My colleague Lesli Maxwell has a story up this week about the Atlanta school district, which over the past ten years or so has experienced a complete overhaul from superintendent Beverly L. Hall. The changes Ms. Hall has made to the organization and structure of the schools, as well as the initiat...
Students in cash-incentive programs in both Washington and Chicago got paid last week, according to this AP article. It'll be awhile until we know whether or not these plans are actually working, although teachers in Washington say that they've seen less tardiness since the program has been in place...
In light of the recent wave of schools trying cash-incentive programs to motivate students, it's only fair to point back to a commentary written by Alfie Kohn, an outspoken critic of these kinds of programs and of testing in general. Kohn explains that what is truly important in the classroom is no...
Following suit with programs in Chicago and New York, it looks like a group of schools in Washington has now jumped on the cash-incentive bandwagon, according to this Washington Post article. About 3,000 students could earn as much as $1,500 per academic year for good behavior, getting to class on t...
This story in The Washington Post is an interesting (though not totally unexpected) twist in the debate over rewarding kids in schools. Apparently schools in the greater Washington area are rethinking the way food is used as a reward for good behavior. Giving students sweets for doing well sends stu...
It's been awhile since we talked about cash incentives for grades, but the subject has once again reared its head, this time in Chicago. About 5,000 high school freshmen in 20 Chicago schools could earn $50 for every A, $35 for every B, and $20 for each C on their report cards this year, says the ...
This story, written by my colleague Erik Robelen, is about a study of student reward programs conducted by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes, which found that such programs improved students' reading scores, but had no discernible effect on math performance. One interesting thing about t...
The Learn & Earn program in Fulton County, Georgia that I reported on awhile back just finished up its 15-week pilot program, and this article in the Atlanta-Journal Constitution profiles one of the participants who found the program, which offered students $8 an hour for studying, successful. "It...
A story in The Houston Chronicle yesterday once again brought up the ever-controversial topic of student incentives. This time, though, the article focused on giving away prizes for perfect attendance, rather than high test scores. According to the article, under No Child Left Behind, the amount of ...
Here's an article in The Christian-Science Monitor about using cash-incentive programs to motivate students. It talks about the programs in Baltimore and Fulton County, Ga., which I have wrriten about in the past, but also about a new program in Baltimore and D.C. that allows students to invest and ...
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