Financial Incentives for Public School Students
With so much emphasis on testing, school officials are beginning to experiment with initiatives that provide students with financial rewards for improving their scores. Call me a purist, but I would prefer that young people achieve academic success because they want to learn and are able to discover and develop their talents and abilities without the interference of financial incentives. My chief concerns relate to dealing with the unintended consequences of paying dollars for performing well on tests. What happens when we stop paying the students, will their scores decline once again? Will students equate academic achievement with additional compensation? Are we providing incentives in the appropriate way? Granted many parents already reward their children financially for doing well in school, I'm not altogether comfortable with our public school systems modeling this behavior. However, given that not much else seems to be working to substantially improve student performance, it really can't hurt to give this approach a try. Because these programs are privately funded, the level of scrutiny is in some ways minimized, which essentially gives educators more time to work through the potential pitfalls and opportunities regarding student financial incentives.
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