翻译《应该掏钱让孩子在学校好好学习么？》
Should Kids Be Bribed to Do Well in School?
应该掏钱让孩子在学校好好学习么？
In junior high school, one of my classmates had a TV addiction — back before it was normal. This boy — we'll call him Ethan — was an encyclopedia of vacuous content, from The A-Team to Who's the Boss?
初中时候，我有个同学看电视上瘾——初中以前还算正常。这个男孩，我们叫他阿森，是一本无聊内容百科全书，从《天龙特攻队》到《妙管家》无所不知。
Then one day Ethan's mother made him a bold offer. If he could go a full month without watching any TV, she would give him $200. None of us thought he could do it. But Ethan quit TV, just like that. His friends offered to let him cheat at their houses on Friday nights (Miami Vice nights!). Ethan said no.
后来有一天，阿森的母亲向他提出一个大胆的建议。如果他能够一整个月不看电视，就给他两百块钱。我们都认为他做不到。但阿森就是离开电视了，就那么简单。他的朋友建议让他周五晚上（当时正在放《迈阿密风云》）在他们家里偷看电视作弊，阿森拒绝了。
One month later, Ethan's mom paid him $200. He went out and bought a TV, the biggest one he could find.
一个月后，阿森的妈妈付给他两百块钱。他出门买了一台电视机，他能找到的最大的一台。
Since there have been children, there have been adults trying to get them to cooperate. The Bible repeatedly commands children to heed their parents and proposes that disobedient children be stoned to death or at least have their eyes picked out by ravens. Over the centuries, the stick (or paddle or switch) has lost favor, in most cases, to the carrot. Today the petty bribes — a sticker for using the toilet or a cookie for sitting still in church — start before kids can speak in full sentences.
有一些孩子，有些成年人试图让他们听话。圣经一再命令孩子要听家长的话，建议不乖的孩子要被石头砸死，至少也要让乌鸦啄瞎他们的眼睛。数世纪以来，棍棒（戒尺、鞭笞）已经没人喜欢，大多数情况已改用糖果。如今，在孩子能说出囫囵句子之前，就开始使用各种小甜头了——比如一张标签纸让他们使用厕所，一份小饼干让他们在教堂安静坐下来。
In recent years, hundreds of schools have made these transactions more businesslike, experimenting with paying kids with cold, hard cash for showing up or getting good grades or, in at least one case, going another day without getting pregnant. (See pictures of kids comparing their paychecks at school.)
近年来，数以百计的学校，让这种做法更加商业化，尝试像孩子们支付现金，就为取得好成绩，至少在一种情况下，别出现孩子怀孕的那一天。（图中孩子们相互比较他们在学校的收入）
I have not met a child who does not admire this trend. But it makes adults profoundly uncomfortable. Teachers complain that we are rewarding kids for doing what they should be doing of their own volition. Psychologists warn that money can actually make kids perform worse by cheapening the act of learning. Parents predict widespread slacking after the incentives go away. And at least one think-tank scholar has denounced the strategy as racist. The debate has become a proxy battle for the larger war over why our kids are not learning at the rate they should be despite decades of reforms and budget increases.
我见到的每一个孩子都羡慕这种做法。但这让成年人深感不安。教师抱怨说，我们正在奖励孩子们做他们应该自愿做的事情。心理学家警告说，钱可以实实在在的让孩子们贬低学习行为，表现糟糕。家长担心奖励消失后会出现普遍的懈怠。起码有一位智库学者谴责这种策略为种族主义。这场争论已经变成一场更大战争的前沿战，即为什么我们孩子的学习没有达到他们应该达到的水准上？尽管几十年来政府预算和教育改革日益增多。
But all this time, there has been only one real question, particularly in America's lowest-performing schools: Does it work?
但是一直以来，只出现了一个真正的问题，尤其是在美国表现最差的学校中：有用么？
To find out, a Harvard economist named Roland Fryer Jr. did something education researchers almost never do: he ran a randomized experiment in hundreds of classrooms in multiple cities. He used mostly private money to pay 18,000 kids a total of $6.3 million and brought in a team of researchers to help him analyze the effects. He got death threats, but he carried on. The results, which he shared exclusively with TIME, represent the largest study of financial incentives in the classroom — and one of the more rigorous studies ever on anything in education policy. (See Roland Fryer Jr. in the 2009 TIME 100.)
