Student incentives work.(correspondence)(Letter to the editor)

I celebrate Professor Kirabo Jackson's article ("Cash for Test Scores," research, Fall 2008). It corroborates and extends my evaluation of the Advanced Placement Incentive Program carried out for the O'Donnell Foundation, which pioneered the program. Beginning with the 1990-91 school year, the foundation paid students $100 for each passing Advanced Placement examination score in English, calculus, statistics, computer science, biology, chemistry, and physics, plus a reimbursement for the cost of taking the exam. The program also pro vided a $2,500 stipend to each teacher undergoing training to teach advanced courses in these subjects. Teachers received $100 for each passing AP examination score their students earned.

In the nine participating Dallas schools, sharply increasing numbers of boys and girls of all major ethnic groups took and passed the AP exams. The number of passing students rose more than twelvefold from 41 the year before the program began to 521 when it ended in 1994-95. After termination, the program continued to have carry over ...