1. Fall 2015 Zealousness Magazine | 13
Have you ever pondered as
to how the students failing in
school/colleges most of the
time might feel? Do they lack confi-
dence; self-esteem, or are un-moti-
vated to a large extent? Every year
more than 380,000 students fail out
of college in the United States. The
impact of college failure can cause
lasting damage to self-esteem, and
the consequences can influence an
entire lifetime. Well-educated stu-
dents are the foundation for a strong
workforce, globally competitive
businesses, and sustainable econom-
ic growth. Every student deserves a
first-rate education that equips him,
or her, with the tools and skills to
compete and succeed in the global
economy. Working together, we can
fix elements of our education system
that do not work, and strengthen our
schools by embracing ideas that can
prove successful.
Don’t you think that we should help
the youth, in not losing their hopes
and dreams, in building their long-
cherished careers? Amidst all major
and minor initiatives being taken by
the US government, will introducing
the educational reward programs
be helpful among these school stu-
dents to come out with ‘flying col-
ors’? Will it lead to an increase in
graduation rates in their respective
school districts?
I think it would surely ‘motivate’ the
students, if rewards are given for
performance goals. People have
a tendency to do things more effi-
ciently if they are being rewarded.
Teachers typically use rewards like
candy, stickers, small prizes, or ex-
tra recess time. They use them to
encourage student behaviors such
as completing assignments, produc-
ing good work, and so on. The ex-
ternal rewards usually work. If you
offer students an appealing reward,
the targeted behavior will generally
increase (for reviews, see O’Leary
and Drabman, 1971; Deci, Koestner,
and Ryan, 1999). Educators may
see small results from reward pro-
grams, but they are continuing to use
them. School administrators reward
students with external rewards by
providing money raffles, cash give-
aways, electronic gadgets and gift
cards for passing exams. Although
external rewards may not be as ef-
fective as intrinsic motivation, princi-
pals do continue to use these incen-
tives as a means to raise students’
initial motivation and in turn their test
scores. Rudy Mendoza, principal of
Gardena High school in Gardena,
California, finds that scores jumped
higher than any other year after
instituting a gift card incentive pro-
gram. The students view the rewards
program as an effective mechanism
for enhancing motivation for those
who have under-performed and ul-
timately acquire knowledge derived
from their participation in school-
based tasks and/or completing their
assignments.
New research being published on
student motivation suggests that the
timing and format of several high-
profile programs may explain some
of their inconsistency. Test perfor-
mance can improve dramatically if
students are offered rewards just
before they are given standard-
ized tests and if they receive the
incentive afterward, new research
at the University of Chicago shows.
Educators have long debated the
value of financial and other rewards
as incentives, but a series of ex-
periments in Chicago-area schools
showed that with the right kind of
I have failed. Not again, not again!
Rolling Educational Re-
wards Program: One of
the Answers to Reforming
Education System in USA?
By Nupur Srivastava, Ph.D.

2. 14 | Zealousness Magazine Fall 2015
rewards, students achievement im-
proved by as much as six months be-
yond what would be expected. The
research team that conducted the
experiments used financial rewards
to boost performance for older stu-
dents and non-financial rewards,
such as trophies, to improve per-
formance among younger students.
Dr. Sadoff, now an assistant profes-
sor at the Rady School of Manage-
ment at the University of California,
San Diego, was part of a team that
conducted a series of experiments
involving 7,000 students in the Chi-
cago Public Schools as well as in
elementary and high school districts
in south-suburban Chicago Heights.
She worked along with John List,
the Homer J. Livingston Professor in
Economics and one of the nation’s
leading scholars of experimental
economics; Steven Levitt, the William
B. Ogden Distinguished Service Pro-
fessor in Economics at University of
Chicago; and Susanne Neckermann,
a scholar at the Center for Europe-
an Economic Research in Germany.
The students tested had low initial
motivation to do well, and thus ben-
efited from the rewards, List said. He
added that follow-up tests showed
no negative impact from removing
the rewards in successive tests. The
research helps teachers and school
leaders better understand the role
of rewards in school performance:
Ref. 1
On the whole, research shows that
reward programs can have posi-
tive effects if they are implemented
thoughtfully, carefully, and within a
set of guidelines. In order to maxi-
mize the chances of the educational
reward programs to be functional,
the rewards should be desirable,
certain and prompt.
