Quality Learning: Paying students to learn?

David Langford is one of the smartest and best consultants I know working in the schooling world. His knowledge and experience of quality and it's application to schooling is beyond par. The following article came in a recent email newsletter from him. I couldn't say it any better! I've copied the newsletter in its entirety. Enjoy.

Quality Learning: Paying students to learn?
By David P. Langford

In the past, I believed most educators understood the inherent differences between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, and valued the latter over the former. However, this does not seem to be the case. Pay-for-grades, gold stars, student-of-the-month programs and attendance rewards are all too prevalent extrinsic motivators used to push students to do a better job. I've found an overwhelming amount of evidence that these schemes do not work in the long term, and can even dangerously affect attitudes toward learning. (Alfie Kohn does an excellent job of compiling the evidence against extrinsic motivators in his books No Contest and Punishment by Reward.) There is no lack of evidence that pay-for-grades programs do not work, so why do schools continue to use them? The short answer is: because they appear to work.

Extrinsic rewards and punishments always seem to work if you do not count the costs. Studies have shown that you can get people to do almost anything if you make the motivator—payment or punishment--strong enough. For example, would you sabotage a colleague for ten dollars? Most people would answer “no.” But what if I upped the stakes? Would you do it for one thousand dollars? Ten thousand? One million? If I continued to increase the reward, most people would agree sooner or later--especially if they got to pick the colleague.

The same principle is true with students. If you pay students to get good grades, more students will get good grades for a while. Very quickly students who were only working to get the reward will discover that it is hard work to maintain good grades, and they will decide it isn't worth the effort unless the reward is increased, because the motivation for getting good grades is not to learn, but to be rewarded. The concept of "learning" to improve one's self never comes into play with the reward system. Just as teacher unions negotiate for higher pay, so student “unions” will eventually want to negotiate for a higher reward.

Extrinsic Theory: Improved Grades = Reward

Most always these reward schemes are touted as a “new trial program,” as if the idea of extrinsic motivation is a new one. In Washington D.C., Chancellor Michelle Rhee, who is making a valiant effort to improve a failing system, was asked why they implemented a "new" program that pays students to get good grades and attendance and she responded, "When critics say that it's sad to pay students, I say it's sad that only 8% of D.C. eighth-graders are proficient in math. People in the suburbs use incentives for their kids all the time, like giving them $10.00 for an 'A.' Kids in our program can save money for college or get a bank account." (Parade Magazine, November 16, 2008, p. 26.) It's unfortunate that we have such huge education gaps in this country and I am certain Chancellor Rhee feels the need to do something about it, but the bottom line is that two wrongs don't make a right. Just because some parents bribe their children to get better grades does not mean we should apply the same principle to all students. We can easily sabotage motivation through the best efforts of well meaning people.

If the pay-for-grades theory is correct, there should not exist a single example of students succeeding on their own. Yet there are thousands--if not millions-- of students who work hard because of a love of learning. Dr. W. Edwards Deming often stated that it only takes a single example to invalidate a theory. Having only 8% of students proficient in math is a dismal statistic to face, but the problem is in the system--not the students. Manipulating students with money will improve some students' performance for a short period of time, but what happens to students when you can no longer afford to pay them and their attachment to learning is for money? Smothering intrinsic motivation is a cost too great for even one student.

Intrinsic Motivation: Acquired Knowledge = Joy in Learning

When learning rewards and punishments are eliminated, systemic performance results will always return to what they were before extrinsic manipulation. Remember, 98% of the problem comes from the system, and students have little or no control over systemic factors. Manipulating student extrinsic motivators does not address the basic cause(s) of the problem. Try asking students with a Force Field Analysis to identify driving and preventing forces of learning, then prioritize the preventing forces with an NGT. You might be shocked to realize that existing factors preventing learning have nothing to do with lack of pay-for-grades. One of the most misguided efforts of quality improvement is trying to improve something that should be eliminated, such as automating grading systems, increasing training for behavior modification or improving the pay-for-grades program. I can guarantee you, in low performing schools there are fundamental problems with:

Teacher training and support
Leadership and management
Process Management
Communication
The way schools are built and maintained
The way technology is being used or not used
Funding for classroom books and materials
Vision and purpose


One of the reasons many extrinsic motivation programs have stayed around for so long and are continually resurrected and improved is because they are convenient for the people managing the system. They keep the focus off leadership and mistakenly place it on the people working in the system. In every education system I have consulted--from the U.S. Naval Academy to primary and secondary schools in the U.S. and Australia to pre-schools in Argentina--the story is the same: we blame students for poor performance without first considering the systemic causes. In psychology this is known as the fundamental attribution error.

If you want a significantly different result, you must first change the system. I applaud Michelle Rhee in Washington D.C. for trying to improve a broken system, and I offer my help. She has made many excellent systemic changes in D.C. such as closing 23 under-populated schools and paying for librarians, art, music and P.E. teachers at remaining schools. These systemic efforts will help to improve student motivation for learning.

Systemic problems are normally out of the circle of influence of students and none of these systemic problems will go away simply by bribing students to work harder within a failing system. Leaders must learn to, as Dr. Deming once said, "work smarter, not harder." If you want a different result, try changing the system and watch what happens to behavior, instead of continually doing what we have always done by leaving the system alone and trying to change the behavior of the people in it.


