P.S. Seth also has some interesting thoughts on what this film tells us about the book industry.

In a moment of Excel fervor, I took data from the College Board’s 2011 Total Group Profile Report of college-bound high school seniors and plotted the mean combined (Reading, Math, and Writing) SAT scores for various income cohorts.

Take a look at the chart below. On the horizontal axis is family income. On the vertical axis is the combined average SAT score for students from families in each group. The general story is pretty simple: The higher the parents’ income, the higher their kids’ SAT scores.

(And this, sadly, is but one example. For a fuller account of the link between income and education, see the work of Duke’s Helen Ladd.)

UPDATE (2/21, 5:15PM EST):  

Thanks for the mega-response to this post. A few things:

1. Let’s all say it together: “Correlation is not necessarily causation.” Just ask XKCD.

2. Several readers have suggested that the real driver here is the parents’ education level rather than their income. Maybe. But without acquiring the underlying data and subjecting it to a more sophisticated analysis, we can’t say for sure. One thing we do know, from Table 11 of the report, is that among households where at least one parent has a graduate degree, the average combined score is 1687 — which is higher than for most income levels but lower than the average score for the highest income households. What’s more, there are three times as many households with graduate degrees as there are households with incomes over $200K, so something else might be afoot.

3. My hypothesis about that something — a guess rather than an assertion — is that the households in the top tier often have two parents with graduate degrees. That is, they’re rich and they’re well-educated and that’s a hard combo to beat. If that turns out to be true, it suggests that one of the most influential, but least remarked upon, social forces in America is assortative mating by education level.

For those new to the issue, or coming to the Pink Blog from Tweets about the article, let me summarize my views as succinctly as I can:

1. Some rewards backfire. Fifty years of social science tells us that “if-then” rewards – that is, “If you do this, then you get that” – are great for simple, routine tasks and not so great for complicated, creative tasks. Since teaching is creative and complex rather than simple and algorithmic, tying teacher pay to student performance (especially on standardized tests) flies in the face of the broad evidence.

2. Contingent pay for teachers just isn’t effective. What’s more, the specific evidence – a cluster of recent studies that have examined “if-then” pay schemes in schools – has shown them to be failures. See, for instance, this piece of research by Vanderbilt University or this one by Harvard’s Roland Fryer or this study by Rand that prompted the New York City public schools to abandon its pay-for-performance plan.

3. Money is still important. The fact that “if-then” motivators often go awry doesn’t mean that rewards in general or money in particular are bad. Not at all. The research shows that money matters. It just matters in a slightly different way than we suspect. Paying people unfairly — say, when Jane makes less than June for the same work — is extremely demotivating. And, of course, low salaries can deter some people from pursuing certain professions. Therefore, the best use of money as a motivator, at least for complex work, is to compensate people fairly and to try to take the issue of money off the table.  That means paying healthy base salaries – and in the private sector, offering some non-gameable variable pay such as profit-sharing.

4. There’s a simpler solution. My own solution for the teacher pay issue, which I’ve voiced many times both in writing and in speeches, is to strike a bargain: Raise the base pay of teachers – and make it easier to get rid of underperforming teachers. Not only is this approach more consistent with the evidence, it’s easier to implement and doesn’t require a new bureaucracy to administer. (To her credit, Michelle Rhee launched some efforts to move in this direction.)

5. We’ve got the wrong diagnosis. The notion that the central problem in American education is lack of teacher motivation is ludicrous. The vast majority of teachers in this country are some of the most hard-working, dedicated people you’ll ever meet – folks who work their butts off in difficult conditions for little recognition. Pay for performance is a weak prescription in part because it’s based on a faulty diagnosis.

6. What really ails us. The real problems, at least in my opinion, are twofold. First, the American education system itself, which is based on 19th century principles and structures, is woefully antiquated. Second, we’re ignoring the issue of poverty and the overwhelming evidence that, absent comprehensive and expensive interventions, socioeconomic status is what drives much of educational attainment and performance. (This is one thing I actually liked about No Child Left Behind. It held someone’s feet to the fire for schools that were criminally negligent in serving low-income kids.)

7. Teaching isn’t investment banking. I find it peculiar that we single out teachers for “if-then” pay when we wouldn’t consider it for other public servants. Should we pay police officers based on how many tickets they write or whether the crime rate in their district drops? How about compensating soldiers based on whether our borders have been attacked or how many of their colleagues have been injured or killed? Would legislators, who are behind much of the bonuses-for-test-scores push, ever agree to hinge their own pay on whether budget deficits rose or fell?

8. Turn down the heat, turn up the light. One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that the people on both sides of this issue are men and women with good intentions. Nearly everyone I’ve encountered is trying to do the right thing. Reasonable people can disagree about weighty matters. And most people are reasonable. The trouble is that much of our education policy — from how we finance it down to how we schedule buses — seems designed more for the convenience of adults than for the education of children. If we reckon with that unpleasant truth and have an honest conversation that places our kids at the center of our efforts, we can make a lot of progress.

The Retronaut blog, which collects artifacts from the past to help us understand the present, unearthed an article from Ladies Home Journal circa. 1900, headlined, “What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years.” Its author, one John Elfreth Watkins, Jr., lays out his predictions for the American life in the early 21st century.

Among his calls: Americans will be taller. (True) There will be no C, X, or Q in the alphabet. (False) Photographs will be telegraphed from large distances. (True) Rats and mice will be gone. (False). Pneumatic tubes, instead of store wagons, will deliver packages and bundles. (False, but Amazon is working on it.)

