Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Mainstream Media Miss

I heard a piece on NPR this morning about an experiment conducted by a researcher at the University of Chicago. The main question of the segment was how to motivate teachers to maximize student achievement. Of the method they were covering, "It's not exactly a carrot and it's not exactly a stick," the reporter told us. What "it" is is a riff on "loss aversion." The study found that teachers who received a cash bonus up front under the conditions that they would have to return it if their students did not achieve were gangbusters successful in making sure their kids passed the test.

Could there be any doubt that I was disappointed by this story? Not only is it insulting to suggest that teachers need external motivation to help their students achieve, but nobody even questioned the definition of "achievement;" it was stipulated as success on a standardized test. (Golly, I wonder what kind of test prep, cough, I mean teaching, was going on in those classrooms?)

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