Ref. 2
The teachers in school should likely
know which rewards would appeal
to their students and which would
mean little to them. For example,
rewarding students for mastery
of a discrete task, skill, or subject,
such as reading a book or solving a
problem, works better than reward-
ing them for performance, such as
reaching a certain benchmark on
a test. Rewarding specific actions
that students can control, such as
completing homework, yields better
results than rewarding accomplish-
ments that may seem beyond their
reach or out of their control, such
as whether they earn an A grade.
Rewards that are too large can be
counterproductive because students
may feel pressured into taking part.
However, these reward programs
enhances students’ proficiency and
growth, which leads to reducing
achievement gaps and increasing
graduation rates (Background pa-
per 2 – Can money or other rewards
motivate students?).
Things don’t always go smoothly.
Some research maintains that ex-
ternal rewards, such as stickers, toys
and gold stars, truly have a substan-
tial undermining effect on internal
motivation (Deci, Koestner & Ryan,
2001). Some of the research says the
use of external rewards can serve
as a temporary strategy to encour-
age a reluctant student to become
invested in completing school work
and demonstrating appropriate be-
haviors (Akin-Little, Eckert, Lovett, &
Little, 2004). However, once the re-
ward stops, the students come back
to their original behavior. In order to
contemplate introducing educational
reward programs in schools, I tried
to interview few educators in USA,
and presented their views as below:
An educator Jordan Shapiro, at
Temple University in Intellectual Heri-
tage Department, Philadelphia, and
who is also engrossed in EdTech and
game-based learning to humani-
ties education at the university level,
opines about the external reward
programs “I don’t have enough fa-
miliarity with WOW to comment in-
telligently. But
I’m generally
opposed to ex-
trinsic reward
systems as edu-
cational motivation. I prefer to keep
economic/commodity style rewards
out of childrens’ school experience.
There is plenty of evidence that stu-
dents learn best when they are in-
trinsically motivated to learn for the
sake of learning, not for prizes.”
Being previously a teacher at West
Adams Preparatory High School in
Los Angeles, where she also served
as the Mathematics Department
Chair and the School of Business
and Enterprise Lead Teacher, Rahila
Munshi Simzar, is presently pursuing
PhD in Educational Policy and Social
Context, at Univesity of California,
Irvine, with interests in learning, cog-
nition, and development. She says
“yes, I think it will motivate students,
but that it will motivate them in less
than ideal ways. My guess is that it
would increase extrinsic motivation
One of the Answers to Reforming Education System in USA?

3. Fall 2015 Zealousness Magazine | 15
and the adoption of performance
goals. While this might result in high-
er achievement outcomes in the short
run, it is questionable whether it will
result in other desirable outcomes
as well. I would guess that many
students would lessen their mastery
goals and would experience dives
in intrinsic beliefs. In line with the
above hypothesis, I would say that
these programs will not experience
long term benefits due to the types
of motivational beliefs they’d be en-
couraging in students. If students are
driven to perform by the presence
of a reward, it is hard to imagine
that they would continue to contrib-
ute those levels of effort to their ac-
ademic feats once the rewards are
removed. Furthermore, as intrinsic
motivation diminishes while extrinsic
takes over, I would argue that even
the students who originally engaged
in academics for the enjoyment and
mastery of learning would no lon-
ger participate in the same levels as
they might have if the rewards were
never in place. For a short term goal
(i.e. graduate rates), there might be
more optimistic results. I would imag-
ine that these rates might increase in
the presence of rewards, especially
if these rewards are set at bench-
marks along the production func-
tion towards graduation. My main
concern would be where students
were left once the rewards were re-
moved.”
Previously the National Director of
the Forum for Education and Democ-
racy, Sam Chaltain, is at present,
a national educator and organiza-
tional change consultant. The views
or the ongoing debate on external
reward programs can be studied at
Ref 3.