为了找到答案，哈佛大学经济学家怀若澜，做了教育研究者几乎从未做过的事情：他在数座城市的数百教室随机展开实验。他一共支付六百三十万美元给一万八千名孩子，这些钱绝大部分都是私人的钱，并带来一队研究者帮助他分析其影响。他受到死亡威胁，但他坚持下来了。他只与时代杂志分享他的结果，这一结果意味着有关课堂中金钱奖励的最大研究，也是教育政策方面最严格的研究之一。（参见二〇〇九年《时代一百人》之怀若澜）
The experiment ran in four cities: Chicago, Dallas, Washington and New York. Each city had its own unique model of incentives, to see which would work best. Some kids were paid for good test scores, others for not fighting with one another. The results are fascinating and surprising. They remind us that kids, like grownups, are not puppets. They don't always respond the way we expect.
该实验在四座城市展开：芝加哥，达拉斯，华盛顿和纽约。每座城市都有其独特的激励模式，看哪种最有效。一些孩子因其优秀考试分数而获得报酬，一些则因为没有和别人打架。结果是迷人的、令人惊讶的。他们提醒我们，孩子和成年人一样，并不是傀儡。他们并不总是如我们所期。
In the city where Fryer expected the most success, the experiment had no effect at all — "as zero as zero gets," as he puts it. In two other cities, the results were promising but in totally different ways. In the last city, something remarkable happened. Kids who got paid all year under a very elegant scheme performed significantly better on their standardized reading tests at the end of the year. Statistically speaking, it was as if those kids had spent three extra months in school, compared with their peers who did not get paid.
在怀若澜以为最成功的城市，实验根本就没其作用——如他所说的那样，“根本就没有任何收获”。在另外两座城市，结果尚有希望，但是两种完全不同的结果。在最后一座城市，发生了一些异乎寻常的事情。一整年处在一套非常漂亮的支付方案下的孩子们，年末标准化阅读测试中的表现明显变好。就统计而言，相比于那些没有得到报酬的同龄孩子，就像这些孩子在学校多学了三个月。
"These are substantial effects, as large as many other interventions that people have thought to be successful," says Brian Jacob, a University of Michigan public-policy and economics professor who has studied incentives and who reviewed Fryer's study at TIME's request. If incentives are designed wisely, it appears, payments can indeed boost kids' performance as much as or more than many other reforms you've heard about before — and for a fraction of the cost.
密歇根大学的公共政策和经济学教授贾汴说：“这些都是重大影响，与人们认为成功的其他干预一样重大。”他也曾经研究激励，并审查怀若澜根据时代杂志请求所做的研究。似乎，如果激励机制设计得当，付钱的确可以改善孩子们的表现，达到或超出你以前听过的其他教改措施所达到的水平，而且只需要一小部分花费。
Money is not enough. (It never is.) But for some kids, it may be part of the solution. In the end, we all want our children to grow into self-motivated adults. The question is, How do we help them get there? And is it possible that at least for some kids, the road is paved not with stickers but with $20 bills?
钱不是万能的（永远都不是）。但是对于某些孩子，有可能是解决方案的一部分。最后，我们都希望我们的孩子成长为自我激励的成年人。问题是，我们如何帮助他们成长？至少对于某些孩子而言，有可能的是，不用标签纸而用二十美元就可以把道路铺平呢？Fryer runs an education-innovation laboratory that has a staff of 17 and an annual budget of about $6 million. His goal is to use the scientific method to figure out how to close the learning gap between America's white and minority kids by the year 2025. When I visit Fryer at his Harvard lab this spring, he hands me an agenda for the day and proudly introduces me to his team. For the next three hours, as we talk about the experiment, Fryer is charming and intense, occasionally lapsing into economist speak and then apologizing for being a "nerd." (Comment on this story.)
怀若澜运作一所教育创新实验室，有十七名员工和大约六百万美元的年度预算。他的目标是用科学的方法找出办法，到二〇二五年，消除美国白人和少数民族孩子之间的学习差距。今年春天我在哈佛造访怀若澜的实验室，他递给我当天的日程安排，自豪地向我介绍他的团队。在接下来的三个小时里，我们谈及这项实验，怀若澜迷人而热情，偶尔也会陷入经济学家的口吻，然后为自己是个书呆子而道歉。（有关这个故事的评论）But Fryer's fascination with the lives and choices of kids is not entirely academic. He grew up poor in Texas, where he lived with his dad, a copier salesman. When Fryer was 16, his dad was arrested for sexual assault and Fryer had to bail him out of jail.
