Megan Cottrel a journalist and blogger (http://trueslant.com/megancottrell/2010/04/12/paying-the-poor-to-do-righ...) who writes about poverty and public housing wrote an interesting piece on this same study, but came to a very different conclusion than the New York Times. She took the time to read through the MDRC report and evaluate the groups participating in the program and what constitutes success and why. Her main argument is that the program is not a "silver bullet" to fighting poverty, but some of the results were encouraging and should not be ignored.

For example, here is her response to why attendance and academics did not improve as drastically as expected,

"There wasn’t a huge change in attendance rates or proficiency levels in the kids. Why? Well, for one, attendance rates, especially for elementary schools, are already pretty high. And proficiency levels? Well, the kids weren’t sent to new, better schools, given more time in school, given tutors or any other supplements. They were just paid for better scores.

New research released on school-based incentives (http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1978589,00.html?xid=newsl...) shows that students only respond to incentives when they have some real control over making it happen. A lot of kids just don’t know how to do better in school and are already so behind it’s difficult to catch up.

But one group in the study did very well with the incentives. Those were 9th grade kids who were already proficient on a basic level – not geniuses, but reading and doing math at grade level. For those kids, the incentives worked. They had better attendance, were more likely to earn all their credits, less likely to repeat a grade and more likely to pass Regents exams."

But I believe the heart of her argument and one of the problems with evaluating the success of this particular program is summed up in Cottrel's analysis of one woman's story from the report and the AP's article,

"One mom, a single mother of two that works as an administrative assistant, says she participated in the program and it helped her. But she couldn’t always do what they incentive program wanted her to do. The program pays parents for attending parent-teacher conferences. But the mom couldn’t get off of work. She was balancing putting food in her kids mouths with being involved with their education. The additional incentive doesn’t do much if she gets fired.

People living in poverty are often asked to choose between their short-term interests and their long-term interests: parent-teacher conferences or a paycheck, teeth cleaning or paying the rent, medicine or food on the table, staying in school or helping to make ends meet. We in the middle-class criticize them for not making the best long-term choices, but most of us have never had to make such difficult decisions."

This story shows that although many parents are willing and happy to make the choices that will help their children and themselves in the long run, often very important short term responsibilities make those good choices impossible. Although a small incentive won't change that, this study shows in which areas there were successes and what behaviours are more easily and efficiently supported by cash incentives. Those lessons shouldn't be lost because the program didn't change or fix everything.