Paying for Performance
DC students, who have been among the poorest academic achievers for decades, now have a new incentive to study. They can earn money. But is this really the message we should be giving to young people?I was probably in junior high school when I first learned of students who were being paid for A’s. In some cases it was as much as $5 an A. Most of those students were lucky to pull one or two top marks in any grading period, so their families were not going broke. But it never sat well with me, as I consistently brought home all A’s.
I was somewhat appalled to read Saturday’s Post article about checks being passed out to over 3,000 middle school students in DC for good grades and good behavior. These kids can make up to $100 every 2 weeks during this school year in a program jointly sponsored by Harvard University and the DC Public School System.
I can imagine that it may well motivate some students to attend school more often and to do their homework. But it may also foster other behavior like increased cheating – anything to make the grade. I wonder if we will see middle school students being mugged for their good grades checks?
I’ll bet the love of learning takes a backseat to the love of money.
Maybe I’m just a cynic. But then I have always had a negative opinion about performance-based pay, which extends from the students to their teachers. Something is definitely wrong with a system where teachers are paid extra money if their students excel on standardized tests and now students are paid to study. In the end isn’t it just the taxpayer who is footing the bill?
posted by Barbara at 7:59 AM
22 Comments:
Yes, definitely a thing to wonder about...When I teach young children (with older ones it is often too late), I try to make them curious and enthusiastic about a subject - and that can work with ANY subject - instead to bribe them. And then I can sometimes see how they start looking around themselves trying to learn more on their own. THAT is what teachers ought to be trained for, I think. And whenever I ask a child what sort of teachers they like best, they always say, the ones who demand something of us. The ones who LIKE the subject they are teaching - and US, the children! If only teachers were employed for those reasons!!! In reality, how many teachers hate children...
Oh, sorry Barbara, I am getting carried away again, but this is an interesting subject!
I find myself quite excited and positive about this program. Ideally, students are motivated by the love of learning and interest in their own futures. But there are so many kids who live in a world where the schools are fearful places and teachers are exhausted by poor books and lack of home support. For many kids there are no strong professional role models to show them the results of diligent study. I'm happy to think my tax money is supporting this difficult age group in making the right choice to study and keep good behavior. I'm hoping that some of them will arrive at a high school graduation with more options than if we lost them in Middle School. Where do I send a bigger check.
My siblings and were paid for good grades. Not a lot. But we were paid. We didn't get good grades for the money - we couldn't plan that far ahead - but we did enjoy the positive reinforcement. We didn't really have any money.
Angela -- I can see you reacted much as I did. Don't ever worry about getting carried away -- that's what comments are for!
KC, Kristin -- Knowing you both and seeing your reaction on the other side makes me pause and rethink my position on this. I'm not quite ready to write out a bigger tax check, but I am anxious to see the results of the experiment with these DC school students.
Maybe another way to look at this is if good habits can be formed, perhaps a love of learning will grow to the point where the monetary incentive can be reduced/removed and the student is still hooked? I could support such a program if this happened even half the time.
But how do you feel about rewarding teachers based on how well their students do on standardized tests?
Man, i offered my son 50 bucks for every A he could bring home.
Sad to say I had a Zero out of pocket expense...
Just like raises at work, money is a temporary and poor motivator.
its a pretty lousy teacher that would be motivated much by money.
Bulletholes -- Welcome back! I guess vacation is over, yes?
If they are going to pay these students, I wish there were some strings attached so they wouldn't just go blow their "earnings" at the mall. If they could figure out how to couple this pay-for-grades with some commitment of the students to invest in society with a part of their money, it might make more sense to me.
I agree that most good teachers are not in it for the money. These are the teachers who lament the fact that they must teach to the standardized tests instead of offering their own take on the curriculum.
In elementary school I got a dollar for each A and TV taken away if I got a C. One time I got 6 dollars and TV taken away because I got a C in PE. They cancelled the reward system when I got to junior high. I wish somebody had explained to me the real reason it's good to work hard in school. By the time I was working my way through college they were giving my youngest brother $10 per A which continued through high school for him. He made about $20 a semester if he was lucky.
Don't worry, I got over it.
As far as the teachers go, I think the good ones are not in it for the money or else they'd be doing something else. What's wrong with rewarding them for having successful students (whatever that means). There are teachers who are lazy and undemanding. If they had more incentive to do a performance-based incentive to do a better job than they would have done otherwise, who will benefit from their extra efforts? They will, and so will their students, even if it is only measured by improved test scores.