但是，怀若澜的魅力在于在生活中选择了孩子，而不仅仅是因为学术。他出身于德州贫困家庭，他与父亲生活在一起，他父亲是个复印机推销员。怀若澜十六岁的时候，他父亲因为性侵犯而被捕，怀若澜不得不保释其出狱。Meanwhile, Fryer raised himself, and not very well. He got a job at McDonald's and stole from the cash register. He sold marijuana and carried a .357 Magnum for a while. But he was fiercely competitive on the basketball court and the football field, and that's where he excelled, earning a basketball scholarship to the University of Texas at Arlington.
与此同时，怀若澜不断提升自己，但是效果不是很好。他在麦当劳得到一份工作，却从收银机里偷钱。他卖过一阵子大麻，带一把点三五七马格努姆手枪。但是他在篮球场和美式足球场上的强悍作风，正是他的优秀之处，为他赢得了德州大学阿灵顿分校的篮球奖学金。In his first semester of college, Fryer took a calculus class. On his initial exam, he scored 45 out of 100. "My friends started calling me Colt 45," he remembers. The failure enraged him, and his pride kicked in. "I didn't want to be like everyone else from my neighborhood," he says.
在他读大学的第一个学期，怀若澜选择了一门微积分课程。在第一次考试，他只得了百分之四十五分。他回忆说：“我的朋友开始叫我外号四十五，”失败激怒了他，他的骄傲踢打着他，“我不想成为我邻居那些人。”Fryer started working hard in school for the first time. He graduated in two and a half years with an economics degree. Then he got his Ph.D. at Penn State University, where he began to use the tools of economics to study the problems of inequality. He joined Harvard's faculty at age 26, a case study in the power of shifting motivations.
怀若澜第一次在学校开始努力工作。他两年半后毕业，取得经济学学位。接下来在宾州州立大学取得博士学位，在那里他开始运用经济学工具研究不平等的问题。二十六岁与哈佛大学教师一道研究转移动机的能力的案例。At Harvard, Fryer heard about a school in New York City that was trying to incentivize kids on a small scale. The idea appealed to him because, unlike reforms focused on the teacher or the curriculum, it treated kids not as inanimate objects but as human beings who behave in interesting ways. But he had no idea if it would work.
在哈佛，怀若澜听说了纽约城里一所学校，尝试小规模用物质刺激激励孩子。这个想法吸引着他，因为这不同于关注教师和课程的教改，这个想法没有把孩子当成死物对待，而是当成举止有趣的活人。但是他不知道是否有用。In 2005 he persuaded Gavin Samms, a friend and Harvard colleague, to go to New York City with him to try to sign up some schools for a pilot program. "We didn't know anything about what we were doing," Fryer says. They couldn't afford to stay in New York, so they stayed at a hotel in the Meadowlands — a grim tract of wetlands in New Jersey. Then they drove around to pitch the idea to principals.
二〇〇五年，他说服桑嘉文，是他的朋友和哈佛大学的同事，与他一同去纽约城为一个试点项目与一些学校签订合同。怀若澜说：“关于我们要做的事情，我们并不知道任何东西。”他们没钱呆在纽约，因此他们呆在梅多兰兹的一家宾馆，这是新泽西州的一片阴冷的沼泽地带。然后他们四处驱车游说校长们。One day while they were visiting a school, they got a call from the school system's headquarters, which had originally approved their project. "They said, 'You gotta leave now,' " Samms remembers. " 'You gotta leave the schools.' " Fryer protested, but he lost. "It was just too political," he says. "It was an election year. They'd already gotten letters saying, 'You can't be paying kids.' "
有一天当他们参观某所学校时，他们收到当地教育局的电话，教育局最初赞同他们的项目。桑嘉文回忆说：“他们说，‘你们必须离开。你们得离开这些学校。’”怀若澜表示抗议，但是无效。他说：“这也太政治化了。那是一年选举年。有人给他们写信说，‘你们不能付钱给孩子们！’”New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein doesn't remember kicking Fryer out, but he concedes that the program was contentious. "When people want to try new and different things in education," Klein says, "it will always stir up controversy."
