S ENATE

  B ILL   21 0 — E ARN -­ TO -­ L EARN   R EADING   I NCENTIVE   P ROGRAM  

G RANTS  
 
S UM M ARY  
 
In  short,  this  bill  establishes  a  program  through  which  public  elementary  school  children  within  a  
federally-­‐designated  Promise  or  Choice  neighborhood  will  be  paid  to  read  books.  
 
W HAT  DOES  THE   BILL  DO ?  
 
• Authorizes  the  Read-­to-­Achieve  Board  to  award  up  to  $1,000,000  annually  to  
organizations  that  operate  a  federally-­‐designated  Promise  or  Choice  Neighborhood.  
 
• The  designated  funds  would  be  granted  to  the  organizations  for  the  purpose  of  
implementing  pay  incentives  for  students  to  read  books.  
 
• Eligible  organizations  must:  
 
o operate  the  reading  program  within  a  public  school  or  a  public  library;  
o provide  proof  that  they  are  approved  for  federal  funding;  and  
o make  the  program  available  to  students—in  any  of  grades  1-­‐5—attending  a  public  
school  within  the  boundaries  of  the  Promise  or  Choice  Neighborhood.  
 
C ASE   S TUDY  
 
• Harvard  Professor  Roland  Fryer,  Jr.  conducted  one  of  the  largest-­‐ever  controlled  studies  on  
the  effectiveness  of  incentivizing  learning.  
 
o Students  in  four  cities  were  offered  monetary  incentives  for  satisfying  various  
benchmarks  related  to  educational  attainment.    
 
 In  Chicago,  ninth-­‐graders  were  paid  for  the  grades  they  earned  in  their  
classes.  
 In  Washington,  D.C.,    middle  schoolers  were  paid  for  their  performance  on  a  
variety  of  indicators,  which  always  included  attendance  and  behavior.  
 In  New  York  City,  fourth-­‐  and  seventh-­‐graders  were  paid  for  their  
performance  on  standardized  tests.  
 Most  simply,  in  Dallas,  second-­‐graders  were  paid  $2  per  book  they  read  
outside  of  school.  
 
o The  Dallas  experiment  was,  by  far,  the  incentive  structure  most  positively  
correlated  with  improved  learning,  as  measured  by  reading  comprehension  
scores.    It  was  as  though  students  in  the  study  had  attended  school  for  an  extra  three  
months  out  of  the  year.    In  addition,  the  Dallas  study  was  by  far  the  cheapest  of  the  
four,  costing  an  average  of  $13.81  per  student  per  year.