Is There a High Return on Investment?

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In Dallas, for example, we paid kids $2 a book to read up to 20 books. The average payout was roughly $20. They advanced the equivalent of roughly two and a half months of schooling. If I could give you two and ahalf months more of traditional public school for $20 per kid, you take it in a heart. We had no impact on intrinsic motivation whatsoever. And the last thing is what kids actually spent the money on.

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.