Is That the Bottom Line of Your Experiment?

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"Incentives are very powerful, but very tricky to get right," he says. "I remember waiting for the district test scores thinking this is going to be the biggest effect we've ever had." He adds that incentives can have a positive or negative impact on students' reading comprehension and vocabulary.

The good news about educational reform, says Harvard economist Roland Fryer, is that we know what it takes to turn a school around. The bad news is that it's hard work--and implementing it won't win you any popularity contests. Listen as the MacArthur Genius Award Winner and John Bates Clark medalist speaks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about how pizza parties revealed the potential of incentives to improve students' test scores, and why he's far more concerned about closing the racial achievement gap than keeping the love of learning pure. He also discusses the five best practices of successful schools, and why it's his failures far more than his successes that keep him in this fight.