The inestimable Rum Smuggler contacted me via private channels to point out Paying for Performance from the Marginal Revolution.
Every three weeks students are tested and if they improve they are paid on the order of $20. Control groups are also tested. Early results are very encouraging. No other reform has anywhere near the bang for the buck as paying the students.
But that’s … that’s so **easy**! Instead of paying the monopolist government school bureaucrats more, pay the kids.
Whiny nosy Mrs Grundy sniffs, “Outrageous; they should they learn for the joy of learning.” In a perfect world, that’s true — but they must be taught the long-term joy with short-term rewards. If we must coax the thirsty to water with gold, then we will quench their thirst just as surely as if we had browbeaten them toward it with “it’s for your own good, you’ll thank me later” … and maybe with more success.
Having taken a break out of my alcohol-fueled hallucinations to pass along this link, I’m obliged to pass along a possible criticism (lots of discussion on this topic amongst the libertarian-leaning blogs today): if you only pay the kids that improve performance, you screw over all of the smart kids who remain consistent at the top of the class. And since kids are intensely jealous of each other, they’re gonna talk.
So do you pay those at the top as well? Then you might end up with an odd situation in which you pay the smart kids and the plucky kid that goes from a D to a C, but not the kid who consistently pulls a B average. Meanwhile, the mouth-breather in the back of class who’s sporting a 5 o’clock shadow in sixth grade is flunking out and doesn’t care, because he’s wealthy from beating up all of the other kids and stealing their incentive money. ;)
Just a bit of Devil’s Advocate there… I think it’s an idea worth looking at, and I think that it has the potential for good in certain situations, but I’m staunchly averse to any implementation via the federal government. Most public schools in the nation aren’t having problems; it’s the urban, heavily immigrant*, or odd statistical failure schools that face the biggest challenges, and they’re spread out over the entire nation.
For more bloglich discussion on this topic, check out the comments over at Jane Galt’s Asymmetrical Information.
*By heavily immigrant I refer to some of the schools in California where, due to heavy immigration from many Asian nations, you may have dozens of languages spoken by the kids. Ditto for a few places on the east coast where you get lots of conflicting eastern European and African languages. Immigrant children do remarkably well if their parents are focused on learning English and integrating into American culture; sadly, many choose to take the exact opposite approach.