Is cash any different than other student rewards?
That's the question I posed in my story today. There was an uproar last week when word got out that the Baltimore school system will offer up to $110 to the 5,000 students who have already failed at least one of the High School Assessments if they can improve their knowledge. (Improvement, by the way, will be gauged by performance on the school system's "benchmark" tests, not on the HSA itself -- a point that Dr. Alonso clarified late in the week.)
Schools give rewards to kids all the time, from candy to toys to pizza parties. What makes cash different? Or does it? And is the issue the reward itself, or what students are being rewarded for?
Baltimoresun.com's 
Comments
Cash is a raw distillatio of value. "Value" is the only abstract on which we have been able to attach a number (try to elocute how much you love or hate something in numbers). By putting a number on improvement, we either highlight all the things we haven't put numbers on or we set a standard for value saying "we think improvement is THIS important", to which we compare all future incentives.
So that's the "reward itself" part... the object of the reward is also an issue (albeit a separate one). If this is a one-time thing, then it's hard to evaluate as it will lack context, but should this go forward, it will be key to focus the reward so that negative behavior (such as failing a test) is not enforced.
Posted by: steegness | January 28, 2008 9:45 AM
Some student response:
http://acce123.org/wordpress/?p=76
Posted by: m | January 28, 2008 4:40 PM
alfie didn't comment on the ample research ont the value of being balt to delay gratification... that said, i heard there is a great clip of an interview with him about internal/ vs. external motivation. when he was complaining about kids getting rewards for work, someone asked him if he writes his book for free or gets paid. did anyone talk about that here yet?
Posted by: jim | January 29, 2008 2:20 PM