does not speak to the effects of incentives targeted at those taking less advanced courses who are deciding between dropping out and just barely graduating.
Posted by: Carl SHulman at Dec 26, 2008 11:07:59 AM
I agree with Carl Schulman. It looks likes this program does nothing for poor and disadvantaged children. Like most government programs, it seems a sop to the middle class, who in this case certainly don't need it.
Posted by: StreetWalker at Dec 26, 2008 12:08:56 PM
This was the topic of a NBER paper I ran across one day in the library.
IIRC, what they found was that rewarding for academic performance usually gives incentive for students to work harder early on in the semester (I think tney looked at college students only), but once students started feeling that the objectives were unachievable, effort actually fell BELOW the normal levels.
This makes a good bit of sense to me: rewards are always important, but a one-size-all rewards program doesn't work, and a constant-rewards program doesn't work either. What you are giving has to be tailored towards the individual needs of the student, and might have to be adjusted throughout the course of the year.
For instance, Jack is a dullard who isn't very interested in education, whereas Jill is a diligent student. Both can benefit from some sort of reward, but for different reasons: Jack might be given a reward for meeting a certain GPA, whereas Jill might be given a reward for taking on additional workload in a specific subject that suits her interests.
If Jack then cannot meet that GPA requirement, an adviser should sit down with Jack and adjust the target GPA lower, with a similarly lower reward, so Jack still has motivation to get work done.
Every child can benefit from a rewards program: none of them are perfect students. But it really requires thought, rather than a "silver bullet." Really, that should be common sense, but education in the United States resembles a factory system more than actual learning.
Posted by: Robert Olson at Dec 26, 2008 12:26:22 PM
I seem to be having trouble getting comments on, so if this is a triple-post, my apologies
This was the topic of a NBER paper I ran across one day in the library.
IIRC, what they found was that rewarding for academic performance usually gives incentive for students to work harder early on in the semester (I think tney looked at college students only), but once students started feeling that the objectives were unachievable, effort actually fell BELOW the normal levels.
This makes a good bit of sense to me: rewards are always important, but a one-size-all rewards program doesn't work, and a constant-rewards program doesn't work either. What you are giving has to be tailored towards the individual needs of the student, and might have to be adjusted throughout the course of the year.
For instance, Jack is a dullard who isn't very interested in education, whereas Jill is a diligent student. Both can benefit from some sort of reward, but for different reasons: Jack might be given a reward for meeting a certain GPA, whereas Jill might be given a reward for taking on additional workload in a specific subject that suits her interests.
If Jack then cannot meet that GPA requirement, an adviser should sit down with Jack and adjust the target GPA lower, with a similarly lower reward, so Jack still has motivation to get work done.
Every child can benefit from a rewards program: none of them are perfect students. But it really requires thought, rather than a "silver bullet." Really, that should be common sense, but education in the United States resembles a factory system more than actual learning.
Posted by: Robert Olson at Dec 26, 2008 12:28:25 PM
@Robert Olson
"Every child can benefit from a rewards program"
Aaah! No. Middle class and affluent children don't need government aid. And as a society we don't have any possible interest in giving it to them.
We might have a social interest in temporarily aiding poor, disadvantaged children to ensure America increases the quality of our human capital and remains competitive in the future. If this program is to be rationally continued, it must be savagely means-tested.
But it won't be, of course: because it does seem as if the majority of benefit programs like these are created by the middle class for the middle class. It's enough to drive one to Hansonism.
Posted by: StreetWalker at Dec 26, 2008 1:07:21 PM
Really, that should be common sense, but education in the United States resembles a factory system more than actual learning.
Let's be reasonable. Unless we're spending 50-100K / pupil / year, we *have* to make do with cookie cutter methods (with maybe a few different shapes).
Posted by: Tom West at Dec 26, 2008 1:09:46 PM
if the incentive to learn is artificially created, such as in this example, does that mean the qualification they work towards has little value?
Posted by: zombie_bot at Dec 26, 2008 1:36:19 PM
@StreetWalker:
If moving children from mildly successful to wildly successful makes everyone better off, don't we have an interest in doing it whether or not the otherwise mildly successful children started off poor?
Posted by: Beatdown at Dec 26, 2008 1:40:03 PM
@Tom West
"Unless we're spending 50-100K / pupil / year"
May I ask you for stats on this? Because I assure you, we in the USA spend huge amounts on public education, like more than anyone, and yet our results are quite poor.
This leads me to consider whether it isn't funding that we need, but rather a complete change of programs and school structures.
This isn't an argument against teachers' unions either, since many countries with strong teachers' unions produce students that calculate rings around ours, read better than ours, and graduate at higher rates.
Posted by: StreetWalker at Dec 26, 2008 1:49:10 PM
@ StreetWalker:
"Aaah! No. Middle class and affluent children don't need government aid. And as a society we don't have any possible interest in giving it to them."
Who said anything about government aid? A rewards program can be institute by an involved parent, after all. I only mean that rewards-punishment should be considered an intrinsic part of a child's development, including his/her educational development. There is no child on Earth who couldn't use a bit more motivation to learn something.
Posted by: Robert Olson at Dec 26, 2008 1:58:10 PM
"The program involved paying for scores on Advanced Placement exams,"
there's your answer. you select the set of students who are most interested to exchange studying for short term gain, and -- woah! they will exchange studying for short term gain.
Posted by: babar at Dec 26, 2008 3:45:43 PM
As a parent I have found that praising a child for their hard work and effort works much better than rewards. I would reward a child for their inputs rather than for an educator's outputs.
Posted by: johng at Dec 26, 2008 4:52:30 PM
Fits the socialist mind set. Treat children as economic units.
Posted by: at Dec 26, 2008 7:04:57 PM
In order to work for poorly performing students, the reinforcement schedule needs to be shorter than it would for higher achieving students. Weekly rewards would work better than rewards given at the end of a grading period or at the end of a year. The worse the student, the shorter the time period between rewards needs to be. Rewards also need a little randomization to prevent quick extinction.
Posted by: sourcreamus at Dec 27, 2008 10:02:41 AM
