Do cash rewards boost student motivation?

Thanks to a new cash incentives scheme, Baltimore students are being paid a hundred dollars for improving their scores on Maryland's high school exit exam. This will create an incentive for students to improve their test scores. The program will cost an estimated nine hundred thirty five thousand dollars. The advocates of this reward system feel that for the progress that students could make, the investments are a small price to pay. However, opponents argue that money should not be used as means of motivation. By money being the motivation for these students, it devalues both their human capital and their cultural capital.

Each student's worth is somewhat decreased because of the superficial nature of the reward. Money leads students to a hollow understanding of what they are being taught. Whereas a student learning information on their own would gain a thorough understanding that would most likely stay with them throughout their educational careers. This follows with the ideal of cultural capital in that these students that follow the economical motivation will most likely not gain the necessary background to succeed. The families of the students who are succeeding in school are usually high income families. These families already have expectations from their children. A student's human capital would also inevitably be affected. Schultz would argue that this would be an investment that each student would be involved in.

Instead of actually helping students in lower classes, we think that this incentive scheme could be an instance of "the rich getting richer". High income families will take advantage of this opportunity because of the advantage that they themselves already have academically and socially.

-GROUP 5, ED175