In a “ripped from the headlines” manner, two lawmakers, one Democratic and the other Republican, today unveiled a measure that would pay kids to read, replicating a program profiled recently in Time magazine that has met with controversy but also success.

Dubbed “Earn to Learn,” the measure would give low-income kids a financial incentive to improve their reading skills by reading more outside the classroom.

The reading incentive program will be available for first- through fifth-graders whose school is within the boundaries of a promise zone—a federally designated area with higher-than-average rates of dropouts and at-risk kids. The reward for reading a book outside of class time will be $2 per book–if the child successfully completes a quiz on the book.

Sponsored by Democratic Sen. Chris Romer, of Denver, and Senate Minority leader Josh Penry, of Grand Junction, Senate Bill 210 is patterned after groundbreaking research that uses economic principles to incentivize kids to learn.

Romer said that he has been following the work of Harvard economist Roland Fryer Jr., who tested and studied incentive programs for kids to close achievement gaps and found encouraging results pointing to successful outcomes. Romer wants to replicate that success here in Colorado. Romer said he called Fryer, and Fryer offered to help, if needed, to drum up support.

“I’ve always been intrigued with providing child-appropriate incentives for learning,” said Romer.  “In our world, the education world, anything that works with this kind of success is phenomenal.”

The Colorado program would be paid for out of the Read to Achieve Program, which Penry said hasn’t been utilized as well as it could be.

“Read to Achieve dollars are not serving a very high purpose right now and I’m open to new ideas and I’m very interested in this idea,” said Penry.

Penry said the innovative policy could produce positive results in ways that other programs have not.

“Market incentives work for big people and recent studies suggest that the same incentives will work for little people,” said Penry.