by Robert Pondiscio
August 1st, 2008
Tags: afterschool, core knowledge, direct instruction, incentives
Posted in Curriculum, Education Leadership | 1 Comment »
A reader of this blog has come up with an intriguing idea for a Core Knowledge-based afterschool center that uses incentives to motivate reluctant learners–and an unusual funding source. She’s put her proposal on a website called ideablob.com, and is in the running for a grant, based on users voting for her plan in an open competition. Think American Idol meets The Apprentice–one idea every month win $10,000 in seed money
Carol Glenn, a 22-year old African American who graduated from Cornell University describes her afterschool center, known as “Bronze, Inc.,” in her business plan:
Bronze is a place for students (particularly older students) to hang out after school. Students are expected to come in and learn something new each day. They will be given assignments that have a point value, and expected to earn a minimum number of points each day. This prevents students from moving on without learning the things they need to. Once the assigned period for study ends and students have met their daily quotas, they will be able to use their points to play video games, watch movies, play indoor miniature golf, use computers, or just grab a hot meal in a cafe (Think Dave & Busters meets the freedom of a college campus). This provides incentives that are more immediate than college or a good job in the future, but not so immediate that they crowd out academic rigor.
Black and Latino students frequently face the possibility of being ostracized for doing well academically. Bronze helps fix this by creating a large cohort of students who value education, preventing these minority high achievers from having to choose between getting good grades and having a social life. Finally, Bronze hopes to make systemic change by seeking out the best academic programs (like Core Knowledge and Direct Instruction), repeatedly proving they work, and then explaining these practices to parents and leaders in the community. Instead of parents simply advocating for “better schools” or “better teachers,” they will have clear objectives and results with which to approach school boards and politicians. Since these students will still be a part of the mainstream system, instead of placed in separate charter schools, the results of parental involvement will likely be seen across districts where Bronze operates.
Vote to support Carol’s idea here.
by Robert Pondiscio
July 22nd, 2008
Tags: California, Florida, incentives, New York, performance
Posted in Education Practice | 6 Comments »
Rewarding students for high performance has been discussed here and elsewhere, now a pending California bill would authorize and encourage school districts to provide nonmonetary incentives to middle and high school students.
“What we’re really looking at is recognition and motivation and incentive to achieve,” Sen. Elaine Alquist, a Santa Clara Democrat who proposed the measure, tells the Sacramento Bee. Not everyone agrees. “At some point, students need to be taught that every good deed does not require reward,” said Jon Coupal of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.
I’m a pragmatist. I favor whatever works. But there will always be something that rubs me the wrong way about having to reward people for acting in their own self-interest.
Update: The Gradebook, a really good edublog by the St. Petersburg Times’ Jeffrey Solochek, has more on this, including similar proposals in Florida and New York.
by Robert Pondiscio
May 29th, 2008
Tags: incentives
Posted in Education Practice | No Comments »
Student incentives seem to boost reading scores, according to a newly released piece of research. Critics have described plans to give cash, electronic gear or other rewards as bribery, but the study of charter school incentive programs from Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes finds “reward systems are found to have stable and consistent positive impacts for student learning in reading. The effect holds across grades and across network and non-network charter schools.”
“It’s not a silver bullet, but for very little investment, you seem to get a pretty consistent bump,” Margaret E. Raymond, the study’s author, said in an interview with Education Week.
Read a summary of the findings here. The full report, “Paying for A’s” is here.
The success of incentives will get all the ink, but this finding caught my eye: “Schools in which there is continuous or near-continuous assessment of student conduct produce larger gains in reading than schools that have reward systems.”
by Robert Pondiscio
January 8th, 2008
Tags: incentives
Posted in Educational Policy, Research and Reports | No Comments »
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.”
