Acting White: Paying NYC Kids for Grades

I am a fan of Roland Fryer, Harvard economics wunderkind. I have read and utilized his work and believe he cares about the plight of blacks as much as anyone, including me. Even so, like most economist, his professional hammer swings a particular way, and this creates an issue when considering his current experiment with the NYC schools. Paying black kids for good grades may have laboratory merit, but it also has very distracting practical implications on his subjects and kids in general.

Regardless of whether kids are motivated by the desire to purchase video games or supplement food on their dinner table, proving that they respond to short-term wants or necessities does little more than retrace known human behavior dynamics. The trick is not proving short-term pain vs. pleasure influence, but rather the long-term factors and implementations that result in happy and productive lives.

As a kid, I was fortunate to have enough food to eat, but like many of the NYC kids I wanted to buy things too, cool things. But with only odd-job and allowance money, I had to wrestle my dreams into a connection with my long-term efforts. I learned to believe that if I worked hard in school that I would be rewarded with a chance for a good job, along with it the opportunity to have whatever I wanted, within reason of course. On the upside, I did not negotiate my day-to-day behavior with my parents or teachers for some immediate reward, this is not how life works. My short-term motivation was reserved for steering clear of the parental 'belt'.

Professor Fryer’s experiment sacrifices the desperate education kids need for long-term dreams, patience, and perseverance, along with academics. When the prize money is not there, for whatever reason, will the kids continue to apply themselves with vigor? Why would they? More reasonably, the response would be some form of protest against the ‘unfairness’ of having their motivation taken away, whether aimed at the school or simply their parents. At this point we will know the full and sad extent of this experiment.

James C. Collier

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