New York Incentive Program for Teachers Falls Flat

A recent teacher-incentive program aimed at boosting student performance in New York City had no effect at all, according to a study of 200 public schools by Roland G. Fryer of Harvard. Experiments in Kenya and India have shown positive effects of incentives, but the New York program, under which schools were eligible to distribute up to $3,000 per teacher, may have been so complex (due in part to union influence) that teachers couldn’t predict how their efforts would translate into rewards, Fryer says. The U.S. government has established a Teacher Incentive Fund to provide $1.2 billion in rewards to schools in 27 states.