Giving Compass' Take:

· According to Education Dive, The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) will be funding a new program called Rhode2College where high-achieving, low-income Rhode Island students are paid for every step they make on their road to college.

· How can this new program provide the incentive students need to achieve in school and attend college? How will the Rhode2College program assist low-income students with funding for college? 

· Learn how the Pay for Success program is helping to build career pathways for low-income students.

Poverty can have wide-reaching effects on a child's life, including health outcomes, brain development and educational opportunities. While principals and other "front-line" education professionals see that reality in their day-to-day work, federal lawmakers don't necessarily see the link between anti-poverty programs and educational outcomes.

Low-income students typically have less access to college-prep resources than their wealthier peers, so programs like Rhode2College are, theoretically, a boon. But debate around these sorts of incentive-based programs for high school students continues.

For one, targeting low-income students that score high on standardized tests may disproportionately benefit white students. And research on these types of programs are mixed. Some are successful, while others are not, and the reasons are unclear. It seems that offering immediate rewards rather than "delayed gratification" often yields better results with high school students, as does offering incentives for direct intermediate steps the student takes, rather than end results, like higher test scores. Rhode2College takes both tacts, paying out for short-term moves, such as sending in a college application, as well as longer-term ones, including improving on the PSAT score when the student takes the SAT. The program also allows for $500 of the $2,000 maximum reward to be accessed immediately (the remainder is put into a savings account for when the student gets to college.)

Read the full article about Rhode2College by Christina Vercelletto at Education Dive.