District To Pay $100 For Good Performances On State Exams

An eastern Ohio school district is experimenting with an incentive usually deployed by parents to coax good grades out of students -- paying them up to $100 for good performances on state achievement exams.

Coshocton City Schools is in the last year of a three-year experiment run by an economics professor at Case Western Reserve University. Officials of the 2,000-student district will decide after getting Eric Bettinger's final data this summer whether to continue it.

The third- through sixth-graders in the study receive $15 for every score of "proficient" on a state exam and $20 for better results -- so they can collect $100 if they have high scores in all five subjects. The money comes as gift certificates redeemable at a local pizza parlor and Wal-Mart.

Coshocton manufacturer Robert Simpson paid for the project with a $100,000 grant from his family foundation, and says the foundation is ready to take the rewards districtwide if the data and the community support it.

"We are confident the incentives work, and our foundation is very pleased with the program so far," Simpson said.For the experiment, entire grades from the city's four elementary schools were randomly chosen to either receive the rewards or not.

Although Bettinger is not releasing his study results early, the district has climbed out of the state's "academic emergency" ranking since the rewards began. It is now two notches higher, at "effective" status.

I guess if you think of it as a tax refund.... it doesn't seem so completely insane.