Is Cash the Answer?
By Amanda Ripley Time magazine April 19, 2010 Pg. 40-47
Harvard economist Roland Fryer Jr. decided to do a large randomized experiment in four different American cities in various schools to determine the effects of using financial incentives in the classroom. He used mostly private funding to pay students for different achievements depending on the city. His experiments took place in hundreds of different schools in Dallas, Chicago, Washington, and New York City. Each city had a different incentive program so that Fryer could determine which would show the best academic improvements. The students who showed the greatest improvement were second-graders in Dallas who were paid two dollars for ever book they read. This proved to dramatically boost reading-comprehension scores. The other city that showed improvement was Washington where sixth, seventh, and eighth-graders were paid up to one hundred dollars every other week for five behaviors that varied from school to school such as attendance and behavior. Ninth-graders in Chicago were paid fifty dollars for every A they made, thirty-five dollars for every B, and twenty dollars for every C but while attendance improved and some got slightly better grades, standardized test scores were not affected. Students in New York City did not show improvement in any area when fourth-graders were paid a maximum of twenty-five dollars and ninth-graders a maximum of fifty dollars per test for the grade they made. These results revealed that children did best when they were rewarded for things that they had direct control over. While students may be motivated to want to do better on tests (to receive money) they may not know how to properly study or learn the material and therefore will not show a greater academic improvement.
Psychology Link: Learning
I chose this article because I found it to be an interesting example of positive reinforcement which we covered in Chapter Five. Fryer used money as a reinforcer to motivate those students to do better in school. Since money does not meet a basic biological need such as hunger or thirst it is a secondary reinforcer. Students who were paid for every book they read or for the grades they received were being rewarded using a fixed-ratio schedule of reinforcement. The students who were paid every two weeks for their behavior were rewarded using a fixed-interval schedule of reinforcement. This experiment showed that positive reinforcement can indeed encourage students to do better in school but it depends on the action that is rewarded.
Reflection
Many feel that students should not be paid for school work because it is something they should be doing without encouragement. With so many students failing to find motivation to do well now though something seems necessary. What do you think?
