The Fragility of Incentive-Based Reforms
Eagle-eyed Alexander Russo spotted the following news item about the Chicago Public Schools: Cash-for-Good-Grades Project Likely Done. Yes, it seems that financial challenges will force CPS to stop paying students for grades. There’s a lesson here about the fragility of incentive-based reforms.
The more successful cash-for-performance projects are, the more expensive they become. When they rely on unreliable funding sources such as foundations or wealthy donors, they live on borrowed time.
Incentive programs like the controversial money-for-grades initiatives rise and fall on messages they send about priorities. Critics believe they send the wrong messages about school performance, while supporters have pointed to evidence that they boost student grades. What happens when students who have grown accustomed to the $100 “A” find out that adults have stopped funding the program—for whatever reason?
As we create incentive programs for students and educators alike, let’s be sure we can fund them for success.
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Actually, for the big
Actually, for the big foundations, the biggest problem with paying students directly is that it might work too well. What if, given their emphasis on accountability, measurement, and return on investment, it turned out that this was the most efficient way for foundations to improve student achievement? Then what?
Would Broad, Gates, etc. be satisfied stepping away from policy, lobbying, funding charters, TFA, Broad Academy etc., and just start disbursing cash to students within the existing public school structures? I think not. Their fundamental business-informed approach would say "yes," but their ideology and, well, desire to have fun jobs, would say "no."
My back of the envelope calculation is that the cost of TFA could provide funding for cash for grades for nearly 1% of the students in the country. Think about that.
Whoops, off a decimal point
Whoops, off a decimal point on my calculation. Make that .1% of students...
Hmm.... We can trade in 1000
Hmm.... We can trade in 1000 TFA's for universal cash rewards? What if all students start doing well? Would we have to go after New Leaders for New Schools?
Let's not forget that Eli Broad is a big fan of the money for grades programs. Many of the current foundations are very interested in incentives (for adults and students alike) and less interested in content or instruction.
Gates, however, has expressed far more interest in promoting better instruction--after their public mea culpa for placing too much stock in the structure of small schools, and too little in what happens in their classrooms.
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