纽约市教育局长冷乔不记得驱逐过怀若澜，但他承认该项目惹人争议。冷乔说：“当人们想要在教育界尝试新的不同的东西，总是能引起争论。”In January 2007, after the mayoral election had come and gone, Fryer returned to New York — this time with a more audacious plan. He wanted to create a treatment group and a control group, just like a real scientist. And he had a $2 million grant from the Broad Foundation, which had taken an interest in Fryer because of the scientific rigor of his approach.
二〇〇七年一月，经历过匆匆来去的市长选举，怀若澜回到纽约，这次带着一项更加大胆的计划。他想建立起实验组和对照组，就像真正的科学家一样。他从布罗德基金会获得两百万美元赠款，该基金会对他感兴趣是因为他的方法有着科学家的严谨。This time, Fryer wanted to get a random sample of city schools to participate. Which is not as easy as it sounds. At some schools, the principal and teachers opened their arms wide and said, "Sure. We're struggling here. We'll try anything." At others, Fryer had to spend hours pleading with staff who felt kids should learn for the love of learning — not for the cash. "To this day, I can't tell you what will predict one or the other," he says. "I could walk into a completely failing school, with crack vials on the ground outside, and say, 'Hey, I went to a school like this, and I want to help.' And people would just browbeat me about 'the love of learning,' and I would be like, 'But I just stepped on crack vials out there! There are fights in the hallways! We're beyond that.' "
这次，怀若澜希望得到一所城市学校的随机样本参与实验。这并不像听起来那么容易。在某些学校，校长和教师张开双臂欢迎：“当然可以。我们在这里苦苦挣扎。我们愿意尝试任何东西。”其他一些学校，怀若澜不得不花费大量时间恳求那些觉得孩子应该学习对学习的热爱而不是金钱的员工。他说：“迄今为止，我无法猜到谁会答应谁会拒绝。我走进一所完全失败的学校，室外坪场上满是碎玻璃瓶，我说，‘嗨，我想要这样一所学校，我想帮助你们。’人们只想用‘对学习的热爱’吓唬我，我会这样说，‘我在外面只看到满地的碎玻璃瓶！走廊上有人在打架！让我们做得更好些吧’”Eventually, Fryer and his team got 143 schools to sign up. About half would be randomly selected as a control group, meaning the kids would not be paid. In the other half, students would earn money for their performance on 10 routine tests given throughout the year.
最后，怀若澜及其团队与一百四十三所学校签订了合同。大约一半被随机选作对照组，这意味着这些孩子不会得到报酬。另外一半，学生将为其在全年十项例行测试中的表现赚取金钱。The summer before the experiment began, a New York Daily News reporter heard about the plan. The story, headlined "It's a Cash Course," quoted an antitesting activist who called the plan "horrendous." One of Fryer's other funders pulled half a million dollars. Fryer got kicked out of the schools again, he says. This time, Klein took him to a Yankees game. A few days later, Fryer was allowed back in the schools. But he started waking up at 3 a.m. to check the newspapers.
实验开始前的夏天，纽约《每日新闻》记者听到这项计划。报道的标题写着“这是一门现金课程”，引用一位反对考试活动家的话说，这项计划是“极其可怕的”。怀若澜说，一位资助者抽走了一百万美元，他再次被这些学校赶走。这次，冷乔带他去看了一场洋基队的比赛。几天之后，怀若澜获准回到学校。但是他开始早上三点钟起床检查报纸。The anger was not something Fryer had anticipated. "I totally underestimated how pissed off people would be because of this," he says. "This is exactly the kind of R&D education needs. I never said it was going to solve all education problems. I just thought it deserved to be tested." (See the 10 best college presidents.)
怀若澜并不总是能预料到愤怒。他说：“我完全低估了人们会因此产生多大的愤怒。这正是这类教育研发所需要的。我从不说它会解决所有教育问题。我只是觉得它值得一试。”（见十位最好的大学校长）The most damning criticism of Fryer came from psychologists like the University of Rochester's Edward Deci, who has spent his career studying motivation. Deci has found that money — like other tangible rewards — does not work very well to motivate people over the long term, particularly for tasks that involve creativity. In fact, there is a lot of evidence that rewards can have the perverse effect of making people perform worse.
