In preschool, teachers give kids stickers. In elementary school, they give them grades. And in high school they give them – cash?

The Chicago public school system launched Green for Grade$ this fall. The program will pay ninth and tenth grade students as much as $4000 a year to get straight A's in English, Math, Science, Social Science and even Physical Education. Students can earn $50 for an A, $35 for a B and $20 for a C, provided they don't fail any of their other classes. Kids get half the pay at the end of the school year and the other half when they walk across the stage to receive their diplomas.

Arne Duncan, the Chief Executive Officer of Chicago Public Schools, says the program is part of a comprehensive effort to help their most at-risk students succeed.

"85% percent of our students live below the poverty line," Duncan says. "We have to pull out all the stops to dramatically reduce drop-outs. If we can give kids a good year as a freshman by rewarding excellence, we're helping them invest in their futures." Duncan adds that studies show that freshman year is a pivotal time for students; kids who don't do well in ninth grade are less likely to finish school and graduate.

But the Chicago-area parent-led advocacy group, Parents United for Responsible Education (PURE), came out against the program in a September 11th blog post:

"We think that the idea will work for many students, too. But at what cost? The question should not be whether this will work, but whether it is good for children. It’s not."

Bonnie Harris M.S.Ed. shares PURE's concerns. Harris is the founder of The Family Center, a nonprofit organization that provides families with parenting resources, and author of Confident Parents, Remarkable Kids: 8 Principles for Raising Kids You'll Love to Live With (Adams Media, 2008). She says that when administrators give students cash for good grades it sends the wrong message.

"Pay for grades is an external motivator that undermines the child’s natural and internal desire to learn. It is a reward that turns the child’s focus to the carrot," she explains. "Once the carrot is earned, the reason for getting the carrot is lost. Rewards undermine a child's desire to learn and create a desire to get paid off for the least amount of effort possible."

Duncan argues that for students who are living below the poverty line, money can mean the difference between dropping out and staying in school. He says the long-term pay off – getting a degree to go to college or get a better job – isn't enough for students in survival mode and they need immediate and practical encouragement.
"For families who are desperately poor," he says. "Children sometimes make their choices not because they want to quit because there are no other options for them."

Paying kids for doing well in school then is a way to give students a chance to treat their education like a job.
This is a sentiment echoed by Lori Fey, Senior Program Officer at the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. The Foundation funds Advanced Placement Strategies, a program that provides monetary incentives to 117 Texas school districts to increase the number of students passing advanced placement exams. Teachers receive extra payment for teaching AP courses and helping kids with extra study sessions and prep classes. Students are paid for passing the AP exams, (the fees to take the exams are also paid by the program).

"At this stage of the game, kids aren't famous for delayed gratification," says Fey. "The concept that an AP chemistry course will serve you well if you decide to pursue a science degree in college is not going to resonate."

The Advanced Placement Strategies program was selected by the National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI) to scale up around the nation in seven additional states. The NMSI cites research conducted by C. Kirabo Jackson, an economist at Cornell. His study linked the program to a 30 percent rise in students who got high SAT and ACT scores and an 8 percent rise in the number of students who went to college.

But some researchers aren't convinced.

Wendy S. Grolnick PhD is a professor and the director of the Frances L. Hiatt School of Psychology and Education at Clark University. For the past 23 years she's researched children's motivation in school.

"There's a lot of research that shows paying people for learning undermines their intrinsic motivation to learn," she says. "And so though we might see some short-term increases in certain behaviors, like taking classes and coming to school, the worry that we have is that you're taking something that should be inherently interesting and that you're doing for the purpose of increasing your skills and learning new materials and you're tying it to a monetary reward."
But rey says that high school kids already understand how rewards work in their everyday world outside of school.
"I can understand this as a concern for younger kids but by the time a student is [in high school] their intrinsic motivation to learn is already established," she says. "They're already in the work force and they're already exposed to the concept of pay for performance in the jobs that they do."

Fey points to success stories across the district, showing how the AP Strategies is raising the number of kids taking on the challenge of advanced placement coursework and exams as well as the number of students passing those exams.

"This is a demographic of students who don't typically get these sorts of options so it's inspiring," says Fey, adding that the success of the AP students helps improve the "mindset" of the entire school even for kids who don't take advantage of the program.

Duncan says that the district will evaluate Green for Grade$ as they go, tweaking it as needed. He points out that the program is just part of an over-arching strategy for improving schools. "I don't spend a lot of time worrying about critics," he says. "I think we can leave no stones unturned when it comes to stopping drop-outs, rewarding excellence and reducing failure."

No matter where you stand on this undeniably controversial practice, it is certainly  striking an emotional chord  with educators and parents across the country--- and beyond that,  raising some fundamental questions about what it means to be “educated” in the digital century.

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