Cash for Cramming?

[orichalcum]

So, the NYC public school system is using a new pilot system in which high school students who get a 5 on an AP Exam will win $1000, $750 for a 4, and $500 for a 3. They're starting it out in several low-income, dominantly minority schools, but plan to expand it if it proves successful.

I'm curious as to people's reactions, because I have really mixed feelings about this (and not just because, gee, $11,500 would have been nice when I was 17. Heck, I wouldn't sneer at it now.) Incentives that push students to take more challenging courses and stretch themselves are really good things. It's hard to convince teenagers that yes, being prepared for college and getting into as good a college a possible for you really does matter in the rest of your life, whereas cash is easily understood. Some of the proponents argue that this might enable students to spend time studying rather than working an afterschool job.

That said, it's a big gamble for those students. What essay you happen to get on an AP Exam can make a tremendous difference in your score, and all the cramming in the world sometimes doesn't matter. Also, to a certain degree you're rewarding test-taking skills, not hard work and intelligence. Lots of folks are much better at dealing with the stress and intensity of a 3-hour exam than others, and paying you for that when there are already other rewards associated with it seems like adding insult to injury.

As with any high-stakes gamble, it seems like it would also encourage cheating of various sorts. My high school teacher, who was terrific, was one of the teachers who wrote the A.P. U..S. History exam every year. She never told us what was going to be on it, of course, yet somehow, we were always especially well prepared for the essay questions that year. Our class consistently scored higher than the other A.P. U.S. History class. Maybe that's because we were in the top track and better students, but maybe not. I had to take my A.P. Biology exam late and on a typewriter because I had gotten strep throat and sliced my finger open two days before the exam. I took it in a small office room, alone. I could easily have cheated, although I didn't.

So, what do you think? Would you have taken more A.P.s or studied harder if you were getting money for it? Is this a slippery slope?

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

One of my concerns is that, at least as the program expanded, the bulk of the money would be very poorly targetted at the marginal case. Like with bounties for child-bearing, most of the people who collect would be people who would have had the children/taken the test anyway. In particular, as it expands out of a pilot disadvantaged population, it's likely to just give cash to upper middle class kids who are already in the top categories of achievement.

However, it does pay for a lot of study time, so it might be a good idea as long as it is sufficiently narrowly targetted.

--Adam

[grnarmadillo.livejournal.com]

"Also, to a certain degree you're rewarding test-taking skills, not hard work and intelligence."

Bingo. I'm sure the test prep industry must be thrilled. If this catches on they'd be able to market their courses as paying for themselves (basically at the school district's expense).

You're also rewarding students who have manged to land themselves in a favorable student:teacher ratio situation that allowed them to write and be graded on essays on a regular basis. I went to a private school and they wanted as many people as possible to take AP exams because they knew that we had enough writing experience to score well above the curve independently of how well we did on the material. My old favorite history teacher insisted on demoting his European history course from AP to honors status because he was tired of dealing with the testing crap. The last year he taught it as an AP course, he only covered half of the syllabus and his students all went on to score 4's and 5's anyway.

One thing they SHOULD do, if they're not already, is pick up the cost of actually taking the exams. I had a classmate refuse to take one of the AP exams because she knew she the college she was heading off to wouldn't give credit for it, and she didn't want to spend the time or money sitting through yet another exam. Can't say I blame her. I know they claim they will waive the fee under certain circumstances, and maybe those circumstances are actually very lenient in practice if you have financial need, but sometimes even having to ask is a deterrent.

(deleted and reposted for broken italic tag)

[orichalcum.livejournal.com]

They do pay for the exams already; Bloomberg started that part last year, I think.

[(Anonymous)]

Speaking as someone who has graded these exams, the system is extremely random and unfair. Most essays are read by only one person, who has been grading the same question for anywhere from 1 to 6 days straight, 8 hours a day. A typical page gets less than 60 seconds of grader time. There are very few safeguards against grader error.

Additionally, when you grade these exams it becomes painfully clear how much your school and particular teacher really matter. Exams come through in groups by school, and the scores for each school are usually pretty closely grouped. Graders are instructed to look for specific key words, so a badly trained kid who knows almost everything gets far fewer points than an idiot from a fancy school who has been trained to say certain key words over and over again. (A count-up system is used for grading, so the second a correct key word appears the point is earned, even if it is surrounded by total bs.)