对怀若澜最强烈的批评来自罗切斯特大学的心理学家德西爱华，他的职业就是研究动机。德西发现金钱——或者其他有形的回报——并不能很好的长时间激励人，尤其是对那些需要创造力的任务。事实上，有很多证据表明，物质奖励会带来坏影响，让人们表现糟糕。A classic experiment in support of this hypothesis took place at a nursery school at Stanford University in the early 1970s. There, researchers divided 51 toddlers into groups. All the kids were asked to draw a picture with markers. But one group was told in advance that they would get a special reward — a certificate with a gold star and a red ribbon — in exchange for their work. The kids did the drawings, and the ones in the treatment group got their certificates.
支持这一假说的经典实验发生在一九七〇年代的斯坦福大学幼儿园。在那里，研究者将五十一名幼儿分成若干组。所有孩子被要求用彩笔画一幅画。其中一个组事先被告知他们将会获得一份特殊奖励，一份带有金色星星的证书和一条红色绶带，以支付他们的工作。孩子们画画，实验组的孩子们得到了他们的证书。A few weeks later, the researchers observed the children through a one-way mirror on a normal school day. They found that the kids who had received the award spent half as much time drawing for fun as those who had not been rewarded. The reward, it seemed, diminished the act of drawing. So instead of giving kids gold stars, Deci says, we should teach them to derive intrinsic pleasure from the task itself. "What we really want is for people to value the activity of learning," he says. People of all ages perform better and work harder if they are actually enjoying the work — not just the reward that comes later.
几周之后，研究人员通过单向镜观察了学校的正常一天。他们发现得到报酬的孩子们花费在为乐趣而画画的时间，只有那些没有得到报酬的孩子的一半。看起来，报酬减少了画画的行为。德西说，因此我们不应该给孩子们小星星，我们应该教他们从任务本身获得内在乐趣。他说：“我们真正想要的，是让人们评价学习活动。”各年龄段的人们表现更好、工作更努力，只要他们真的享受工作，而不是为了随后而来的报酬。In principle, Fryer agrees. "Kids should learn for the love of learning," he says. "But they're not. So what shall we do?" Most teenagers do not look at their math homework the way toddlers look at a blank piece of paper. It would be wonderful if they did. Maybe one day we will all approach our jobs that way. But until then, most adults work primarily for money, and in a curious way, we seem to be holding kids to a higher standard than we hold ourselves.
怀若澜从原则上表示同意。他说：“孩子们应该学习对学习的热爱。但是他们并没有。那么我们应该做些什么？”大多数青少年看到他们的数学家庭作业，不像幼儿看到一张白纸那样欣喜。真要这样那倒很好。也许有一天我们都能像这样做我们的工作。但是在那之前，大多数成年人主要是为了钱而工作，奇怪的是，我们似乎把孩子放在一个比我们更高的标准上了。In the fall of 2007, the New York City experiment began. Fourth-graders could earn a maximum of $25 per test, and seventh-graders could earn up to $50 per test. To participate, kids had to get their parents' permission — and 82% of them did. Most of them also opened savings accounts so the money could be directly deposited into them. Meanwhile, Fryer and his team found other testing grounds. In Chicago, Fryer worked with schools chief Arne Duncan, now President Obama's Education Secretary, to design a program to reward ninth-graders for good grades. Over beer and pizza in a South Side bowling alley, they sketched out a plan to pay kids $50 for each A, $35 for a B and $20 for a C, up to $2,000 a year. But half of their earnings would be set aside in an account, to be redeemed only upon high school graduation.
二〇〇七年秋天，纽约市的实验开始启动。四年级学生每次考试最多可以赚取二十五美元，七年级学生每次考试最多可以赚取五十美元。要参与实验，孩子必须得到家长的许可——百分之八十二都得到了。他们大多数还开设存储账户，这样可以直接把钱转给他们。同时，怀若澜及其团队寻找其他实验场地。在芝加哥，怀若澜与督学长邓肯庵，现任奥巴马政府教育部长，共同设计一套方案，奖励九年级学生的好成绩。在南岸保龄球馆灌了一通啤酒和比萨饼，他们勾画出了一份计划，为每个获得优秀的孩子支付五十美元，良好三十五美元，中等二十美元，一年两千元封顶。但是他们收入的一半会被存入一个账户，高中毕业的时候才能取回。In Washington, middle schoolers would be paid for a portfolio of five different metrics, including attendance and good behavior. If they hit perfect marks in every category, they could make $100 every two weeks. Schools in Dallas got the simplest scheme and the one targeting the youngest children: every time second-graders read a book and successfully completed a computerized quiz about it, they earned $2. Straightforward — and cheap. The average earning would turn out to be about $14 (for seven books read) per year.
