Should you pay your child for good grades?
What randomized trials in more than 250 US schools found when students were paid for grades, and three better ways to reward school effort.
Paying for grades means promising a child money or a prize in advance for reaching a mark or a ranking on a test or report card.
Report cards come home, and so does the bargain: an A earns $10, a top-three ranking earns the bike. It comes from a good place, since it gives a child a reason to try harder.
Economist Roland Fryer tested this at scale, with randomized trials in more than 250 US schools (Fryer, 2010). So does paying for grades actually work?
What happened when students were paid for grades?
In New York, fourth graders could earn up to $250 a year from test scores, and seventh graders up to $500. Their test scores barely moved.
In Chicago, ninth graders received $50 for every A on their report card. Their grades rose a little, but their reading and math test scores did not.
Dallas was different. 3,788 second graders were offered $2 for every book they finished, as long as they passed a short quiz on it. Their reading comprehension clearly improved, although in classes tested in Spanish it went the other way.
Why didn't grades go up?
Fryer's team followed 12 New York students and asked them after every test what they could do to earn more. They talked about test tactics, like reading the questions more carefully.
Not one mentioned reading the textbook, studying harder, doing homework or asking a teacher. The children wanted the money but did not know how to earn it.
A grade is an outcome. Reading one more book is a step a child can take today.
Does a promised reward cost anything?
A review of 128 experiments by Edward Deci, Richard Koestner and Richard Ryan (1999) found that promised rewards of money or things made people less likely to keep doing an activity they used to enjoy on their own. The effect was stronger in children than in college students.
Rewards that arrived as a surprise had almost no effect on that interest. The timing of a reward matters as much as its size.
Three things to try at home
- Pay for the step, not the grade. For example, 50 cents for each finished book, after your child retells it in three sentences.
- Celebrate the report card without a promise. If you give a treat, give it afterwards and name the effort, like the 12 books read this term.
- Leave hobbies alone. An 8-year-old who loves drawing doesn't need paying to draw; pay for the practice they avoid, like 15 minutes of times tables.
In JarSave, kids earn from practice a parent has checked, and certificates and report cards are recognized after they arrive, with no price list up front. Good grades still deserve a celebration; just pay for the steps that lead to them.
