We recently purchased a Cozyla Calendar for our home and started using an app to track tasks for our family. The app allows you to attach point values to the tasks which family members can then redeem for “rewards” that you set.
In the first weeks, I have noticed the Cozyla Calendar is doing what I had hoped. My kids check it each morning to see what is on the schedule, and what jobs are available for earning points—we are sharing the workload of running our home. I am noticing several factors that are contributing to the success of this digital chore chart when compared to the many other systems I have tried:
- The kids get to choose from a list of job opportunities. They can choose based on the point value, their interest, or abilities.
- Participation in the family economy is totally optional. There are no punishments for not doing any tasks, other than the natural consequence of not being able to buy certain privileges with your points.
- They feel empowered to work for what they want, and they are planning out their day based on the tasks they want to complete and the rewards they want to buy.
I am enjoying having the Cozyla manage things so much that I started wondering what a system like this might do in education. As a self-directed learning advocate, the thought of paying a child to learn feels counterintuitive. After all, one of the reasons to give kids freedom to explore and remove the pressure of grades and standards is to help them develop their intrinsic motivation. I want to keep the love of learning pure, and yet, I can’t deny that this point system helps my kids focus on and finish tasks. I wondered, is there a way to incentivize certain behaviors, actions, or tasks without overriding intrinsic motivation for exploration, creativity, and curiosity?
The “learn to earn” model isn’t new to education, but the research on it is sparse and the results very mixed. As a young student, I understood that good grades meant scholarship money for college, and college meant better-paying jobs—or so I was taught. In that sense, grades are essentially a form of reward for future redemption, but not all kids have the ability to delay gratification long enough to value grades and their supposed eventual payoff. Money is much more immediate, which is probably why many parents pay their kids for good grades.
In the mid-2000s, Harvard economist Roland Fryer decided to try experimenting with paying students for their schoolwork. He started with offering pizza parties, which eventually led to actual cash rewards offered to students in low-performing school districts in New York, Dallas, Chicago, Houston, and Washington, DC. Again, the data produced mixed results as far as evaluating its effectiveness, but one factor that seemed to make a difference was incentivizing behaviors over outcomes.
I decided to speak with some microschool founders who use “learn to earn” models and programs in their schools, to see how it works for them.
Widline Pierre, who founded Enlightening Pathways Academy in Florida, works with 16 students in kindergarten to 12th grade. She says that after years of working as a mental health counselor, and seeing the impact of financial stress on people who don’t know how to manage money, she knew that financial literacy would be an important component for her school. She decided to include a school store that opens every Friday, where the students can spend the funds they earned through finishing various tasks. She loves the real-world experiences the kids are having in the store, including working as a cashier, writing invoices, and setting goals to earn and save for big-ticket items. And so far, her students are very motivated to do their work and prepare for the store to open each week.
Iman Alleyne, founder of Kind Academy in Coral Springs, Florida, explains that her model is not “learn to earn,” but rather learn and earn. Using an online platform called Life Hub, K-12 students at Kind Academy have the opportunity to choose from a variety of topics to learn about, earning actual money on a debit card in the process. The program introduces learners to a variety of new interests, which can then lead to other hands-on, project-based learning in Kind’s self-directed learning environment.
“Life Hub has been such a good fit for us,” she said. “It doesn’t replace intrinsic motivation; it adds context. It teaches kids that their time and talents have value, while still allowing space for creativity, exploration, and growth.”
In my research, I discovered another online platform called Starter School. This one is geared toward older students, ages 12–18, and introduces them to industry tools in projects that simulate real-world work. When they finish a work project by the deadline, such as building a website or creating video content, they receive real funds on their real debit card. As with Life Hub, the students can choose according to their interest in the types of projects and industries offered.
Classrooms all over the country are having success increasing student engagement through the use of more immediate incentives. Empowered is a national community of over 57,000 educators who are transforming the way they run their classrooms to increase student engagement. An important piece of their framework is the use of “markets”—open and free environments where goods, services, time, ideas, and knowledge are exchanged. This can look like token economies which are exchanged for rewards such as “lunch with the teacher” or “pie the teacher in the face.” But the principle is that engagement is incentivized and meaningful contribution is rewarded. The reason this is effective, and not just another star chart, is the use of Empowered’s foundational principles to help teachers co-create their environment with their students.
Class Bank is a tool created by a former math teacher for this very type of classroom economy. On this platform, teachers can “hire” students for different jobs in the classroom. The kids even get to upload a résumé, or have an interview if the teacher desires, and the platform tracks the income and expenses of each student. I especially loved that the founder built into it the ability to set an interest rate for student savings, and the space for students to do their own calculations.
The bestselling author and motivational speaker Simon Sinek once said, “Working hard for something we don’t care about is called stress. Working hard for something we love is called passion.” I guess the question is: Can we discover passion when we are being paid to pursue it? And by the same token, if we are passionate about it, should we not also be compensated for our time and talents? As with most educational methods, this is not a one-size-fits-all cure for disengaged students. However, I am excited to see this kind of innovation in the education space, and look forward to testing some of these products in my own school this year.
