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Students are bringing home some serious cash for doing well on important tests thanks to the REACH program, which pays students for passing Advanced Placement exams. And while the students are thrilled to have earned up to $500 per test, the overall results of the experiment are mixed.

"To some extent, there is now three years of evidence that students do respond to these financial incentives," said REACH Founder Whitney Tillson.

But what they're responding to is the key question. Students in the REACH program get more money the higher they score. But all the students NY1 spoke with said the chance to earn money was not what motivated them to do well on the exam -- the cash was just an added bonus at the end.

"That was an extra benefit initially, because at first I was more interested in just getting high scores to get into top colleges," said student Stephanie Fernandez.

"The money didn't, because I didn't get the money yet. It was more the tutoring they gave us through Learn Learn Win and the mentoring," said student Bea Almendrala.

The tutoring and mentoring is optional, but it turns out to make a big difference in whether students pass or not. Students who attend three of the program's Saturday test prep classes were more than twice as likely to pass the exams, so REACH said students who attended the classes could earn a higher amount. Four times as many students started attending the classes and many more students passed the exams.

"We realized after the first year that by tying the Saturday prep classes to the maximum payments, the incentives would jump the students attending saturday prep classes, which in turn has jumped our results substantially," said REACH Executive Director Tami Kesselman

Harvard researchers had similar results in April when they published the largest study yet on financial incentives in the classroom. They found paying New York City kids to do better on state tests didn't work, but paying students in Texas just to read more books led to higher scores on reading tests.

These experiments are still relatively new but the results suggest that paying kids to attend more class or do more school work may actually lead to higher test scores. However, there's no proof yet that paying kids simply for getting higher scores makes any difference.