School education and CCTs

Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs have been the latest step in poverty eradication strategies. One of the popular CCTs have been that involving transfer of cash to students (or their parents) to incentivize school attendance and performance. Many initiatives have begun over the past year or so, especially in New York, and while the early indicators have been mixed, it may be too early to pass any definitive judgements. Such programs have been discussed earlier here and here.

New York city has been test ground for a number of such programs, run by different private foundations. The NYT reports a mixed verdict from the results of the first year of one such program for students appearing in the Advanced Placement exams, wherein students in 31 New York high schools were offered upto $1000 for improved performance. At the 31 schools, the number of students taking exams rose to 4,620 from 4,275. Students involved in the program, financed with $2 million in private donations and aimed at closing a racial gap in Advanced Placement results, posted more 5’s, the highest possible score. That rise, however, was overshadowed by a decline in the number of 4’s and 3’s. Three is the minimum passing score.



In New York, in addition to the privately run Advanced Placement program, Roland G. Fryer, a Harvard economist who is serving as the Department of Education’s chief equality officer, is leading the school system’s effort to give middle school students prizes of up to $50 per test (and cellphone minutes for good behavior, attendance and homework along with test scores) for taking and passing other standardized tests. Test scores of the nearly 6,000 students who participated in Dr. Fryer’s program, which distributed $1.1 million in private donations, would be released in October.

The largest such CCT program is set to start later this year. In it, corporations and foundations have pledged $79 million over five years to pay 13,000 students and their teachers in 67 high schools in six states $100 for each passing score on the math, science or English Advanced Placement test.