I was a straight-A student who sailed through school without much effort.

By contrast, school was an ordeal for my husband, who's dyslexic.

So guess which one of us wants to offer our daughter cash as a reward for good grades? Hint: It's not me.

Plenty of parents do give money in exchange for A's and B's -- often $5 to $20 for top marks or $100 for a straight-A report card.

Cities are getting into the act as well. New York City rolled out a pilot program last year to reward kids in poor neighborhoods for good test scores. Fourth-grade students in select schools can receive up to $25 for their performances on each of 10 standardized tests, according to The New York Times, while seventh-graders can get up to $50 per test.

But the trend disturbs many experts on parenting and money.

"Rewarding good grades with money is really a gray area," said attorney Jon Gallo, a father of three and co-author with his therapist wife, Eileen, of "The Financially Intelligent Parent: 8 Steps To Raising Successful, Generous, Responsible Children." "Some psychologists believe that paying for grades is a bad idea because it substitutes an external reward -- money -- for an internal sense of satisfaction and therefore interferes with developing a work ethic."

Janet Bodnar, the deputy editor of Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine, a mother of three and the author of the book "Raising Money Smart Kids," agreed.

"You really want them, by the time they're 16 or 17, to be doing (well) on their own for the internal satisfaction of a job well done," Bodnar said.

When Bodnar expressed these views in recent columns, though, she got plenty of flak from parents who pay for grades. Many made the argument that going to school is a child's job, making it appropriate to link pay with performance.

Bodnar has another perspective: that going to school is the child's role in the family, just as her role as a mother is to plan meals for her kids.

"It's not something I expect to get paid for," Bodnar said. "It's what I do as part of the family."

Here are the major arguments against paying for grades:

It may not be effective

The research so far is mixed. One study by Johns Hopkins University researchers said paying for grades and attendance seemed to improve both among low-achieving students.

Attorney Gallo pointed to another study of high school students' motivation for doing well in school. The research, conducted by the nonpartisan research group Public Agenda, found the kids rated being paid for grades seventh behind such factors as their own sense of satisfaction and pleasing their parents.

Anecdotally, results seem to be all over the map.

Psychologist Gary Buffone, the author of "Choking on the Silver Spoon: Keeping Your Kids Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise in a Land of Plenty," said his two now-grown daughters did well on their own in elementary school but responded to payment for grades for a few years in junior high and high school.

"All kids don't need this," Buffone said. Some respond to external praise from parents and teachers or to the good feeling they get from their accomplishments. "But some kids need more to get them focused and working harder toward some far-off goal. Money can be a good motivator, not unlike the real world, which explains why most people show up for work."

Several parents on the Your Money message board, and at least one former paid-to-succeed student, agreed that money is an effective prod.

"If I had children, I would consider paying for grades because it did help me," wrote poster "mardavtwo." "High academic performance was expected of me, (and) the money was just another form of positive reinforcement. I believe it helped me make a link between performance and compensation."

Others disagreed. "Berzerk," a 19-year-old poster who was paid for good grades, said it didn't work.

"It didn't make me any more motivated to do any better in school, and all of the kids that I knew that were being offered money and got good grades (did) it because they had a good work ethic and a (desire) to do well," Berzerk wrote. "Money had nothing to do with it."

The Gallos tried paying their own kids for grades with mixed success.

"Money did motivate one of our kids for a while. It didn't work at all with the other two," Jon Gallo said. "If we had the chance to do it over, we wouldn't pay for grades."

It may not be fair

Even if my parents had wanted to use their limited funds to pay us for grades, it would have been a horrible idea in our household.

While I barely broke a sweat in school, at least before college, my sister struggled for every B. Rewarding my natural ability and punishing her lack of it by paying for grades would have been cruel.

I thought about that when poster "leopardgirl" related her childhood experience of being paid for grades:

"When I was in school in the 70s, my parents paid us $1 for each A and 50 cents for each B on our report card, plus $20 in the bank for college," leopardgirl wrote. "I was always happy on report card day because I usually got straight A's. My brother (got) mostly B's, and my younger sister mostly C's. She would start to cry on the school bus on the way home on those days, because she really did try to do well."

My husband, who agrees with the school-as-a-job approach, is sensitive to these concerns. He'd like to focus the reward system on areas in which our daughter can be expected to achieve good results with good effort. He believes this will help teach her to "develop her strengths," as he did when he focused on developing his artistic abilities -- the abilities that help support his family today.

(Our daughter's in preschool, by the way, so this is all still theoretical for us.)

If parents do want to pay for grades, Kiplinger's Bodnar said, they should be conscious of the differences in children's natural abilities, intelligence and learning styles. Having more than one child makes this even more critical. If one kid has a learning disability, for example, a parent might want to reward improvements in grades rather than the grades themselves. But then they may have to contend with issues of equity if they wind up punishing one child (the achiever) for a C while rewarding the other for the same grade.

"It pretty quickly becomes unwieldy," Bodnar said.

It's a slippery slope

Money can be like drugs: It can take more and more to get the same effect.

If cash becomes your child's primary reason to achieve, you may well lose your leverage when she's old enough to earn her own, Bodnar said. Either that, or you may find yourself constantly upping the ante to keep your child's interest.

It may start out as a few bucks for an A, she said, "and by high school it's 'How about a car, Mom and Dad?'"

Bodnar recommends parents who want to use cash rewards do so for a limited time to avoid these side effects.

You may be sending the wrong messages

I'll quote poster "No_Rulz": "Paying for grades sets kids up for an unrealistic expectations of the future. How many people in the working world get bonuses every six weeks for doing the job that is expected of them?"

Furthermore, as much as we'd like to believe that hard work and achievement are always rewarded in the marketplace, we know differently. Success also is tied to picking the right field, staying ahead of trends in our industries and economy, developing relationships and connections with others, and knowing how to negotiate, among other factors.

In other words, there's a difference between working hard and working smart. Our kids need a good work ethic, but they need to know it takes more than that to succeed.

There may be better ways

Even parents and experts who support pay for grades say praise, encouragement and parental involvement are equally, if not more, important motivators.

If you want to avoid cash payouts but still reward your kids for their successes, consider experiences instead, such as dinner out or a special trip.

"Experiences cost money, but unlike cash, a nonstandard, shared outing takes a special and lasting place in your child's memories," said Judy MacDonald Johnston, a co-founder of Blue Lake Children's Publishing, which produces children's magazines and money-management kits for parents and kids.

I like this approach because it fits with all we're learning about how experiences contribute more to lasting happiness than stuff does. For more details, read my colleague MP Dunleavey's column "7 ways to buy happiness" or read her book, "Money Can Buy Happiness.")

Johnston recommends defining each family member's "family contribution" -- the unpaid, nonnegotiable tasks and expectations for being part of the family that can include chores, behaviors and achievements.

Maintaining a B average might be part of a child's family contribution, Johnston said. Anything below a 3.0 draws consequences, such as the loss of a treasured privilege, while achievements above that mark merit special rewards. For example:

• One A merits a family dinner out at the child's choice of restaurant.

• Three A's merit a concert or sporting event ticket.

• Straight A's merit a family overnight trip to the destination of the child's choice.

"Each family's finances and dynamics are different," Johnston said, so parents "should customize the reward system to meet their needs."