The Effects of Monetary Incentives on School Performance

Abstract

Interest in the use of monetary incentives as a means to motivate students to attend school or to improve their performance has been growing. In the present study, teenage girls at risk of school failure were randomly assigned to either a control condition or to one of two year-long experimental programs aimed at improving their academic work and attendance: (1) a “payment” program in which they were given only monetary incentives for improved performance or (2) a case-management program in which social workers, teachers, the girls, and their parents. worked together to develop and implement ways to help the girls do better. Both experimental programs surpassed the control condition with respect to positive changes in grades and attendance. The case-management outcomes were clearly superior to those of the payment program. However, neither program's effects appeared to carry over to the following year, which suggests that more sustained intervention may be necessary to bring about enduring improvement in the girls’ school performance.

Social Worker-Teacher Collaboration in the Classroom: Help for Elementary Students at Risk of Failure

“…By posttest it had considerably more. This suggests that attendance problems that are not addressed worsen as the academic year continues, a finding that has been supported by other research (Reid & Bailey-Dempsey, 1995). However, it seems that such problems may be responsive to intervention by a social worker-teacher team.…”

Don't Jump, Mother Loves You: The Rescue of Social Work From the Suicide of Its Own Research

“…Riccio and Hasenfeld (1996) is marred by the same methodological problems that bedevil MDRC's evaluations of Greater Avenues to Independence, California's famous job placement effort. Icard et al (1995) employ outcome measures that undermine their research task; Magen and Rose (1994) torture their data for hope yet still come up with largely negative findings; Rife and Belcher (1994) ignore alternative explanations of their outcomes -professional supports -that are more reasonable than their own preferred causes; Reid et al (1994) also ignore alternative explanations for their findings (in this case surveillance) and Reid and Bailey-Dempsey's (1995) replication fails to blind evaluators while violating randomization. Together with the remaining forty six studies enumerated by Aaron et al (1999) the best of the modern scientific enterprise in social work constitutes a graveyard of failed investigations: case examples, subjective assessments, small samples, lack of controls, biased measures and measuring procedures, trivial investigations, and so forth.…”

The Partners in Prevention Program: Further Development of the Task-Centered Case Management Model

“…The PIP Program, administered through Liberty Resources, Inc., a large human service agency located in central New York State, is a schoolbased program funded through a network of partners that consists of the school districts in Madison County, the Madison County Department of Social Services, the Madison-Oneida Board of Cooperative Education, the Madison County Mental Health Department, local United Way and Community Chest funds, and the Madison County Youth Bureau. The PIP Program is an extension of the design and development work done by William J. Reid with the task-centered model, and later by Reid and Cynthia Bailey-Dempsey who added a case management innovation to Reid's model (Reid, 1978;Reid & Bailey-Dempsey, 1995). Details of the development and subsequent evolution from the task-centered case management model to the PIP Program are presented in Colvin, Lee, Magnano, and Smith (in press).…”