The March 2, 2009 New York Times article that put "Rewards for Students Under a Microscope
Monetizing a grading system that's already flawed is like icing a cake that's already ruined. The schools, therefore, should do what works. To use the jargon of applied behavior analysis, I see no problem with a system of rewards that uses an ABAB experimental design that demonstrates A) ordinary classroom (baseline) achievement before intervention, as in a student reading aloud from a list of words with 70% accuracy and trained with traditional classroom instruction, B) improvements during an intervention that changes only one aspect of the environment, as in 90% accuracy upon the addition of a piece of popcorn contingent upon every correct word while maintaining the traditional instruction, A) a reversal back to the baseline classroom conditions to see if the performance levels also reverse when the intervention is removed, or a return to 70% achievement with no more popcorn, and B) a return to the intervention for long term use if the system's effectiveness has been verified, or popcorn reinstated.
If reading is a chore or if reading is a bore, then add some flavor to the pot. Try a token economy. A professor at Monmouth University once said, however, "behavior modification should not be a crutch. Use it as a tool." Be careful about paying cash for good grades if there is a long delay between performance and reinforcement. Schools can use computer-aided instructional software for immediate accumulation of points and condition the points to signal to the class that they will later receive tangible rewards. Selling toys with the points can work, or games, clothes, free time, or a pizza party. They can hold an auction every Friday in the first half of the school year. A teacher should accompany the artificial rewards with social reinforcement and phase out the tokens by the end of the year. Praise can include "I'm proud of you" and "How does it feel to do such good work?"
Remember, however, that a reinforcer for one person may be a punisher for another. Detailed programs should be individualized; specific incentives cannot apply to everyone. Somebody will not enjoy the popcorn. By definition, we know our consequence is a reinforcer rather than a punisher if behavior increases over time and the delivery of the consequence is contingent upon the emission of the behavior. For example, in physical education, some will do more walking (behavior) if they track their results with a step counter (reinforcement). Others will dread the counting as a painful task (punishment) in a routine they might otherwise enjoy. They'd rather listen to music (alternative reinforcement) as they walk. The counter might cause some of them to avoid the exercise altogether (the escape and avoidance involved in punishment). Others will do well in the challenge.
Since improvements in schoolroom performance can be temporary, additional assessments should include ongoing, long-term probes of achievement scores. To add to the validity of a plan, teachers should survey the satisfaction levels of the students. Better yet, students can prepare and implement parts of the program, deciding on the rewards, or setting the rules of conduct. They are more likely to enjoy and comply to the features they have developed themselves.
Although these programs can work for some, we don't need to pay money to those who can learn to read without it. In the upper grades, assign a good book at a challenging level and the reading itself contains the reinforcement. Give the child rich experiences outside the classroom. Encourage her to read to her interests. Preliminary success in the lower grades can itself be reinforcing, as in decoding words one word at time. If the material is programmatic, carefully designed to shape behavior one step at a time, if it gradually approximates the long-term goal of fluent reading at the college level, with each advance a small addition to previous successes, with tens of thousands of minor achievements built up over the years, so they make minimal mistakes, then the reading program has built-in reinforcement and the material itself can be intrinsically reinforcing, only mildly aversive at its worst. The teacher, however, should criticize objectively, without derisive or caustic remarks. Otherwise he will become the aversive stimulus and any reinforcement in the material will be overpowered by the overbearing presence of an imposing adult.
Positive programs can exist in lieu of the traditional system of compulsory school attendance that depends upon students doing their work in order to avoid failure, detention, bad grades, scolding, disapproval, humiliation, in-school suspension, demerits, being sent to the principal, "bad" notes sent home to the parents, and dropping out of high school.
Some people blame this approach for its "dependence on an external locus of control," that it interferes with the love of learning, that it takes away the fun, but we need not choose between extrinsic and intrinsic incentives. We can have both, and when we do, we should always stress positive reinforcement of the desirable behaviors, thoughts, feelings over punishment of the undesirable.
Indeed, there may not be a distinction between the outer world of the environment and the inner world of the mind. B.F. Skinner, the major proponent of behavior analysis in the second half of the twentieth century, did not distinguish between physical and mental events. To him, thinking was a form of behavior modifiable by reinforcement. Thoughts were links in the chains of cause and effect, items occurring in the biotechnology of the brain. Instead, Skinner drew the line between public and private events and between overt and covert behavior. Saying "Great job!" to somebody was a public event. Saying it out loud to yourself when someone overheard you was also a public event, but it produced different reactions in the different people. Saying it out loud to yourself when nobody heard you was a private event. Saying it quietly to yourself was also a private event, but it fed a different set of stimuli back to yourself than the vocalized version. The differences lay in the contingencies that existed among the responses and their consequences.
Whichever way we slice it, however, with Skinner's radical behaviorism or with the dualistic view of the outer and inner worlds, praise is better than blame, and self-respect is better than anxiety, guilt, and shame. Whatever philosophy we hold dear, we can use the science of human behavior to better perfect our schools.
(For the origin of most of the ideas contained in this editorial, see Chapter 2, "The World Within the Skin," and other chapters in B.F. Skinner's About Behaviorism, 1974. See also "The Science of Learning and the Art of Teaching" in Part III of his Cumulative Record, Definitive Edition, edited by his daughter, Julie S. Vargas, in 1999.)
