Can you bribe a 9th grader to succeed

Students will be paid 50 dollars per month if they can improve their and keep them up. Presumably, the rationale is that such a program will get students to understand the connection between good grades and financial security by giving them an example of the money they will earn if they do well in school and get a good job.

The segment focused on two students participating in the study Kevin Muncy and Urail King. Both young men have mediocre grades. This essay will focus on whether bribing students is a good idea.

Bribing students can have a mixed response. For some people, money is enough to motivate them. On the other hand, some people will not change their habits even if they have a motivation. The documentary showed that the program had a mixed effect on both King and Muncy. Both of them improved some of their grades, but they also did worse in other classes. Four really cool things. First, they found that money works, and the amount of money really matters.

Authors: "As far as we know, ours is the first study to demonstrate that student responsiveness to incentives is sensitive to the size of the reward. Second, they learned that the rewards were most powerful when they were framed as losses rather than gains i. If you fail, I'm taking it away. We're more protective of money we have -- or think we have -- than we are aggressive about seeking money we don't have.

Third, they learned that "non-financial incentives," like trophies, worked best with young people. Fourth, they learned that rewards provided with a delay -- "we'll get you that check in a month! The power of hyperbolic discounting is strong with these ones. We don't always think of our attention as part of a budget, but it is. When we pay attention, we pay, literally. These second-graders who were encouraged to read more books in class showed marked improvement in their standardized reading exams.

In a piece in the Washington Post , it was also noted that the students in Washington who showed the biggest gains in test scores were those who are normally the hardest to reach. Boys responded better than girls and the kids with a history of behavioral problems saw the biggest improvement overall. Toronto Following Suit? Because of the results of studies like the one above, other schools with a high percentage of at-risk students are also looking at the addition of monetary rewards to motivate children to perform better in schools.

According to the Toronto Star , Toronto's public school board is also considering a program to pay kids in disadvantaged areas to do well in school as a part of an anti-poverty plan. The argument in Toronto is that the schools in this city were designed to cater to middle-class students. Those who don't fall into this category may be at a disadvantage. Magnolia Pictures documentary Freakonomics. Do children's names prefigure their success in life? Why do athletes cheat in the sacred sport of sumo wrestling?

What caused the startling drop in crime statistics in the s? Can a ninth grader be bribed to get good grades? For that matter, can moviegoers be bribed to see a documentary about the seemingly dry discipline of economics? Dubner in their book Freakonomics get an omnibus ride in the new movie of the same name. My own study indicates that the results are a mixed bag, but well worth dipping into. Levitt and Dubner, who can come on as engaging or super-smug but are certainly camera-friendly, set up each segment with remarks about their studies.