在华盛顿，初中生将按照五种不同指标的组合获得报酬，其中包括出勤和良好行为。如果他们每个类别都得到满分，他们就可以每两周拿到一百美元。达拉斯的学校采用最简单的方案，目标是最年幼的孩子：二年级学生每读一本书，并完成相关的计算机测试，就可以赚取两美元。直接且便宜。平均每年能得到大约十四美元的收入（阅读七本书）。The early feedback was promising. Principals were lobbying to get their schools switched out of the control group and into the treatment group. Parents began using the paychecks as progress reports, contacting teachers to find out why their kids' checks had gone up or down. In Chicago, Duncan discovered that the program affected kids in ways he'd never expected. "I remember going to schools and seeing how excited the kids were when they got their checks. They were like pep rallies — but around academic success!" he says. Fryer appeared on The Colbert Report and CNN to talk about the experiment, and that's about when the death threats started. All the while, Fryer refused to speculate about what the data would reveal. He was not all that interested in whether the kids raised their grades or turned in their homework. Grades are subjective. The more objective measure would come at the end of the year, when the students took their standardized tests. Would they improve more than the kids who were not getting paid? Or would they, as the psychologists predicted, actually do worse? "If it doesn't work, we're going to stop and start doing something else," says Washington schools chancellor Michelle Rhee. "But if it does work, it should drive where we put our money." (Watch Michelle Rhee talk about D.C. schools.)
早期的反馈是有希望的。校长们游说把他们的学校换出对照组，加入实验组。家长们开始把薪水支票当成进度报告，联系老师弄清楚为什么他们孩子的支票会上升下跌。在芝加哥，邓肯庵发现该项目会以他从未想到的方式影响孩子。他说：“我记得我来到学校，看到孩子们领取自己的支票时有多兴奋。他们就像参加了赛前动员会——但这次是冲着学术胜利去的！”怀若澜出现在《柯尔伯特报告》，并在CNN上谈及这项实验，于是死亡威胁开始了。怀若澜一直都拒绝猜测哪些数据会泄露出来。他并不是只关注孩子们是否提高了等级或者上交了家庭作业。等级是主观的。更为可观的评价措施将在年底实施，届时学生将参加标准化考试。他们会比没有拿报酬的孩子进步更多么？或者如心理学家所预言的，他们实际上表现得更差？华盛顿特区教育局长李美姬说：“如果该项目没有用，我们就会停止它，然后开始其他实验。但如果有效，我们将为它投入更多钱。”（看李美姬谈及特区学校）The results began to trickle into the lab last summer. In New York City, the $1.5 million paid to 8,320 kids for good test scores did not work — at least not in any way that's easy to measure. In Chicago, under a different model, the kids who earned money for grades attended class more often and got better grades, two major accomplishments. Those students did not, however, do better on their standardized tests at the end of the year.
去年夏天，结果开始源源不断汇入实验室。在纽约，为良好考试成绩向八千三百二十名孩子支付一百五十万美元，却没有作用——至少在任何他们容易衡量的方面没有作用。在芝加哥，采用不同的模型，孩子们赚钱主要靠两个方面，更频繁的上课和取得更好的等级。然而，这些学生在年底的标准化测试当中并没有表现出更好。In Washington, the kids did better on standardized reading tests. Getting paid on a routine basis for a series of small accomplishments, including attendance and behavior, seemed to lead to more learning for those kids. And in Dallas, the experiment produced the most dramatic gains of all. Paying second-graders to read books significantly boosted their reading-comprehension scores on standardized tests at the end of the year — and those kids seemed to continue to do better the next year, even after the rewards stopped.
在华盛顿特区，孩子们在标准化阅读测试中表现更好。因为包括出勤和行为习惯在内的日常活动的一系列小小成就而获取报酬，似乎会让这些孩子学习更多东西。在达拉斯，试验取得了非常惊人的成果。为二年级学生阅读书籍支付报酬，显著提高了他们在年底的标准化测试中的阅读理解分数，并且这些孩子似乎在下一年会做得更好，甚至在停止付给报酬之后。The kids had much in common. In all four cities, a majority were African American or Hispanic and from low-income families. So why did the results vary so dramatically from city to city?