But somehow I found his predictions for “How Children Will Be Taught” most compelling. Here’s what he says:

A university education will be free to every man and woman. Several great national universities will have been established. Children will study a simple English grammar adapted to simplified English, and not copied after the Latin. Time will be saved by grouping like studies. Poor students will be given free board, free clothing and free books if ambitious and actually unable to meet their school and college expenses. Medical inspectors regularly visiting the public schools will furnish poor children with free eyeglasses, free dentistry, and free medical attention of every kind. The very poor will, when necessary, get free rides to and from school and free lunches between sessions. In vacation time, poor children will be taken on trips to various parts of the world. Etiquette and housekeeping will be important studies in the public schools.

Your thoughts?

Here is Joe’s explanation, followed by his questions:

Our school holds an annual holiday volleyball tournament in phys ed class.  Every student participates, and even the athletically uninclined risk dignity and limb diving into bleachers to save a point.  The reward for winning is nothing, yet they care at a near super-human level.

Many JV and some Varsity coaches have complained that their athletes do not care as much about their varsity sport as they do this tournament.

1) Why?

2) What can varsity and JV coaches do to build/foster this measurable effort in their sports?

Okay, folks, what do you think? Offer your answers in the Comments section. I’ll collect the best and include them in a separate post.

Josh’s goal was to guide 250 students as they tackled self-selected learning projects — everything from building a model of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, to writing and performing a comedy act, to creating a documentary video of Innovation Day itself. What could have been full-bore chaos turned into a fantastic day of learning and sharing. In his blog, Josh reveals some of the secrets of the day’s success:

• Teachers, administrators, and students treated each other with mutual respect. The kids knew Josh would support them, and Josh knew the school administrators would support him in turn. According to Josh, “One of the hallmarks of the school I work in and the principal that leads us is innovation.”
• As a teacher, Josh was flexible, in touch, and resourceful. He kept an eye on his students’ progress, knowing “when to step in and when to step back.” And rather than pose as the expert, he used all the resources at his disposal to give the students “access to as many learning opportunities as possible.”
• Josh recognized the importance of asking his students to do worthwhile work. “You don’t want students to waste your time turning in sub-par quality work, so don’t waste their time and ask them to do sub-par quality activities.”

So how did the project turn out? Josh reports that his students tackled their tasks with “an abundance of enthusiasm.” They completed more than 20 projects. Discipline problems were nonexistent.  Students helped each other out. Administrators and Josh’s fellow teachers dropped by the classroom and were caught up in the excitement. But perhaps this exchange between Josh and one of the sixth-graders best illustrates the power of Innovation Day:

As the students were walking out at the end of the day one student stopped me and asked, ”Can we do this again tomorrow”?

I responded with, “Well, I would love to, but tomorrow is Saturday,” in a half-joking manner.

This student looked me dead in the eyes and replied, “I would come back tomorrow to do this again.”

The first comprehensive study of this approach, from the Nashville public schools, showed an effect somewhere between minuscule and nonexistent. The students of incentivized teachers did no better than the students of teachers paid regular salaries.

Now an even bigger study is out from Roland Fryer, a prominent Harvard economist and an architect of some of these programs. In an impressive paper published last week, he examines the effects of pay-for-performance in the New York City public schools. Here, from the paper’s abstract (and with italics added), are his key findings:

“Financial incentives for teachers to increase student performance is an increasingly popular education policy around the world. This paper describes a school-based randomized trial in over two-hundred New York City public schools designed to better understand the impact of teacher incentives on student achievement. I find no evidence that teacher incentives increase student performance, attendance, or graduation, nor do I find any evidence that the incentives change student or teacher behavior. If anything, teacher incentives may decrease student achievement, especially in larger schools.”

I’m all for experimenting with new solutions. But it should be clear from these results — not to mention, from 50 years of research on human motivation and performance — that improving American education will take bolder and less convenient solutions that dangling a few carrots in front of our teachers. (You can read Fryer’s full paper here.)

]]> http://www.danpink.com/archives/2011/03/does-giving-teachers-bonuses-improve-student-performance/feed 68 http://www.danpink.com/archives/2010/12/interview-exchange-of-the-day http://www.danpink.com/archives/2010/12/interview-exchange-of-the-day#comments Wed, 22 Dec 2010 19:39:54 +0000 Dan Pink http://www.danpink.com/?p=2968 From Deborah Solomon’s New York Times Magazine interview with superstar physicist Brian Greene . . .

SOLOMON: Do you think SAT scores define intelligence?

GREENE: No. They define the capacity to answer questions on an SAT test.

But Fisch also has a day job — at Arapahoe High School, near Denver. This year, in addition to his other duties, he’s begun teaching algebra to 9th and 10th graders. And he’s taken a novel approach: Instead of lecturing during class time and assigning problems as homework, he’s flipped the sequence. He now records lectures on video and puts them on YouTube for the students to watch at home at night. Then spends class time working on problems with students. (Note: As Fisch himself says, he didn’t invent this “inverted classroom” approach and he’s not the only teacher doing it.)

There’s a great lesson in innovation here, which is why I devoted this month’s Sunday Telegraph column to what the rest of us can learn when flip happens.

Previous Sunday Telegraph columns:
August: Is the best vacation policy no policy?
July: Can you speak human at work?
June: Is Bob the Builder the ideal leadership role model?
May: Could ending sales commissions increase sales?