Social Norms Beat Market Norms
Dear Deborah,
One of the most interesting books I have read in recent months is Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions. I was particularly interested in Chapter 5, where he explains the difference between social norms—where people act because they are motivated by a sense of idealism or purpose, and market norms—where people act because they are motivated by a desire for more money.
As I read his words, I realized that the goal of the corporate education reform movement is to push market norms into education. The corporate reformers assume that teachers aren't working hard enough and will work harder if they have the lure of more money and if they compete with one another. Ariely's studies say this is wrong, and it won't work. Last fall, the POINT study from the National Center for Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University also showed that merit pay based on test scores did not produce higher test scores.
Curiously, the corporate reform movement likes to talk about data-driven decisions, but they ignore any data that