Input-based incentives produce achievement gains at lower cost than major education reforms of recent decades¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2010 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? Student incentives for inputs produce similar achievement gains to Head Start, class-size reduction, and teacher bonuses at lower cost. → Roland G. Fryer 2010

Evidence¶

Roland G. Fryer 2010¶

Roland G. Fryer, Jr. (2010). Financial Incentives and Student Achievement: Evidence from Randomized Trials. NBER Working Paper No. 15898. http://www.nber.org/papers/w15898

q2 · i? · causal · r2

The article compares its experimental effect sizes to those of well-known interventions, noting the Dallas reading comprehension effect (.180–.249 SD) is similar in magnitude to lowering class size from 24 to 16 students (.22 SD).

"relative to achievement-increasing education reform in the past few decades – Head Start, lowering class size, bonuses for effective teachers to teach in high need schools – student incentives for certain inputs provide similar results at lower cost."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Financial incentives for reading books produce negative achievement effects for Spanish-speaking students in Dallas, consistent with a crowd-out hypothesis — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
• DC math impacts of about one-third of a standard deviation are similar in magnitude to New Orleans reforms and larger than some well-known interventions — related
• Instructional expenditures show the largest consistent association with achievement, with roughly 84% of variation in spending effectiveness driven by class size reductions, teacher salary increases, and reduced teacher turnover — related
• Paying middle-school students for attendance, behavior, uniforms, and homework yields marginally significant reading gains and non-significant math gains in Washington, DC — related
• Paying second-grade students to read books increases reading comprehension by roughly 0.18–0.25 standard deviations in Dallas — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
• Paying students for performance on standardized tests or for course grades does not increase achievement test scores in urban public schools — related
• After three years of Teacher Incentive Fund implementation, pay-for-performance bonuses had small positive impacts on student math and reading achievement in ten evaluation districts — related
• Offering pay-for-performance bonuses in 10 TIF districts increased student reading achievement by 1 percentile point after two years, with a similar-magnitude but statistically non-significant math effect — related