©2008 Langford International Inc. All rights reserved.
e-Mail: office@langfordlearning.com
12742 Canyon Creek Road, Molt, MT 59057
Phone: 406-628-2227 Fax: 406-628-2228

Teachers Have NO Constitutional Right to Free Speech

In several previous posts I have been exploring this idea that public schools are a tool for the Federal Government to 'school' the public in the 'basics' in order to produce a disciplined society (and reduce crime). In one of the articles I read about the origins of the 'free' public school system the author was suggesting the aim of the education is to indoctrinate the public. I have just finished reading an article (link below) that says a teacher has NO constitutional right to express personal opinions (free speech) in the classroom.

Here's a quote from the article:

A teacher's speech is "the commodity she sells to an employer in exchange for her salary," the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in January. "The Constitution does not enable teachers to present personal views to captive audiences against the instructions of elected officials."

I wonder how many professional teachers working today would know this? I wonder, if they did know this, if they would say they comply with the law and DO NOT express personal opinions in the classroom?

If I interpret this properly this 'law' says that a teacher must ONLY say what they are approved to say by the local School Board. I presume the local School Board takes their mandates from the State School Board, which in turn takes their cues from the Federal Board of Education.

What does this mean to the anyone that is interested in changing education (or transforming education)?

Here's the article:

Supreme Court denies hearing for fired 'honk for peace' teacher
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer • Tuesday, October 2, 2007
An elementary-school teacher who was dismissed after telling her class on the eve of the Iraq war that "I honk for peace" lost a U.S. Supreme Court appeal Monday.
The justices, without comment, denied a hearing to Deborah Mayer, who had appealed lower-court decisions upholding an Indiana school district's refusal to renew her contract in June 2003. The most-recent ruling, by a federal appeals court in Chicago, said teachers in public schools have no constitutional right to express personal opinions in the classroom.

And, if one is involved in education something like this would again make it seem like the only people that know what is good for young people are the people in charge - not the teacher in the classroom.

Taking this to the extreme, as I have suggested in previous posts, the education system is not set up to teach people to think. It also appears that the system isn't designed for people in the system to think either.

Paying Students, Fining Parents

So here's another example of theory in use in public education. On the one hand, we're creating high stakes testing for young people at an early age and continuing that through their lives - punishing young people with greater and greater punishments. On the other hand there are school districts and schools that are resorting to creating incentives and paying young people to attend or to get good grades - with greater and greater extrinsic motivators. And now, a bill has been introduced in the Texas legislature that would fine parents $500 if they miss meetings with their children's teacher.

Bill proposes fining parents who miss teacher meetings
A bill introduced in the Texas Legislature would impose a $500 fine on parents who miss conferences with their child's teachers. The representative who filed the bill said it was designed to encourage parents to be more involved with their child's education. CNN/Associated Press (2/1)

I've written in a previous post about how the education system is based on a model of compliance. One of the results of a compliance type environment is these acts of desperation - to force compliance where voluntary compliance isn't taking place.

Instead we should be spending our resources creating a system that instills intrinsic motivation and enthusiasm for learning with voluntary participation from everyone involved - young people and parents and teachers and community members.

Here's another example of the desperate attempts to get young people to come to school or keep them from skipping school:

Truancy attacked with iPods, food
Schools throughout the nation are enticing students with everything from breakfast to iPods to keep them in school. Attacks on truancy help boost academic performance, administrators say.

More Intrinsic vs Extrinsic Motivation

This time it's on the teacher side. So now we have School Districts paying teachers to improve the test scores of their students, School Districts paying students to come to school, and parents paying students to get better grades. Does anyone see a train wreck coming?

This will spiral to a system that is so distorted and has absolutely nothing to do with learning.

Mixed feelings over bonus pay
On Tuesday, the Houston Independent School District began giving out the first of its $14 million set-aside for performance pay to those teachers who raise student test scores. Some teachers are concerned that the pay will create rifts among those teachers who reap bonuses averaging $1,800 and those who get nothing. Houston Chronicle (1/24)

If it isn't already obvious, a person that is motivated by extrinsic rewards must continue to get greater and greater rewards or they will become disappointed and lose interest.

Extrinsic vs Intrinsic Motivation II

Many years ago I attended a workshop on continual improvement in education. In that workshop, David Langford made a poignant point when he asked us to consider the trajectory the current educational model is on when it comes to making mistakes, getting the wrong answer, discipline, etc. He suggested the only likely end point is killing people (literally).

If we make a similar extrapolation about the prevailing education system and how many educators use competition and external rewards as motivators it would make sense that educators would at some point pay people to not only attend school but also pay them for doing well on tests.

Both of these things are happening now. Here's the latest:

Ohio District Tests Performance Pay—for Students
Geralyn Raach, a teacher at Central Elementary School, has a favorite slogan for motivating her 3rd graders to put in their best effort, but it’s not what you would expect. Borrowing a line from the movie “Jerry Maguire,”the veteran teacher likes to call out, “Show me the money!”

And here is an older article on parents paying their children for grades:

Parents Offer Kids Pay for Good Grades
Sat Aug 12, 2006 10:13 AM EDT
Ben Feller, AP Education Writer

WASHINGTON — Sure, learning is its own reward. But some kids respond best to cash. Andrew Waller's grades soared when his parents started offering $5 for A's and $4 for B's. Now he pockets about $25 each report card, saving it for video games and summer camp.

As I read through this post I realized that there are some people that might feel this is a good idea - motivating young people to 'stay in school' or 'do good in school.' Isn't it obvious that schools in themselves are creating the need for this kind of behavior (on the part of the school districts, on the part of the parents, and on the part of the young people)?

If schools were designed as places of learning, where there was discovery and intrigue and mystery and curiosity - and god forbid, fun - young people would be naturally motivated not only to go there but on their own accord to continue to want more!