Teen Vogue, Dec 2008 /Jan 2009

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Teen Vogue

Dec 2008 / Jan 2009

HEADLINE: Smart Money

BYLINE: Kara Jesella

HIGHLIGHT:
Should you get paid for good grades? Kara Jesella reports.

BODY:
There have always been many good reasons for high school students to take Advanced Placement (AP) courses: They could help with college admissions, translate into college credit, or simply be a challenge. At the School of Science and Engineering in Dallas, there's another reason for students like eighteen-year-old Karen to take APs: money.

"Some of my friends say, 'I'm taking the test because I might get $100 back,'" says Karen, who collected $300 this year for passing AP calculus, physics, and chemistry. About to start college at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Karen likes that her school rewards students for good performance. "It encourages you to take the test and work hard," she says.

Getting into college is notoriously grueling, but slogging through after-school SAT prep, endless APs, all-night cram sessions, and weekend homework marathons might be a little easier to bear if you knew you'd be getting paid for your efforts. That's the thinking at some schools across the country that give awards--usually cash--to students who excel in classes or pass AP or other state-mandated graduation exams. (Teachers at these schools get incentives, too. If their students do well, they often get financial rewards.)

Karen's school is part of a privately funded program in six states--Arkansas, Alabama, Connecticut, Kentucky, Massachusetts, and Virginia--that generally pays students $100 per score of 3, 4, or 5 on certain AP exams. "Our goal is to be in 20 states at the end of 5 years," says Gregg Fleisher, the National AP Training and Incentives Director of the National Math and Science Initiative, who runs the program.

The question is, does paying students to excel work? And even if it does, do these programs teach students that the only reason to work hard is because a material reward might be at the end of all those multiple-choice tests?

At Northeast Health Science Magnet High School in Macon, Georgia, students on the principal's honor roll who get straight As are eligible to win a flat-screen TV, and those who prepare for the Georgia High School Graduation Test can win an mp3 player, an iPod, or a boom box. Samuel P. Scavella, the school's principal, says that it's a good idea to give students incentives "to do things that are going to be beneficial to their life" and prepare them for college. Once they get used to succeeding, "the need for rewards fades away" and students want to do well just for the satisfaction of doing well, he explains.

"I think it would be an incentive to make kids accomplish more
--Katie, 18"

But Robert Schaeffer, of the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, disagrees. He says: "It may be a good thing to see more kids taking AP courses and getting college-level credit, but the question is, what happens when they get to college and they are not paid for each grade, not paid to pass a test? We need to teach kids the importance of learning in its own right, not just taking tests to get cash payoffs."

Karen says she thinks most of her friends will continue to study hard in college, even without the incentives: "I think they will already have a feel for that subject--maybe they will already like it--and want to keep going and work hard."

The New York Times recently reported that students at 31 New York City high schools who were offered up to $1,000 for getting passing scores on AP exams took 345 more tests this year than last. But while the number of students who received 5s--the highest score--rose, the number of students who passed actually declined.

Melanie, eighteen, one of Karen's classmates, took seven AP classes her senior year, though her school awards cash for passing grades only in math, science, and English. She took the classes "not just for the money, but for college," she says. And she wanted to do better than just pass--she wanted to get a 4 or a 5--because most colleges will give credit only for the highest scores.

One of the main reasons schools are instituting these types of programs is to level the playing field between stu-dents who go to economically disadvantaged schools, like Melanie's, and wealthier schools, which offer more AP courses.

C. Kirabo Jackson, an assistant professor of economics at the ILR School of Cornell University, found that incentive programs appear to give students an edge. At several Texas schools that offered them, he says, more students took and passed their AP courses. There was also a 30 percent rise in the number of students with high SAT and ACT scores and an 8 percent increase in students going to college.

As Jackson points out, "The idea that kids are rewarded with cash or a Nintendo Wii is not new." The reason people are uncomfortable with schools that give incentives, he explains, is because parents aren't doing it.

Katie, eighteen, from Richmond, Rhode Island, gets rewards from her parents when she does well in her classes. They give her "money and they help me out with things I need to pay for regularly on my own, like gas or car pay-ments," she says, adding that this encourages her to work harder. Her high school doesn't give cash or gifts to high-achieving students, but she believes maybe it should: "I think it would be a good incentive to make kids accom-plish more in school."

GRAPHIC: Picture, EXCEL RATE
A TUCSON, ARIZONA, HIGH SCHOOL TESTED OUT A PROGRAM IN WHICH SELECT STUDENTS WERE PAID $100 A MONTH FOR MAINTAINING ATTENDANCE AND AT LEAST A C- AVERAGE. THOSE PAID HAD HIGHER GPAS ALL YEAR.

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