Merit pay is back in the news. For kids, that is, not teachers. Washington, DC’s Michelle Rhee is the latest to float the idea of paying 12-year-olds to act in their own best interest. Fordham’s Liam Julian thinks it’s a bad idea, preferring the stick to the carrot. But he makes the emotionally satisfying argument:
It is expected that students will complete assignments and work hard; it is legally demanded that they come to school. When these obligatory activities are rewarded with cash, what was once mundane becomes exceptional. Standards of right behavior take a prima facie tumble. The student who shunned class is paid to be there, which makes a mockery of the rules, and the pupil who already came to school on time now receives money for it and learns the false lesson that punctuality and conscientiousness are extraordinary and noteworthy.
I’m not immune to this line of moral hazard reasoning, although I remain agnostic and willing to consider any reasonable idea to boost performance. Still, I have a hard time arguing incentives are bad when I know darned well that there are affluent kids who are routinely bribed — er, rewarded — for good report cards with everything from a ten dollar bill to a new car in the driveway. Add the fact that many inner city families have learned not to expect much from their education, and it becomes hard to ask them to take our good word for it that education is its own reward.
Greg Foster nails it at Pajamas Media. “Admit it,” he writes, “you don’t care about whether it works nearly as much as you care about whether it’s just inherently wrong. This policy is the sort of thing people respond to purely by visceral reaction.” He then goes on to explain why it’s not wrong.
Joanne Jacobs, as usual, is the voice of reason: “If foundations want to fund pay-for-performance schemes,” she writes, ”I suggest they put the money into college (or job training) scholarship funds for hard-working students. Connect doing tomorrow’s homework with a brighter future down the road.”
I deplore the idea of merit pay for children. In my view, it’s lazy, desperate, cynical, counterproductive and insulting.
The premise there is that students don’t achieve because they aren’t motivated. Hence, money will motivate. Hence, the problem doesn’t lie with the school. What a relief for the school.
But merit pay doesn’t teach the children anything that’s worthwhile, and - since the real problems are to be found in what happens between teacher, child, curriculum and learning environment - merit pay isn’t going to fix the problems we have.
It is expected that parents will put their own wants aside to meet the needs of their children; it is legally demanded that they support their children materially and psychologically. When these obligatory activities are put aside to fulfill the immediate gratifications of the parents, children learn easily the most important thing in life that they will ever learn; they are expendable. Standards of right behavior went out with the Latin Mass. The parent who shuns marriage is paid welfare, which makes a mockery of the value of the family, and the couples who do the right thing are lucky to keep their tax breaks. Who is anyone to tell any child you must learn for the sake of learning when their own parents won’t parent for the sake of the child?
Even if these programs work I’ve got questions about unintended consequences (and not just the moral hazard ones).
If you give 12 years olds money, are you going to put strings on what they can do with it? Or is it fine if they blow it in a weekend on junk food and iTunes?
If you give small enough amounts that you don’t care how they spend it, is it going to motivate them after the novelty wears off?
Are monetary rewards a way of getting around the idea that publicly honoring high performing students is bad form? Just let kids brag about the new iPod they got with their test money…
The basic problem these proposals are trying to address is that kids have a hard time balancing the short term vs. the long term. Tearing yourself away from a video game so as not to get a 0 on your homework is hard. But I think educators are going to find that if they try to use money to overcome this on a large, the amounts of money needed will be uncomfortably large.
I suspect most middle-class parents who have rewards for grades also use the rewards as the hook for their nagging. The reminder about the possible new bicycle may catch the attention of the video-game fixated homework avoider. But are the rewards themselves enough? My experience as the parent of a 12-year old leads me to think not.
Me again…
It’s often struck me that the big difference between college teaching and K-12 teaching is that K-12 teachers have to focus a lot more on teaching kids how to learn. And a lot of that is teaching kids how to delay gratification.
Almost all elementary classrooms I’ve seen have some sort of rewards system — some group-oriented, some more individual-oriented — but the recognize that many kids need something more concrete than the smiley face sticker on a good worksheet to keep them focused.
Money-for-test-scores builds on this idea — but a key part to making the concept work is to find a good match of timescale — stretching, but not moving out of range of, the kid’s normal horizon — with reward.
I think a lot of the discomfort about paying middle school students is a sense that the plans don’t get that balance right.