Paying Off the Achievement Gap

What were you thinking about the night before taking your Advanced Placement exams? College admissions? College credit? College scholarships? College, college, college. For students in 31 high schools across the metropolitan area, that’s about to change. In an attempt to increase the number of low-income students who receive college degrees, the city, in cooperation with private donors, has committed $1 million to a program that rewards those who pass their AP exams with cash prizes: $500 for a three, $750 for a four, and a whopping $1,000 for a five. Sounds like a win-win situation, right? Who didn’t like it when their parents coughed up $20 for every A on their report card?

But let’s think about this logically for a minute. Disregarding the ideological arguments against the use of monetary incentives in educational environments, who’s scoring these fives anyway? Probably not students who actually need the money. Whitney Tilson, co-creator of the Rewarding Achievement program, REACH, said it best: “We’re not going to tell you how to reach this goal, we’re just going to reward you when you do.” However, recent evidence suggests that the “how” has become the most difficult hurdle to overcome. Despite the fact that many inner-city schools don’t offer any AP or advanced-level courses, those that do have historically scored much lower than private schools in the same district. Therefore, it becomes all the more unsettling that six of these 31 schools are privately funded in the first place.

Of greatest concern, however, is the city’s jurisdiction over where these monetary rewards can be spent by their recipients, or lack thereof. “We’re going to make sure that if you want to go to college, we’re going to pay you to do so,” New York State Senate Minority Leader Malcolm Smith said in reference to REACH. Well, if that’s the case, then this costly program must not have fallen under his scrutiny. Students who earn a monetary reward can spend it where they want, when they want. The program does not discourage these high school students in any way from blowing their hard-earned cash on new iPods or flat-screen televisions.

Proponents of REACH say that students who pass AP exams tend to do better in college. But this rationale is flawed in many ways. If students are only taking APs to get money, their argument breaks down. No longer will APs be about getting into or succeeding in college. Instead, a well-established institution that encourages the pursuit of knowledge and academic excellence will be undermined by a trivial program that promotes short-sighted goals.

Successful students are not created overnight. Suddenly offering money for high scores is not going to help the underserved and underachieving. The achievement gap can only be closed through systematic change, not a series of patchy quick fixes. Giving $500 to a student scoring a three on the U.S. History AP exam isn’t going to encourage him to go to college more than letting him use his cell phone in school for getting a good grade.

Early this November, it became known that the principle designer of REACH, Harvard economist Roland Freyer, had been working in tandem with the Department of Education to develop another education reform—one that would provide pre-paid Motorola flip-phones with a limited number of minutes to students who have a record of academic success. While Freyer’s intentions of raising the standard of inner-city education are nothing less than admirable, targeting minority students with free cell phones ready with ringers of their favorite hip-hop artists seems to be furthering prejudice at the cost of trivial educational reform.

A lot can be done in the way of providing monetary incentives to well-performing students, principals, and schools. Cash-in-hand has few tangible results, as there is no way to ascertain where or how reward recipients spend their money. Freyer aims to eventually place more inner-city students into college, yet his proposals leave students without guidance or any greater aspirations: a problem that could find a remedy with a state pledge to provide scholarships to more prestigious out-of-state universities or to place earned incentives towards the purchase of a computer for college—the list could go on. But half-hearted efforts on the part of policy advocates Freyer and Tilson will only give students their $500 and let them walk away. We’ll see how much that money pays off.

Clare Kelley is a Barnard College first-year. Raoul Mendoza is a Columbia College sophomore. Nick Turner is a Columbia College sophomore. The authors are members of the Education Committee at the Roosevelt Institution.