For me, paying the students seems like a false incentive, but that is just based on my own experience.
My dad paid me and my siblings for good grades -- I forget how much, but it wasn't a lot. And I still never brought home all A's. (I think I'd have done just as well if he didn't pay me at all!)
His rationale was that school was our job. And just like he was paid for his job, we should be paid for ours. I think the "love of learning" is almost an entirely adult concept. Most kids would not express a "love of learning," even if they did love to learn. Know what I mean?
Students getting paid
Pros: incentive for getting better grades
Cons: decreases love of learning/ money comes from taxpayers
Teacher incentive: getting paid/ not losing job b/c of standardized testing
Pros: weed out the lazy bum teachers
Cons: stifle creativity by teaching to standardized testing. There are still going to be students /parents who don't care and will drop scores down.
Evaluation of teachers by students/other teachers /principals/ impartial "third party"
Pros: get rid of lazy bum teachers
Cons: Some teachers are very demanding and are not liked by students at the time they are in their class, therefore, students would not be impartial. Evaluation by staff would be better, but not as impartial as a third party.
Still, you would have lazy bum students/parents that would not learn even with the best teachers, money, whatever. Cost of impartial third party.
No, I would not like for my taxpaying money to be spent paying kids to get good grades, let the parents do that. Long comment, sorry. Tina
Cyndy -- I would have said the same thing about a false incentive. But hey, you turned out OK! I do think taking away TV for a C in PE was a little over the top though.
Steve -- I confess to being a totally weird child, but I do think I had a love of learning. I also liked classical music when everyone else was into rock.
If teachers do their jobs well, I still hope at least some students love learning, even if they are not paid for the results.
Tina -- The bottom line is there is no silver bullet for good education. It would probably help immensely if parents cared just a little more about how their kids were being educated. Our society often throws money at complex problems as a bandaid when another solution would really be better.
Sounds pretty nutty. Shouldn't parents, not public schools using my tax dollars, make these incentive payments if anyone is to do so? Didn't I also read recently that at least one college has been paying admitted freshmen $1,000 to re-take their SATs if they get a higher score, so that the school can artificially pump up its student body statistics? Nutty, I say.
MC -- Does the college also pay for tutoring prior to retaking the SAT's? I find that absolutely disgusting. Why would anyone in their right mind take the SAT's again after they had served their purpose?
Did your parents pay you for good grades? I'm starting to think I got screwed growing up in a post-Depression household where I barely got a weekly allowance and paying for grades was not on the radar at all!
Mine didn't pay me for good grades -- they simply expected them.
MC -- Ditto. In truth, I demanded a lot of myself, so my parents didn't have to.
It's easy to have a knee-jerk reaction about being "paid" to have good grades, afterall, shouldn't students get good grades because of the love that they have for learning?
Yeah, right,
and then there are all those lazy teachers, that if they just got off their butts, could make children love to learn!
uh huh.
Yes, it's true that kiddos love to learn. However, it's correspondingly true that they love to learn what THEY want to learn. Most would never willingly learn long division or about the civil war, unless they had been conditioned to the reinforcement of grades versus the punishment of parent/teacher censure of not doing their work.
How many of you would go to your jobs that you love if you were not getting any reinforcement (pay, praise, pats-on-the-back) for doing that job?
As a middle schooler, I hated school so much that I made myself sick rather than attend. I would go, on the average about 2 days a week. I still got ok grades, but wasn't a full participant in the school. My parents heard about this new thing called positive reinforcement and decided to pay me to go to school. The only way that I received a weekly allowance was if I went all five days to school. I won't say I was never sick (my mom was feeding me something I was allergic to for breakfast every morning), but I am still trudging off to school every morning.
I guess there must be some lazy teachers somewhere, but I haven't worked with them. If you are lazy, you don't last long in this profession. Unfortunately, many people think that teachers are lazy because the kiddos leave at three in the afternoon. The critics fail to see that teachers often arrive at a school at seven and then work until five or six. Many don't see the hours spent grading papers or making materials.
