"OK, class, here are your tests. Remember, if you get a perfect score, you win $50.00!"Does this seem fair? In a lot of schools, if you do well on a standardized test, or get straight A's, you win a cash prize or some other reward. The teachers as well get rewarded cash bonuses for which classes get the most A's. This is a corrupt thing to do, because children are being bribed to get good grades instead of actually trying for them, and learning from mistakes. Children who don't do that well in school, or have learning disabilities don't have much chance of being rewarded. I'm in special ed math, so I, for example would never have a chance to earn a reward for grades. School is supposed to be about teaching people that everyone is equal, but are students really equal if the kid with the most prizes is smartest, and the kid with the least is the class idiot? If kids do well on tests and in school because they're being paid, then they're not really learning anything. They're doing well only for the money. Teachers shouldn't be bribed into being good teachers. They should be able to teach kids so that they can become successful as adults, not because they're given bonuses. Money isn't everything, but if people are being bribed to do well, then that's the lesson they're being taught. Rewards for good grades and for the class with the best grades are unfair, and set unfair standards as to who is the smartest and who is the stupidest.You're not going to really learn anything if you are only doing it because of the reward. You're only learning how to be corrupt. Do you think schools should reward the kids who do well on standardized tests and in school? Would doing so be reasonable, or corrupt?
5 comments:
Here's a cut-and-paste job from a posting on scienceblogs. I'm too lazy to actually write my own.
Original at
http://tinyurl.com/244sb6
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Paying Students to Learn
Category: Brain & Behavior
Posted on: March 7, 2008 10:24 AM, by Jonah Lehrer
It's a new pilot program in a few dozen New York City schools: students are given cash rewards in exchange for higher test scores. Jennifer Medina reports:
The fourth graders squirmed in their seats, waiting for their prizes. In a few minutes, they would learn how much money they had earned for their scores on recent reading and math exams. Some would receive nearly $50 for acing the standardized tests, a small fortune for many at this school, P.S. 188 on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
When the rewards were handed out, Jazmin Roman was eager to celebrate her $39.72. She whispered to her friend Abigail Ortega, "How much did you get?" Abigail mouthed a barely audible answer: $36.87. Edgar Berlanga pumped his fist in the air to celebrate his $34.50.
The idea is a little offensive - the money feels like a bribe - but I'm all in favor of the educational experiment. My justification is rooted in the details of the developing brain. The maturation of the human mind recapitulates its evolution, so that the first parts of the brain to evolve - the motor cortex and brain stem - are also the first to mature in children. They are fully functional by the time we hit puberty. But brain areas that are relatively recent biological inventions - areas like the frontal lobes - don't finish growing and myelinating until the teenage years are over. The prefrontal cortex is the last brain area to fully mature.
This developmental process holds the key to understanding the behavior of adolescents. Consider the high-school drop-out rate. Earning a high-school degree is an incredibly lucrative endeavor: if you get a diploma your average lifetime earnings increase dramatically. And yet, in many urban school districts, the dropout rate approaches fifty percent. By any measure, this is clearly irrational behavior. Teenagers are willing to forgo significant long-term gains (increased pay in the future) for short-term benefits (not having to go to school).
Richard Thaler gives an example of this psychology at work:
A recent West Virginia law revoked driving permits for students under the age of 18 who drop out of school. The first year results indicate that this law has reduced the drop-out rate by one-third. It seems implausible that one-third of the high school dropouts were so close to the margin that the loss of driving privileges for a year or two (or more precisely, the expected costs of driving illegally for this period) could tip a rational human capital investment decision toward completing high school. Rather, the behavior seems to reveal extremely myopic preferences. A similar myopia is evident in the lament of a dermatologist that her warnings about the risk of skin cancer have little effect, but "my patients are much more compliant about avoiding the sun when I tell them that it can cause large pores and blackheads."
This irrational behavior can be explained, at least in part, by the immature prefrontal cortex. Studies by Jonathan Cohen and colleagues have shown that when people choose delayed monetary rewards they rely on the lateral regions of the prefrontal cortex. In contrast, when we submit to our impatient impulses - these are the impulses telling us to drop out of school - we rely on the midbrain dopamine system. While the emotional brains of teens are operating at full throttle (those raging hormones don't help), the mental muscles that check these emotions are still being built. That's why teens act so recklessly.
What does this have to do with paying students for test scores? I think these cash rewards can help correct for the hyperbolic discount rates used by adolescents. They don't really grasp the long-term consequences of their decisions, but perhaps we can get them to do the right thing with some targeted short-term rewards.
Hello, thanks for responding! Uh... that article you sent, I already read that, and that's what inspired me to blog about that topic. I'm still trying to attract bloggers. I'm gonna respond on others blogs, and hope they acknowledge my blog's existence! Thanks again!
I think maybe you perhaps didn't read the comment carefully. It adds some commentary to the original reporting. No?
Oh......sorry. I didn't really read it carefully, but I remember reading that article before, which inspired me to post that blog.
from Mr. B's daughter again (and so was that one about the deomocratic mudslinging):
oh my goodness. I hate rewarding people for good grades! you're right, it's just teaching corruption. Grades do not reflect a person's intelligence (SO many factors go into the grade system) but even if they did, someone shouldn't be rewarded for something they were born with!
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