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Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Can’t Economists Stay Away From Schools? Don’t They Have Enough Other Things To Do? | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

Can’t Economists Stay Away From Schools? Don’t They Have Enough Other Things To Do? | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…:


Can’t Economists Stay Away From Schools? Don’t They Have Enough Other Things To Do?

Just what we need, another study from economists telling us how to make schools more effective (one released earlier this year concluded that “The message is to fire people sooner rather than later” ).
This new study, The Behavioralist Goes to School: Leveraging Behavioral Economics to Improve Educational Performance, has several authors, including Steven D. Levitt of Freakonomics fame.
They wanted to see if students would try harder on a standardized test if they knew they would get cash or some kind of immediate reward if they improved on their results. They tried offering these rewards in a couple of