Contingency contracting with school problems.
A simple written deal between kid, teacher, and parent can cut school problems in half within a week.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Five kids with school problems signed simple contracts. Each contract said what the child must do and what reward would follow.
Teachers and parents gave the rewards. The kids earned things like extra recess or a trip to the store.
What they found
All five kids cut their problems by at least half. One boy went from 30 talk-outs per day to five.
The contracts worked fast. Most kids showed big change within the first week.
How this fits with other research
Hursh et al. (1974) built on this idea. They added group rewards and rules. Their package beat contracts alone for keeping a whole class on task.
Jenkins et al. (1973) swapped the contract for a DRL schedule. They told kids, "Keep your talk-outs under three per period and earn free time." DRL worked as well as contracts but needed no paper.
Mishra et al. (2024) took the same token idea to adults with severe mental illness. They paired it with functional analysis and saw one year of calm behavior.
Why it matters
If you need a quick fix for one or two students, a one-page contract still works. Write the target behavior, the reward, and who tracks it. Get parent and teacher signatures. Start small—one class period or subject. Review every Friday and bump the goal only when the child wins three days in a row.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Contingency contracting procedures used in managing problems with school-age children involved analyzing teacher and/or parental reports of behavior problem situations, isolating the most probable contingencies then in effect, the range of reinforcers presently available, and the ways in which they were obtained. The authors prepared written contracts delineating remediative changes in reinforcement contingencies. These contracts specified ways in which the child could obtain existing individualized reinforcers contingent upon approximations to desired appropriate behaviors chosen as incompatible with the referral problem behaviors. Contract procedures were administered by the natural contingency managers, parents and/or teachers, who kept daily records of contracted behaviors and reinforcers. These records were sent to the authors and provided feedback on the progress of the case. Initial results of this procedure have been sufficiently encouraging to warrant recommending an experimental analysis of contingency contracting as a clinical method.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1969 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1969.2-215