Rewards for good grades and test scores are gaining traction. Forget stickers and pizza parties. Eddy Ramirez’ piece in this week’s U.S. News notes that the the bribes…sorry, incentives, include basketball tickets, iPods, cars and cash. Ramirez quotes Roland Fryer, a Harvard professor of economics, who says it’s “‘absurd’ to expect children who grew up in poverty, with parents who dropped out of school, to appreciate the value of education without giving them immediate rewards for taking school seriously.”
Maybe so, but if it’s for the kids’ benefit, not to boost test scores, then where were all those incentives before testing mania hit fever pitch? Just wondering.
Over at her spiffy new digs on the Education Week site, the redoubtable Eduwonkette does what she always does better than anyone: looks at the research. It’s always refreshing to read education research from outside the education department, and EW digests three reports from last weekend’s American Economic Association meeting, all of which looked at student financial incentives. Do incentives work? The economists say “not really.”
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