Hmm, when does motivation become bribery?
Frankly, Deering High School junior Samantha Webster felt bribed. Just showing up to take the state's standardized assessment tests was enough to get her into a raffle with a top prize of $100.
"They're trying to pay kids to take the test," Webster, 17, said after school Tuesday as students poured onto Stevens Avenue in Portland. And she questioned the technique's effectiveness, adding: "You can't really bribe kids into taking the test when it doesn't affect their grades."
A national phenomenon has come to Maine as fourth-, eighth- and 11th-graders take the annual Maine Educational Assessment test over the two-week period ending Friday.
Since the federal government last year began to use test results to measure school quality, many Maine schools have decided to go beyond serving orange juice and muffins to test-takers. Now they're copying schools in other states and offering rewards ranging from raffle prizes to pizza parties - even a day off from school.
I don't think this is an indication that schools are "test-obsessed." Motivations like free food and free leisure time work as well on high-schoolers (if not better) than they do on adults, and these are pretty low-key. Sure, some kids will come to win a chance for pizza and still draw a Batman logo on the bubble sheet, but the kids who would have been willing to show up anyway will probably appreciate the possibility of an extra reward:
Even though Deering met "adequate yearly progress" under the federal law last year, Roy said there is always room for improvement. To draw the best performances from the 260 or so juniors taking the test this year, she moved testing out of the school gym and into classrooms. She also authorized two raffles using proceeds from the soda machine in the faculty lounge as prize money.
One raffle is for students who have taken the tests and shown proctors they made a good-faith effort. The other is for students who improve on scores they received as eighth-graders, and for students who are meeting or exceeding standards. This raffle will take place in the fall when test results are expected.
"We felt it was appropriate to use that money as a marketing ploy to help our students give us their very best effort," Roy said of the drawings, each of which will feature one $100 prize and probably eight $50 prizes. "I guess we feel it's a worthy investment if we truly get results that reflect what the kids can do."
The schools are under pressure to get as many kids as possible to take the exam, and the kids know the exams don't affect their grades. And if individual scores aren't returned to students, then there's not even the incentive of useful feedback. So why not a little external motivation? The idea of paying people to take tests isn't unheard of; post-K12 pilot exams often involve financial reward for those examinees willing to show up and take the pilot tests seriously.
Posted by kswygert at March 10, 2004 02:48 PM