The rationale is that students need
short-term rewards to bridge the
gap between challenging and
seemingly meaningless school tasks
and the long term rewards that
achievement will bring. Some edu-
cators also argue that the external
rewards make a connection for those
students whose parents can’t afford
the kinds of rewards that more af-
fluent parents routinely give their
children. Studies of extrinsic rewards
program have produced mixed re-
sults, depending on which behaviors
are rewarded and how the program
is designed. Harvard economist Ro-
land G. Fryer in a working paper
published by the National Bureau
of Economic Research, conducted
one experiment in which students
were paid if they improved their
test scores (no impact), and another
experiment in which primary grade
students were paid to read books
and take quizzes on them (dramatic
increases in test scores). A key vari-
able seemed to be whether students
had control over what would produce
learning gains. It was more effective
to reward students for completing a
specific task (read this book) than
for a performance (such as reach-
ing a benchmark on a test), and us-
ing books as rewards rather than
money appeared to work better. “At
the same time,” say Usher and Ko-
ber, “poorly designed programs can
actually decrease motivation if they
are targeted at the wrong students,
or are implemented ineffectively.”
The decision about rewarding should
be based on knowledge regarding
the person to be rewarded, the tar-
get or direction, and even the timing
of the reward. Otherwise, for some

4. 16 | Zealousness Magazine Fall 2015
individuals the rewards might produce an effect dia-
metrically opposed to its intended purpose.
I conducted an interview with the corporate execu-
tive working team at Incentive Solutions, Inc. http://
www.incentivesolutions.com/ who are working part-
ners with iN Education Inc. http://ineducationonline.
org/, and their views on continuing with these reward
programs are as below:
Do these external reward programs as giving cash to
students, or rewarding them with some gifts, are re-
ally motivating the students?
The concept of rewarding (Gold Star Stickers, Smi-
ley Faces) and recognizing students (Honor Roll, Most
Likely to Succeed) not to mention a parent or guard-
ian rewarding a student for their achievements (Mon-
ey for attaining an ‘A, B or C’ grade point average)
has been around long before formal incentive com-
panies were formed. DeAndre’ and the iN Education
team http://ineducationonline.org/about/founder-
and-president have the foresight to take this concept
to the next level by partnering with the Incentive Solu-
tions team with this important initiative.
Will these programs have long term benefits?
Questions regarding this specific program are best
directed to DeAndre’ and the iN Education team.
From an incentive perspective studies have shown up
to a 22% increase in productivity when participants
are recognized and rewarded for their efforts. (The
Incentive Research Foundation – www.theirf.org) We
strongly believe that creating a habit of success and
recognition will carry through with each student long
after they have left school.
Will rewarding students would lead to increase in the
graduation rates?
DeAndre’ may have studies and/or consultant studies
to provide empirical data to address this question.
Once launched Incentive Solutions will be tracking this
and other data to evaluate the success of the pro-
gram and will make program recommendations to
maximize the desired results.
What happens when rewards stops?
The program is being structured in a way to engage
each student participant to adopt success habits that
will persist long after the student has left the program
to become a productive member of society. From this
sense, the iN Education team is providing an equal
opportunity for a lifetime of rewards beyond the
scope of this program.
The question still remains for us to decide, whether
the external reward programs as WOW Educational
Rewards Program, can be the source of motivation for
the academic development or would provide long-
term benefit to students? Will this lead to an increase
in the graduation rate in districts?
What is WOW Educational Rewards Program?
In most of the American states there are failing school
districts. In order to motivate the students to be a part
of the workforce, the Founder and President of iN Ed-
ucation, Inc., http://ineducationonline.org/ DeAndre’
L. Nixon of Ohio has started this rewards program in
education. The mission of the program would be, to
motivate the failing students or failing school districts
in achieving their best possible in the education and
earn their rewards on their own.
References:
1: http://news.uchicago.edu/article/2012/06/26/immediate-re-
wards-good-scores-can-boost-student-performance.
2 http://www.aft.org/newspubs/periodicals/ae/winter0708/will-
ingham.cfm#back4.
3. http://www.samchaltain.com/using-rewards-in-the-class-
room-short-term-crutch-or-long-term-strategy
http://www.nber.org/papers/w18165.pdf