What We're Reading: New Evidence on College Prep and Financial Aid
The National Bureau of Economic Research has released a couple of new papers worth reading. (1) A new study from Kirabo Jackson at Northwestern considers a Texas college-prep program called APIP: Advanced Placement Incentive Program. It provides cash incentives for student and teachers to help students perform well on AP tests, and it provides teacher training, curricula oversight, and test-prep sessions . While this clearly fits the model of "teaching to the test" it's about way more than paying students for grades. The cash incentives for the teachers are real money-- depending on the school, as much as $500 for each student in their course scoring a 3 or better on an AP exam, and bonuses up to $1000 at year's end, and for the "lead" teachers, annual bonus payments up to $15,000 per year. Payments to students are also large-- not only is the fee for the exam defrayed, but they can also get up to $500 for good scores. Now, this is clearly not an entirel...