Harvard, D.C. team up for cash reward program for students

WASHINGTON —


Thousands of D.C. middle school students will be paid up to $100 every two weeks for attending school, staying out of trouble and getting good grades under a new program meant to inspire achievement with cash.

About 3,000 sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders from 14 of the District’s 28 middle schools will participate in what officials are calling “Capital Gains,” an alliance between D.C. Public Schools and Harvard University’s American Inequality Lab.

Participating students, most no older than 13, will be rewarded simply for showing up, behaving in class and demonstrating academic gains, Mayor Adrian Fenty said Thursday during a news conference outside Georgetown’s Rose L. Hardy Middle School.

“If this partnership seems a little bit out of the box,” Fenty said, “it is.”

The program will cost an estimated $2.7 million in its first year, split between the District and Harvard.

Each student’s pay rate, officials said, will depend on his or her achievement in five metrics — attendance, behavior and three others likely tied to academics. The money will be deposited into individual bank accounts set up for each student, who will have access to financial literacy courses. Payments will begin in October.

“On the face of it, it seems crass and inappropriate perhaps to pay kids,” said Ward 3 D.C. Councilwoman Mary Cheh. “But they have tried it in other places, and we do reward kids in other ways. It might be worth trying.”

Only a third of D.C.’s middle school students are able to read and write to District standards, and many fewer meet national measures — “dismal” statistics that demand “radical intervention,” schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee said. Children tend to “crystallize their attitudes, ideas and perceptions about education” before the ninth grade, she said, so reaching middle schoolers is crucial.

“You lose them then, you lose them forever,” said Jane Hannaway, director of the Education Policy Center at the Urban Institute, who said the incentive program was worth a try.

Harvard professor Roland Fryer, who developed the D.C. program and organized a pilot version in New York City, argued that children of means are rewarded by their parents for classroom successes, but students from lower-income families often get nothing. Capital Gains will offer an important life lesson, he said: “If you do well in school, you will be rewarded.”

The 14 participating schools will be chosen at random by lottery, officials said.

Perhaps good research will one day prove that paying children to learn works, said Mary Levy, schools expert with the Washington Lawyers’ Committee. But it is nevertheless disappointing, she added, that it’s come to this.

“I’m saddened to think that we’ve sunk so low in valuing education that we have to pay children to learn — not to mention attending and behaving themselves,” Levy said.