Pay for Performance, in School

‘When the rewards were handed out, [Manhattan fourth grader] Jazmin Roman was eager to celebrate her $39.72. She whispered to her friend Abigail Ortega, “How much did you get?” Abigail mouthed a barely audible answer: $36.87. Edgar Berlanga pumped his fist in the air to celebrate his $34.50.’

These children had just been awarded real money for better grades. Now, before we jump to take a stand on either side of whether it is ok to pay for grades, let’s take a moment to consider.

First, let’s assume that paying students for performance actually works – in the sense that it gets them to pay attention to learning and get better grades. If so, is this approach of paying for better grades necessarily wrong?

We can say that it is plain morally wrong to reward performance with pay. It will distort the children’s value systems. But isn’t this (getting more pay only if we perform to our employer’s requirements) what we have to live with for the rest of our adult lives? So why is it wrong to do it when we’re young but ok when we’re old?

We can claim that it will lead to students not learning to value education in and of itself. But let’s face it: Even most parents talking about giving their children a good education, want to do it so that the children will fare well in life, that is, find a good job/career and make lots of money. So they are seeing education as a means to an end (involving loads of money at the end of it).

Societies, when they talk about valuing education, want an educated populace because only then can the economy grow and prosper. Again, it’s about the money. And again, the reward mechanism for the society is money.

In every human profession, except probably pure science research (though even that is becoming highly commercialized – e.g. biotech), the reward for performance is money. So let’s not be hypocritical and claim that it is morally wrong.

However there is one argument that is harder to defeat. And that is, that there is some value to learning for learning’s sake.

Yet, there are only a few people who get a kick out of learning, of knowing, of being the best at something – for its own sake. And most likely, these people who are already inclined towards real learning won’t be adversely affected just because someone pays them every time they to do accomplish something. Those who needed an extra push, might learn for the money. And finally, the completely unredeemable – well, we’ve lost nothing by trying.

Or perhaps we could claim that it is ok as an adult to get money for performance but not as a child. So are we expecting children to be wiser than adults, by learning for learning’s sake, and adults to be more driven by such “superficial” things as money?

I remember one incident – probably I was in class 6 or 7. I had a particularly good math teacher. One day in trigonometry, he taught us how to calculate the height of a tree, given the angle to the tree-top and the distance to its base, and assigned several homework problems. The next day in class he solved a few of them for us, ones that involved two trees (one behind the other) instead of just one.

At the end of the class, to everyone’s surprise, he made a bet with us: Any student who could solve the next problem by the end of lunch session would get two rupees as a prize. Two rupees was not a huge sum even in 1980s, but to us kids, a test based on money was a novelty. We all got our notebooks and pencils ready. He wrote a problem with two trees on the black board and the class ended. And during the break that followed we all worked on the problem. I worked out the answer and turned in my notebook, just as all children had. But somehow it didn’t feel right. Then I got it: This was a 3-dimensional problem. One of the trees was on the other side of the river. So I ran to the teachers’ desk, got my notebook back, and re-did the solution. I still remember my friend Ritika hovering around me to finish so that she could put the notebook on the desk before time was up :).

The next day I was the proud recipient of a crisp new two rupee note tucked inside a book of logarithms. I still remember that I couldn’t pay attention to any other classes the rest of the day. My mind kept wandering to the slim logarithms book signed by Mr. Raman (the teacher) and the crisp two rupee note.

Did that experience of being paid for solving the problem make me expect that I’d be paid every time I solved a class problem? No. Did it turn me off of math? No. Did it corrupt me for life? I don’t think so .

If he had rewarded us with money every day instead of just once in a year, would the answers be different? I doubt it. After all, most companies pay for performance these days. Does it make every employee their job less? Not that I can see.

Though this is a dataset of one , I think value systems of people are not formed by being rewarded for better grades or not. They are formed by watching how adults around us act and behave. Children are quite perceptive. And I doubt that paying them for good grades would harm them for life. At worst, it will be ineffective. It might actually give them a better understanding of financial management – in fact, I hope the teachers use this as an opportunity. At best, it will help those who need the extra push to perform better.

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