Schools try offering kids 'paychecks'

Tied to scores
Rewarding students is not new. Gold stars and pizza parties have been around for ages. But the new programs are more systematic. They are often available on a school-wide basis or throughout certain grades rather than just doled out by select teachers, many times with their own money.

At KEY Academy, said Hayes, "You're not the teacher that has to go to the 7-Eleven to buy the bubble gum to give to the kids on Friday."

Today, money is more likely to be the prize offered than in the past, and it also is more likely to be tied to test scores.

Testing has gained immense importance under the 2002 No Child Left Behind law, which imposes increasingly stiff penalties on schools that fail to hit annual testing goals.

In addition to New York and Ohio, public schools in Baltimore and suburban Atlanta are among those that have experimented with incentive programs.

'Show me the money'
In Ohio, one teacher hung fake dollars from the ceiling, said Eric Bettinger, an economist who has studied that experiment. Others, he said, would shout 'Show me the money' to their students.

"As a parent, I kind of cringe," he said. But, he added, the teachers were using these tactics to engage kids who appeared otherwise uninterested.

Many of the cash-incentive programs being tried are funded by private donations. Some experts wonder how such initiatives could increase in scale and be sustainable.

Fryer said the average cost of $250 per kid per year in New York is relatively inexpensive if it works. Public schools spend on average roughly $10,000 per student annually.

Not everything that motivate kids costs a lot. A popular incentive with students in the Stanford think tank study was lunch with the principal. At KEY Academy, getting top grades can earn kids the right to wear jeans instead of uniforms.

"Wearing jeans just makes everybody feel special," said eighth-grader Crystal Wright, who got that perk.

It is pretty clear Crystal was not only talking about the look of denim, but what the kids wearing blue in a sea of khakis had done in school to stand apart from the pack.

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