"What gets measured, gets managed as a classic insight that's mostly true in this case," he says. "It would have been nice for someone to really read the papers and say, Hey, if you're going to do what you do it this way." The study was done roughly from 2008 through 2002; most people who wrote about it found no effect of paying people.
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.