When children don't succeed in school, teachers are receive the brunt of the criticism, but the plain truth that the children of today are different from the children of yesterday is frequently forgotten. It was the rare child in my middle class suburban town that came from a broken home, now it is unusual to find a child who is living with both of his orignial parents. The parents of my generation work so many hours, most of them do not eat any meal with their child for weeks on end. The children themselves are scheduled for many, many activities afterschool from soccer to drama. When I left the school tonight (at six-thirty), there were still about six or seven children who were waiting for their parents to pick them up from play practice. This meant that by the time they got home, ate dinner and did some homework, it would be nine or ten o'clock at night.
What is the cost of education and what is the cost of non-education? If paying the students would mean that there is one more viable, contributing adult to society, what would the economic ramifications be? I, for one, would rather that my money went to pay some student to stay in school and make good grades than build another prison or buy another missle.
Just my two cents,
Kellyann
Kelly -- I would say that's at least 25 cents worth! It's nice to get a teacher's take on what has turned out to be much more controversial than I would have ever thought.
It's quite a success story that you went from being a convicted truant to being a phenomenal teacher! I'm sure your story would inspire those in the field of education who wonder if they are making a difference.
As a teacher, I don't believe in monetary rewards for teachers or students. Many students and most teachers are not motivated by money. If it's not done for every kid across America, then it is not fair. As a kid, I worked for a Gold or even Red Star!! Really, I didn't work just for that, but I did want one. We worked for our parent's approval at first, and then later, it was usually for the love of the subject.
The idea that teachers make successful students is ridiculous! We can teach right to the test all we want, but you can only do so much with what you've been given, and that's different in every class every year. We can guide them, but I don't think we can take rewards for what are ultimately their achievements.
WE need more resources and material/curriculum that the students can connect to their lives and personal experience to increase even the chances of more success. (I don't believe much in the validity of measuring success in standardized tests, especially in Gr. 3 and Gr. 6 when kids are still very much developing skills at different rates.)
Here, we are wishing they'd ditch the tests and spend the money they spend on them, on resources and extra help for at risk students.
MOI -- I would love to see you and Kellyann debate this topic. As veteran teachers, you both have a perspective that most of us have never experienced. But you obviously have different opinions!
I don't think that MOI and I are so far apart... yes, we all worked for our parents' approval, but we had a real connection with our parents. We spent time with them, talking in the car, at the dinner table, at parks on picnics, cleaning the house, setting the table, planting in the garden (in my case: driving to square dances, camping, driving across country, practicing the piano, reading the newspaper). I wonder if kiddos have the same connection with parents that they only see on weekends or who live in different towns.
I don't really believe that teachers should get paid for the progress that their children made, but I would like to see the respect for teaching as a profession that people make a comittment to and suffer because of it. How many jobs do you have where you have the pleasure of bringing your own writing supplies or kleenex? Did you know that the average teacher lives only an average of eight years after retirement (I'm sure it's because there are times when they cannot go to the bathroom for six hours)?
I would like to see the money and drama spent on national testing go to better uses, but I also think that there are places where not even testing can cure the illness in their education system. A big district near one of my houses has a hard time finding, paying and keeping teachers so they bring them from other countries. They recruit yearly to find those teachers because teaching in that district is so horrific. If that district could make teaching in that district reasonable, it wouldn't have this problem. I can only imagine what it is like to be a STUDENT in that district!
I know, I know, I am on a soapbox, but education is a topic near and dear to my heart. I have invested 24 years of life teaching and seven years learning to teach.... is that 31 years?! Ohmigoodness!
Kelly -- You are so very correct in observing that many of today's students lack a connection with their parents, often having just one parent in their lives.
I am sure too that many good teachers go unnoticed and unrecognized, the attention being called to those who are not performing so well. And it is difficult to come up with objective and comparable ways to measure teacher performance that doesn't focus on standardized testing.
It's a really sad comment that we are now having to recruit teachers from other countries to fill less desirable positions.
I wish I had answers to some of these educational dilemmas.
I did have an idea the other day that there is a growing pool of educated retired people (like me) who could be organized to provide additional resource help to schools at all levels. Most of us would probably not demand any remuneration.
i don't know, i'd find it hard not to be cynical about this too - cheating and plagiarism are such a problem over here, esp. with more focus on coursework rather than exams, and esp. with the internet...
it seems to me there must be other ways to motivate students
Lettuce -- That's pretty much the same reaction I had. But I'm curious to read the evaluation of this program after a year. Perhaps with certain socio-economic groups the money can really make a difference. I would hope the goal is to wean the students off their reward money after they are hooked on learning!
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