Paying Kids to Go to School: Can It Work?
WNYC
On a recent morning Willina Rodriguez strode across 9th Avenue in cropped pants, wearing red shoes and lipstick that matched them....
....Willina now thinks she has the grades, in the 80 and 90 range, which will open the doors of the Fashion Institute of Technology to her. But not too long ago, when Willina was a sophomore, her grades hovered around 50. And she skipped classes 15 days a month.....
....Willina received the money as a part of an experiment of the Bloomberg administration called Family Rewards 2.0. The city is trying to motivate kids by paying them to go to school, get good grades and pass standardized tests. Parents also get cash rewards. Willina’s mom, Carmen De La Cruz, 42, gets conditional cash if she works full time and if she and Willina do annual physical and dental check-ups.....
....In 2007, the city launched a three-year conditional cash transfer program. It was only a small experimental program, not like Mexico’s, which essentially became the main welfare system. But by 2010 it was clear the program wasn’t successful in New York. Bloomberg wasn’t discouraged. He still wanted to give conditional cash another shot. Jim Riccio worked on redesigning the program.
“The new demonstration is an attempt to apply the lesson from the original study, build a stronger intervention, one we think … will have bigger effects,” Riccio said.
Riccio works at a non-profit research organization, MDRC, that launched the next phase. Six hundred Bronx families have earned on average $4000 in the past two years. But Riccio says we’ll have to wait for 2015 to see if paying people for good behavior can prevent another cycle of poverty....
