Education: Merit Pay for Kids?

The progress Petersburg has made in improving its schools is heartening. The city faces great challenges, but it has proven that even daunting obstacles can be overcome. Much of the credit goes to superintendent James Victory, whose name carries a poetically appropriate connotation. Educators in other parts of the state might want to study how Petersburg has improved.

While they are doing that, the commonwealth might want to consider what other parts of the country are doing. Many have adopted material incentives for student improvement. New York, Chicago, Baltimore, D.C., Tucson, and Dallas have implemented programs that entice students with cash, MP3 players, and other rewards for clearing various hurdles, from simple regular attendance to outstanding academic performance.

The principle that money motivates is beyond dispute. Still, skeptics worry such programs might undermine children's "intrinsic motivation." That begs the question: What about children who lack intrinsic motivation? And even if all children do share a certain level of intrinsic motivation, material rewards -- rewards that middleand upper-class children often receive but poor children often don't -- can amplify it. As Chicago's Mayor Richard Daley says, "Wealthy parents in the suburban area, they give their kids a car. They take them on a trip to Hawaii . . . .These [poor] kids don't even get out of their homes for many, many years."

Critics of merit pay for teachers say it isn't fair to hold educators responsible for the test scores of children when they can control neither which children they teach nor those pupils' ability and motivation. Fair enough. But those concerns do not apply to merit pay for kids. Perhaps the commonwealth should look at whether the most cost-effective investment in some schools might involve financial incentives for those with the most direct control over academic performance: the children themselves.