Getting paid to go to school

[Thanks to my mom for pointing this out to me!]

Up until I read this article on school attendance, I wasn't aware that No Child Left Behind factors attendance rates into its yearly school evaluations. A higher attendance rate can mean substantially more money for the school district. And so, predictably, schools have begun to rely on rewards systems in an attempt to boost attendance.

CHELSEA, Mass. — Attendance at Chelsea High School had hovered at a disappointing 90 percent for years, and school officials were determined to turn things around. So, last fall they decided to give students in this poverty-stung city just north of Boston a little extra motivation: students would get $25 for every quarter they had perfect attendance and another $25 if they managed perfect attendance all year.

"I was at first taken a little aback by the idea: we're going to pay kids to come to school?" said the principal, Morton Orlov II. "But then I thought perfect attendance is not such a bad behavior to reward. We are sort of putting our money where our mouth is." [emphasis added]

Wow. It's those last two sentences that get me. If you want people to behave in a certain way, you'd better be paying them for it. Otherwise you're not "putting your money where your mouth is." This doesn't merely reflect the uncritical embrace of behaviorist methods that Alfie Kohn talks about, but also the "uber-capitalist" mindset in which all human behavior takes place according to economics and economics only. Asking kids to show up for school without a rewards scheme is, apparently, naive and unrealistic.

Back to the article:

In Hartford last year, 9-year-old Fernando Vazquez won a raffle for students with perfect attendance and was given the choice of a new Saturn Ion or $10,000. (His parents chose the money.) At Oldham County High School in Buckner, Ky., Krystal Brooks, 19, won a canary yellow Ford Mustang. In Temecula, Calif., the school district prizes can include iPods, DVD players and a trip to Disneyland.

. . .

In the Chicago public schools, students with perfect attendance for the first three months of the year are eligible to win $500 worth of groceries or up to $1,000 toward a rent or mortgage payment. Joi Mecks, a spokeswoman for the district, said that for every 1 percent increase in its attendance rate, the district received $18 million more in state money.

. . .

Last year, Fort Worth began holding an event for every student with perfect attendance for at least one six-week period. The students have chances to win cars, computers, shopping sprees at Pier One Kids, and a suite at a Texas Rangers game. More weeks of perfect attendance mean more chances of winning.

Is anyone else struck by the similarity to game shows and lotteries? Have any of the school administrators considered the potential negative morale that results from having rewards bestowed at random, rather than on merit? And for god's sake, has anyone thought about the public health implications of having clearly ill children coming to school? Or the fact that children are being punished for getting sick in the first place?

But for the schools, pedagogical or public health or ethics considerations cannot compete with that most primary goal: better funding.

Many schools have been galvanized by the federal No Child Left Behind law, which factors attendance into its evaluations. And schools, especially in poor districts, are motivated by money from state governments, which is often based on average daily attendance.

. . .

Schools in Fort Worth had a budget shortfall of $15 million last year, said Beatriz Mince, assistant coordinator for the district's Office of Parent and Public Engagement. "The only way to get extra money is average daily attendance," Ms. Mince said, adding that if average attendance increased by one student, the district would receive an extra $4,700.

It reminds me of basing grades on homework completion. The question is not "Are the kids learning?" but rather "Are the kids doing their work?" Or in this case, are they merely showing up? Are we keeping them adequately warehoused?

The article has one quote from an expert who opposes these incentives plans:

"It's against our grain to suggest that you have to cajole, seduce or trick students in order to get them to learn," said Dr. Jeff Bostic, director of school psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital. "And where does it end? Are we going to need to give out a Porsche Boxster? Rather than say we're going to pay you if you show up, we've got to work harder at showing how school really does have relevance to these kids' lives."

It's a well-known fact that in order for an incentives plan to continue working over a long period, rewards must continue to be increased. But his first point is the key one, in my opinion: do we want to suggest that no student would willingly learn without carrots and sticks? That we are totally unable to point out the relevance of school in these children's lives (because maybe there isn't much relevance)? Or that it's simply so unpleasant to attend school that we have to pay students to do it?

Well, yes, actually, apparently that is what we're saying:

But other experts say incentives make sense because they parallel the working world, where employees are given financial incentives to work harder or better.

Okay, fine. School is really hard work, and we should pay kids to go to school because it's appropriate for school to mirror the working world. If that's the case, at what point do we start using the term "child labor"?

The article goes on to question the utility of rewards schemes, discussing school districts where incentives for attendance worked, had no effect, or actually resulted in decreased attendance. One expert said that it was a matter of getting an incentive of appropriate value, and that it needed to be delivered immediately following the desired behavior. These are the sorts of arguments which tend to dominate discussions of carrot and stick programs, according to Alfie Kohn; but what about questioning the whole idea?

Back in Massachusetts, the headmaster at the high school in Lowell, William J. Samaras, said a program to give laptops to graduating seniors who missed no more than seven days of school drew criticism that "we're giving them a prize in a sense to do what they're supposed to do anyway."

Of course, schools do that all the time. Kids get reward tokens for acts as basic as learning and being polite to other students.

Interestingly, in one district where the incentives program resulted in worse attendance, some students and teachers felt the situation was preferable.

Some students, however, said the incentive-only policy had had unexpected benefits because those who attended school were more likely to want to be there.

"Usually in a classroom that has kids that don't want to come to school, you don't get a lot of participation," said Sonya Garcia, 16, a junior. "It lowers my motivation for working. If I'm working with people who are focused, it creates competition and that gets me motivated."

Mr. Resnek agreed. "It's almost created a better school," he said. "It's selfish, but it's better for us who are here."

Kind of calls into question the compulsory nature of schools, doesn't it? And the new Michigan graduation requirements, which insist that every student be on the college prep track or be denied a diploma? What do we sacrifice when we use coercive carrots and sticks and utterly disregard the benefits of autonomy?