Cash for Grades

Throughout my education the concepts of using positive reinforcement and recognition were brought up too many times to mention.  Incentives are used everywhere in life to encourage people to not only continue what they ought to be doing, but perform above and beyond.   For adults, raises and promotions act as incentive and students who are nearing to joining the workforce see new and highly respected career opportunities as their prize.  But what about grade school students, how far does a gold star really go?  Typically, the main incentive for a young student is a good grade to bring home to mom and dad in their quarterly report card; however there could be room for something more.  

According to an article, Bribing Kids to Try on Tests by Steven Levitt of Freakonomics, some teachers utilize extra play time or computer usage as an incentive for their younger students.  This same article goes on to point out that this method is wholly ineffective on older students.  What does work?  Cash.  

The ultimate non-cash elementary school incentive.  Image Credit.

The impetus for this inquiry into cash incentive goes hand in hand with a teacher’s proverbial Sword of Damocles, standardized testing.  Teachers are rated based on the performance of the students, and often their pay raises or freezes are directly affected by the results of these exams.  An article, Do Students Show What They Know on Standardized Tests? by John List and Suzanne Neckermann of The University of Chicago, and Jeffrey Livingston of Bentley University examines if these tests truly measure what a student knows or if they learner is merely going through the motions.  The control was the standardized test, but prior to the exam a separate test was given to the student.  Immediately before the separate test the students were informed that there was a cash bonus for high performers.  The timing of this statement is crucial, as the test takers could not do more preparation, they could only try harder.  The students scored, “substantially better,” with a marked increase of .3 to .5 standard deviations.  When the students took their originally scheduled test their scores returned to the expected levels.  It is interesting to note that the largest impact was on the easier questions.  So it seems that the incentive gives the students that little extra nudge to try a little harder to correctly answer questions that were within their scope of knowledge.

As a parent to a young daughter, already it is interesting to note the effect of incentives. While potty training, initially the chocolate chip as a prize was very rewarding. Now, however, my almost two year old has already “worked the system” and knows she can sit on the potty and get a parent's full attention AND chocolate, without necessarily going to the bathroom. This leads me to believe that giving my daughter cold hard cash for grades, would not be a good long term plan to keep her motivated or keep my wallet full. I would imagine that positive encouragement and spontaneous rewards such as day trips or shopping excursions, may be more of what my wife and I will try.

Education in the Digital Age

What is within your arm’s reach right now?  If you’re reading this in the morning, perhaps a cup of coffee.  Midday? Maybe there is a soda, or indeed another cup of coffee.  Is it evening? Maybe a snack, or yes, even yet another cup of jo.  Regardless of the time of day, there is a very good chance that your cell phone is within your immediate proximity, in fact, you might even be reading this on a cell phone.  Adults may be aware of their dependence on electronics, but how much of that dependency should be passed onto children, and to that end how much technology should be allowed in the classroom?

There is no question of how important it is for young learners to know how to utilize technology for academic pursuits.  However, during school hours it is important that technology stays a tool for learning.  In a CNN article by Ivana Kottasova, it was noted that schools in Britain found that an outright ban on cell phones saw an increase in student performance.  This is not surprising as a distracted person, student or adult, is less efficient.  Kottasova discovered that low achieving students saw a much larger rise in their performance than the high performing students.  This could have to do with what the phones are being used for, or more likely it could demonstrate the ability to split one’s attention.  Cell phones are personal property, and many parents may be adamant on their children having a phone for emergency purposes on them, which is difficult to combat.  So we must analyze something that is more controllable: school computers.

School computers often have a few educational games, and from personal experience many of them certainly have their merits.  Mavis Beacon, for instance, was, and still is, a fantastic typing tutor.  The classic, Oregon Trail, is a great facsimile for the struggle that was westward expansion.  There is also a very long list of math focused programs.  The key  is balancing the digital and traditional learning.  It is truly an instance of too much of a good thing being a bad thing.

Bacon: Good; Too Much Bacon: Bad. Photo Credit

Along with all of those useful programs there is also the wide expansive series of tubes: intertubes - aka - the internet!  Schools must be sure that the computers are equipped with proper site blockers to keep students in computer based classes focused.  As a former, and current, student of the digital information age, I can attest that the internet has many more distractions than sources of genuine knowledge.  It likely has even more misinformation than true information as well.  This leads to a different idea of teaching students to discern between reliable and unreliable sources.

Adults may want to curb their children’s screen time, but that may be a lost cause at this point.  An article by Annie Murphy Paul the Washington Post states that students attend school for a total of 1000 hours in a year, a more staggering estimation is the amount of time spent absorbing different forms of digital media: 4000 hours.  Just for scale and scope, a year has 8760 hours.  It is important to note that this number is inflated due to mass consumption, i.e. viewing social media, while playing a video game, with music on in the background would for an hour would equal 3 hours of consumption, and this sort of consumption likely occurs outside of the school.  Paul argues that some of these distractions do provide unintended benefits.  She states that video games can boost one’s spatial skills, and audio will increase a learner’s language recognition and stimulate their creativity.  

However, with young learners being tied to digital devices outside of the classroom, there is clearly a need to balance the equation by ensuring that a majority of the time within the classroom is not device oriented.  Student’s will have ample time to use a connected device at home or at a local library, time in school should be more focused on socialization and learning activities.  Of course, some time should be utilized to demonstrate the usefulness of technology and learning, but this time should be well planned, and limited.