Paying Students to Learn Program Gets Mixed Grades

While New York City is in the middle of a two-year pilot program headed up by Harvard economist Roland Fryer that pays elementary school students who improve their grades, a similar program involving high school students apparently is not doing so well.

With $1 million in funding by hedge funder Bill Ackman's Pershing Square Foundation, the one-year-old Reach (or Rewarding Achievement) program awards $1,000 to students who do well on Advance Placement exams. The program, and others like it, are trying to help reduce the black-white achievement gap.

The New York Times reports:

...students at 31 New York City high schools took 345 more of the tests this year than last. But the number who passed declined slightly, raising questions about the effectiveness of increasingly popular pay-for-performance programs in schools here and across the country.

Students involved in the program, financed with $2 million in private donations and aimed at closing a racial gap in Advanced Placement results, posted more 5's, the highest possible score. That rise, however, was overshadowed by a decline in the number of 4's and 3's. Three is the minimum passing score.

And here is Fryer:

Dr. Fryer said that the A.P. test incentive program shed no light on the efficacy of a separate one he is managing that rewards middle school students with cellphone minutes for good behavior, attendance and homework along with test scores.

"I crave for scientific evidence that things are working," Dr. Fryer said, adding that while he believed that incentive programs held promise, "the jury is still out."

"I don't think we should make too much of the actual numbers at this point, but I'm encouraged that they're trying something," he said of the Advanced Placement program. "I actually don't care if incentives are the answer; I just care about getting an answer. If incentives aren't the answer, I guarantee you I will drop them like a bad habit."