In other words, the NYC's program is just yet another form of "the rich get richer" with the exception of a very small percentage of truly brilliant students who can do well without the coaching. They're talking about a lot of money. It would be so much better to use it to improve early childhood and primary education in underfunded areas.

Sorry to post anonymously, but this post isn't f-locked and I could get in a lot of trouble for my comments.

[orichalcum.livejournal.com]

Totally understand; I didn't friends-lock it because I wanted a variety of perspectives, and I'm very grateful for yours.

It's a grant from a private donor, so it may be difficult to redirect, but I definitely see your basic point. The count-up system is totally prone to error, I imagine, especially when there are financial incentives for both student and the school (which gets block grants.)

But would the student still benefit from taking the harder course, regardless of the randomness of the exam?

[(Anonymous)]

If the goal is to get the student to take the harder course, then why give prizes by score? Why not give grants in low income areas to bring in qualified AP teachers (it is actually a lot of work for a teacher to be qualified by the College Board to give an official AP course, and it requires training and time off their normal teaching load for development), or give low income students a small flat stipend to use for books etc? It is giving cash by score that really bothers me, because as you said the scores are so random, and in fact I believe they are deeply unfair and fatally flawed. (to the point where I refused further association with the process even though it pays pretty well and the extra cash was needed).

In some subjects, it certainly is true that courses following the AP curriculum are harder than and superior to standard courses. However this is definitely not true across the board. At the end of the day, the AP exams are a for-profit process and the exams are written to be easily and profitably graded, not for how well they judge student understanding. And really, how can any nationalized standardized test really be fair? And if it is a private grant, could it be coming from the College Board itself or one of its shareholders? Because it is a pretty big publicity bump for them. I absolutely abhor the fact that our government educational system invests in and trusts so many private companies.

And I completely understand not wanting to friends lock a post like this. Sorry for filling up your journal with essay-length comments, but this is a topic that really gets to me.

[emilymorgan.livejournal.com]

I'm curious- are more objective courses like math and computer science scored more fairly, in your view?

[(Anonymous)]

I've only graded one subject, so I'm hardly an expert, but my understanding is that the system is pretty consistent across disciplines. The sciences (even math) have essay questions graded by a "count up/key word" system just like the humanities do. I imagine that it is slightly easier to tell right from wrong in that situation, but I don't think it's really that different.

[(Anonymous)]

I've only graded one subject, so I'm hardly an expert, but my understanding is that the system is pretty consistent across disciplines. The sciences (even math) have essay questions graded by a "count up/key word" system just like the humanities do. I imagine that it is slightly easier to tell right from wrong in that situation, but I don't think it's really that different.

Plus, I got a 5 on the biology exam in high school and there is no way that was due to actual knowledge. :)

[(Anonymous)]

woops, sorry for the duplication. Posting as anonymous I can't delete. Sorry, orichalcum! :(

[kid-cthulhu.livejournal.com]

The money would have been nice, but I do also worry that what you'd get is a lot of kids from nice suburban schools like mine making all the cash. I mean, really, how many AP courses do inner city schools offer? My school had 8, plus International Bacheloreate courses, which are like AP plus. But I was in a rich suburb. Yeah, so I was one of five kids with a widowed mother, but demographically, no one in my town needed the money, really.

If we want to encourage this stuff, we need to give money to the inner city and rural schools to offer the courses and give the money to the schools for the number of 4s & 5s they get. Or give a portion to the schools and a portion to the kids as a grant, usable only for education, not as a check.

[orichalcum.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing you're right; it is supposed to be paired with school grants, but still, more of that money is going straight to the kids. My worry about the grant for education only is that it's both less of an incentive to the kids and often just means that you lose X amount of financial aid a college would have given. I know I used all the academic prize money I won (plus money from 2 summers of picking up trash at the county fair) to go backpacking in Europe the summer after high school, and that was definitely educational in a different way.

Your mention of your family background makes certain things click; I've often thought, "KidCthulhu seems like someone who had to learn to be responsible at an early age."

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I woulda killed to get the chance to even take an AP math or chem or physics, back when I was in high school (early 90s, VERY rural Ohio). Money would not have been an incentive for me, and we had neither the teachers nor enough interested/driven students to field those courses anyway. Hell, I'm still mad that I didn't get access to any APs. And we didn't have a spare vehicle for me to drive myself to the branch of the state U for extra math classes, even though the state would have paid for them!