Response from David Langford about Paying Students to Learn
On December 11, 2008 I posted an article written by David Langford about paying students to learn.
An anonymous person commented that there is research that says there are positive effects of incentive based programs. I forwarded that response to David and asked him if he was interested in responded. He sent me the following:
Thanks for passing along my article to those who might listen. Unfortunately we are fighting a losing battle with extrinsic manipulation. It is so easy to implement these programs it is hard to stop politians and administrators. The new pick for Education Secretary Arne Duncan is also an advocate of pay-for-grades and implemented such a program in Chicago. I am fearful we may see an escalation of this thinking during the Obama administration.I read through each of the studies the person who responded offered. None were credible comparisons of the blatant manipulation offered in the Chicago Public Schools or in Washington D.C.
Offering girls in Kenya scholarships to continue to go to school if they work hard does not compare to throwing money at kids who get A’s, in a fabricated rating system, when they are already guarenteed a free education: Apples and Oranges comparisons. The study from Texas cited on paying students to take AP courses I believe lacks credibility since in order to get the predicted results they wanted they changed systemic factors such as opening AP courses to anyone interested instead of doing what they had always done by limiting class size to class rank. This is only one of a multitude of problems in this study.
The real problem is not how to make a better buggy whip, but should we be making them to begin with. I know I could produce the same positive correlation to improved work by beating children if they do not work hard. But, should we adopt that as a program and then start improving it? Automating or improving a bad process just means you can do something very bad quickly and to a larger number of people. Maybe Harvard would like to promote that study since they seem to be the source of promoting these pay-for-performance programs. I like the line in the movie Jurassic park that goes something like this, “You were so busy trying to see if you could you forgot to think about if you should!”
All of these types of programs and studies take time away from studying and fixing the real problems. No child will say I don’t work hard at school because they do not pay me enough, but they will say it’s boring or my teacher dosn’t care. Who will work on these problems? Let’s work on the real problems preventing high quality work and effort instead manufacturing new problems.
I’m interested in hearing from others about this very important topic.
2 comments
As a teacher of some 20 years, and as a devotee of progressives like John Taylor Gatto, A.S. Neill, Maria Montessori, Jerry Jessness, Socrates et.al., I would relish the chance to support the idea that extrinsic motivation does not produce educated people.
Teachers are supposed to “understand” the politics of education, we say we support democratic values, that literacy is a foundation for these values, then we put a system of constant monitoring and manipulation in place and tell students that they are free.
Teachers who don’t go along are drummed out, usually with such thorough discrediting and personal attacks, that these valuable educators are lost.
Arnie Duncan is a frightening choice, but Obama has also revivified Alan Bersin, despite and with no mention at all of his “work” in education.
We needed Obama to be sincere about the American Bill of RIghts, but meet the new boss, [maybe not] the same as the old boss.
First, it's not accurate to lump all incentive programs together and make generalizations about their effectiveness. Incentives program differ in how they recognize behavior/outcomes and how they reward them (i.e. cash vs. pizza parties vs. points). The most effective are those that recognize incremental achievements among parents, peers, teachers – helping students, particularily low-performing students, build their confidence and competence. In essence, it could be considered extrinsic "manipulation" with positive academic improvement as the ultimate outcome.
Second, you mention that these programs take away efforts focusing on the "real problems"… are there not multiple strategies to accomplish student achievement? After all, each student is unique – therefore, you would think multiple approaches would be the most logical path to success.
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