New National Research Council Report Finds That Incentives & Punishments Not Successful In Helping Schools & Their Students
A new National Research Council (sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering) finds that offering incentives or threatening punishment to schools does not result in improved student learning.
The report, Incentives and Test-Based Accountability in Education, finds that high-stakes testing can result in “teaching to the test” and, therefore, are not an accurate measurement of student learning. Instead, the report looks:
at students’ scores on “low stakes” tests — such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress — that are not linked to incentives and are therefore less likely to be inflated, the report says.
Using that more accurate measurement. the study’s authors finds minimal or no positive change in student