MacArthur Genius Grant Goes to Educational Researcher Who Showed Economic Incentives Don't Work

Among this year's recipients of the so-called "genius grants" by the MacArthur Foundation, which give promising unconventional achievers in diverse fields $500,000 with no strings attached to apply to their work, is education economist Roland G. Fryer, Jr.  Fryer is the founder and director of Harvard University's Education Innovation Laboratory and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.  His work has concentrated on trying to explain and address the educational achievement gaps among minority students.

Clearly, that is an important topic worthy of funding.  And Fryer has been involved in many different studies.  But what I found really interesting about this grant is that Fryer's arguably most significant studies where two that showed that financial incentives (i.e., paying people for higher test scores) DID NOT WORK.  In the first study, they tried offering more money to teachers for higher test scores; in the second, they did the same thing for students.  In neither case, however, did the money do anything to improve educational achievement (as measured by test scores, at least).

Here is a great quote by Fryer in talking about how these studies have radically changed his ideas of trying to improve education by linking higher compensation to higher scores:

"Economists always assume people know how to produce something. Incentives work if you are lazy, not if you don't know how to do something.  So that's spawned some new theoretical ideas for me. What if people don't know how to produce something? What do optimal incentives look like in that environment?"

I just think this is a great point to hear in our recent environment of blaming educational problems on bad teacher and evil teacher unions.  As I've said often before, we need to stop trying to impose the business model on schools, because education is not the same as just trying to sell more widgets.  Outstanding education, particularly during a time when more than one child out of every five is living in poverty, is a complex and ever-changing business.  Tying teacher pay directly to test scores is only likely to exacerbate the situation, because it drives teachers who need the extra salary money to move from high poverty schools, where the test scores may depend on how many of the children taking the test even had enough food in the past day to be able to focus on the exam, to the schools they know kids are likely to perform better, just on their life circumstances alone.

In short, it is NOT that teachers are lazy (OK, maybe some are, but not most).  It's that nobody knows how to consistently improve the many different factors that can inhibit educational achievement.   Dangling financial carrots in front of them for higher test scores has been shown to be useless at best, and insulting, morale sapping, and counterproductive at worst.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out this is a failing policy.

Research Study Shows Merit Pay Doesn't Work for Students Either

After yesterday's rant on my blog, I continued to research the issue of merit pay, or in academia-speak, "financial incentives for performance output.""  I ran into another fascinating study that I somehow missed when it came out in April 2010.  This study looked at the effectiveness of paying for standardized testing improvements as well, but this time the money went to the students instead of the teachers.

This study, conducted by Roland G. Fryer Jr. of Harvard University, EdLabs, and EBER, was quite extensive.  It was a four-year study among the four (edu-speak again) "protypically low-performing urban school districts" of Chicago, Dallas, New York City, and Washington DC (and, having lived in Washington DC, I can attest to what a desperate state the schools there are in).   It involved giving a total of $6.3 million to about 38,000 students in over 250 different school, based on their achievement within a number of different incentive systems.  The study involved students from 2nd-9th grade, including MIDDLE SCHOOLERS.   It was also much more controversial than the previous study with the teachers; not only did Fryer get thrown out of quite a number of schools, but he received hate mail and even death threats from those who say his work as "bribing students" for good performance.

Once again, there were good news/bad news result:

THE BAD NEWS:  Student merit pay didn't work in raising standardized test scores.  Or, to be more specific, offering students up to $2,000 (a significant amoutn for students, especially those from low-income families) for better grades in classes and weekly exams did nothing in terms of raising their end-of-the-year standardized test results.

THE GOOD NEWS:  However, those students who were paid for performance--that is, just showing up regularly, following directions, good behavior, etc.--did show some significant improvement in their year-end scores.  The best investment?  Paying student to read books.  That produced the largest gain in reading comprehension scores of all the incentive schemes, and at a relatively low price; the average student only earned $14 in incentive grants.  But they had much better results, not only compared to other incentive programs, but compared to other educational reforms like reducing class size and increased early education programs that cost thousands of dollars more.

To me, the two studies are both fascinating -- and related.  Once again, the result tell me that students don't WANT to have bad test scores.  You can offer what is a relative fortune to them ($2,000) to improve their scores, but they can't do it.  This suggests that low student performance comes not from "laziness" or lack of motivation, but from an inability to do any better.  On the other hand, if you give students even little sums of money to do what they can do--show up at school, be on their best conduct, read another book or do than they would have done otherwise--those small behaviorial changes can add up to a significant increase in student achievement.

In presenting this study, I don't want to argue that we should necessarily be using monetary incentives with students.  As I have said in earlier posts, I'm a great fan of Alfie Kohn, and am persuaded by his book entitled Punished by Rewards (a great interview about the contents of that work can be found at http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/pdf/Punished%20by%20Rewards.pdf).  However, I would not rule out something that some of our most struggling schools have found to be effective in raising student achievement.

But, once again, I think it demonstrates the difficulty in imposing the industrial model on education.   This study says, in my interpretation, that low test skills are not a result of lack of interest or effort or motivation by students--a problem that MIGHT be solved by economic incentives.   Rather,  if the child doesn't understand the concepts being tested, offering $2,000, $10,000, or even $1,000,000 doesnt make any difference.  The child can't pass the test.  But now, the child feels even more frustrated, even more downcast, even more worthless, than simplying failing the test without outside incentives.

Not a good idea, to my mind.