Question: Do incentives work in education?

Charles Best: I think even some of the most, highly regarded schools like Kips schools they have an incentive system, I don’t know if it is quite as financial as the incentive you described, but even at DonorsChoose.org there are teachers who will come to our site and they will request Barnes and Noble gift certificate to give to each of their students who complete the project on time, or to give to students who get a certain grade and maybe it gets a little dicey if a student is straight-up getting paid, I guess I would feel uncomfortable about that, but some other incentives I think would be good. I think my dad once often to give me a 100 bugs, if I read this whole Russian history book and actually I only got till like page 50 and I couldn't go on any longer, but I guess I am not in the position totally attack incentive since my parents give me some to me.

Recorded on: 1/29/08