Should Middle-Schoolers Receive Cash for Science Grades?

Well my dad used to implement this on myself in Junior High and High school, regardless of the subject. What I got was for every A (final grade)I received, my dad gave me $50. if I got a B, he would take away $40 from the pot, and couldn't go in the 'negative'. If I got a C then the whole bet was off (one year I got almost straight A's, but a C in track for being a screw off, so I got nothing!), and if I had ever got a D (which never happened) I'd owe my dad $50. I think the joke was if I got an F, I was out of the house. Worked pretty well for my own motivation

Very bad idea. Read Alfie Kohn's Punished By Rewards: The Trouble With Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes published in 1993. It is a shame people can't learn from well documented research that has existed for decades.

@ John- if we're going to bribe kids, we may as well may it explicit.

Thirty-seven years ago, we tried the same thing with college freshman students who had been admitted under a special program for students who would not otherwise have been qualified for college.

We tried a lot of other things too, and used every test we could think of, and followed the students for five more years. What did we learn? Just one thing correlated closely over a long term with ultimate educational success: the young people who really wanted to learn did very well, and the ones who didn't care much didn't do so well.

We also found that almost anything novel woke the students up so that they learned better until the novelty wore off. So maybe the paying will work for some students for a bit. The novelty of novelty also wore off after a while, though, so the whole technique stopped working.

A lot of government money spent, and results published, and people are apparently still thinking this sort of thing is innovative.

Nonetheless, if a student really, really wants money, paying them a substantial amount for good grades is probably going to focus their attention - on getting good grades. Some of them will learn the material, and some will improve dramatically at cheating.

@John -
Like I said above, this technique worked on me. Well, I guess it's hard to gauge, don't really know if I would have done any worst if the incentive wasn't there. Julia Makes a good point - at some point you can bride a student, but if they aren't interested, they'll just get a job instead. My question to you is, what would work better? Punishment for bad grades? I think that's a worst idea... My two cents, though

This is wrong on so many levels.

1) This is public education, the right of every citizen to attend, paid for with public monies. Why should the taxes I pay go to trying to motivate Schmoe Jr. when Schmoe isn't motivating Junior himself? The motivation to do well should come from a) parents, b) society, and c) the value of intellectualism.

2) The reward of doing well in class should, in an ideal world where knowledge and intelligence are valued, be the joy of learning how the world around one functions and is put together! Reading and math are presented by society as being hard and without rewards. This is part of the problem. If reading and math are taught as having their own intrinsic awards, then achieving well within them is its own award. Removing that award and replacing it with a cash incentive only serves to: a) cheapen knowledge and intelligence by equating it purely with cash rewards, b) make kids into cash-grubbing morons fine-tuned to regurgitating factoids, and c) perpetuate the decadent American notion that everything worthwhile has got to have cash at the end of it.

Anyway, that's my 0.04 class points worth.

Here is why I disagree:

"Rhee said she is targeting sixth- through eighth-graders because some students in the group typically have had intractable behavior and academic problems... District middle-schoolers, often trapped in violent and academically weak campuses, typically flee the system in higher proportions than other groups, school officials said."

So the problem is not so much that children are not motivated per se. There are multiple problems which the school has acknowledged:

-Violence on campus
-Bad teachers (i.e. "academically weak")
-Students who might be at least OK are warehoused with students who have persistent behavior problems, thereby forcing teachers spend class time attempting to control the behavior problems instead of teaching the subject
-The students with the persistent behavior problems are not having those problems corrected (I can think of many ways to do that, none of which would be popular with voters or likely the problem children's parents, all of which cost money and resources)
-Parents don't care to socialize or motivate their own children adequately for schooling, i.e. having a hyperactive kid flunking math is "normal" due to prevalence, so why bother
-Socioeconomic problems that tend to go along with ghetto schools: Poor nutrition, poor health, lack of facilities, parents unable to devote much time or resources at home

...And they think that tossing the kids a buck or two will somehow change all this?

I do pity the poor chancellor. She's probably at her wits' end and trying to do something about a school system that bears more than a passing resemblance to Lord Of The Flies.

Eh . . . I think it's worth a shot, for a couple of reasons.

1) My middle school aged son exerted himself wildly to 'win' reading points which he could trade in for what non-middleschoolers might consider cheesy prizes (colored rubber wrist bands, a gimme cap). I mean to say: the boy actually voluntarily without my turning into the Bitch Goddess of Homework turned off his video games and read big long books, so he could earn rubber wristbands and gimme caps that trumpeted his reading points. Never underestimate the power of a tangible reward, when it comes to motivating people.

2) I live near DC, and have family members who live and work there (including one in a neighboring school system). Anything. Anything. ANYTHING. Would be better than what DC schools were before Fenty and Rhee. It's a work in progress. Let the woman try stuff out.

Surely there is social science research about school rewards programs? It would be interesting to see if people have actually looked at the efficacy of something like this.