孩子们有许多共同之处。在这四座城市，大部分是非裔、拉丁裔或来自低收入家庭。所以，为什么城市之间的结果变化会如此显著？One clue came out of the interviews Fryer's team conducted with students in New York City. The students were universally excited about the money, and they wanted to earn more. They just didn't seem to know how. When researchers asked them how they could raise their scores, the kids mentioned test-taking strategies like reading the questions more carefully. But they didn't talk about the substantive work that leads to learning. "No one said they were going to stay after class and talk to the teacher," Fryer says. "Not one."
怀若澜的团队在纽约访谈学生时，一条线索浮现出来。学生普遍对钱很感兴趣，他们想要赚取更多。他们似乎只是不知道怎么做。当研究人员问及他们如何去提高成绩时，孩子们提及应试策略如更仔细的阅读题目。但他们并没有谈到促进学习的实质性工作。怀若澜说：“没人说他们打算在课后留下来同老师谈谈，一个也没有。”We tend to assume that kids (and adults) know how to achieve success. If they don't get there, it's for lack of effort — or talent. Sometimes that's true. But a lot of the time, people are just flying blind. John List, an economist at the University of Chicago, has noticed the disconnect in his own education experiments. He explains the problem to me this way: "I could ask you to solve a third-order linear partial differential equation," he says. "A what?" I ask. "A third-order linear partial differential equation," he says. "I could offer you a million dollars to solve it. And you can't do it." (He's right. I can't.) For some kids, doing better on a geometry test is like solving a third-order linear partial differential equation, no matter the incentive.
我们倾向于假设孩子们（以及成年人）知道如何实现成功。如果他们没有成功，那是不够努力——或者缺乏天赋。有些人的确如此。但大多数时候，人们仅仅是在四处瞎撞。芝加哥大学的经济学家黎强，他注意到他的教育实验中这种脱离现象。他这样向我解释这个问题：“我可以请你解决一个三阶线性偏微分方程。”我问：“一个什么？”他说：“三阶线性偏微分方程，我可以为你提供一百万美元去解决它。但是你仍然还解不出。”（他是对的，我解不出。）对于某些孩子，在几何考试中要做的更好，就像去解三阶线性偏微分方程，跟奖励是没有关系的。Similarly, in Chicago, kids were paid for grades — a result they could not always control. There, the findings were mixed. Kids who got paid did indeed get better grades, and they also attended class more — a week and a half more over the school year. That is a big deal, since nearly half of Chicago's high school kids drop out before they graduate and the kids who skip school and fail courses as freshmen tend to be the ones who drop out. We won't know until 2012 if the experiment lowered the dropout rate, but we do know that the rewards did not raise standardized-test scores.
同样，在芝加哥，根据评分等级向孩子们支付报酬——他们无法一直控制结果。而最终结果是好坏参半。那些获得报酬的孩子的确获得更好的等级，进课堂听课的次数也更多，一学年能多出一周半以上。这是个大问题，因为几乎将近一半的芝加哥高中孩子都在毕业前辍学，那些高一就开始逃学和考试不及格的孩子更有可能辍学。我们不知道，到了二〇一二年该实验是否能降低辍学率，但是我们知道奖励并不能提高标准化考试分数。So what happens if we pay kids to do tasks they know how to do? In Dallas, paying kids to read books — something almost all of them can do — made a big difference. In fact, the experiment had as big or bigger an effect on learning as many other reforms that have been tested, like lowering class size or enrolling kids in Head Start early-education programs (both of which cost thousands of dollars more per student). And the experiment also boosted kids' grades. "If you pay a kid to read books, their grades go up higher than if you actually pay a kid for grades, like we did in Chicago," Fryer says. "Isn't that cool?"
那么，如果我们付钱让孩子们完成任务，而他们有知道如何去做，会发生什么？在达拉斯，付钱让孩子们读书——几乎所有孩子都能做的事情——造成了巨大的差别。事实上，这项实验相比于试验过的其他许多教改——比如小班制、抢步教育计划注册学生（这两项都在每个学生身上花费数千美元），对学习产生了较大的影响。本项实验也提高了学生的等级评分。怀若澜说：“如果你付钱让孩子读书，比起你直接为其成绩付钱，他们的等级评分提得更高，就像我们在芝加哥做的那样。这不是很酷么？”It may also help that the kids in Dallas were the youngest in the experiment, making them more receptive to reforms. It's hard to know for sure. Another caveat is that the Dallas model worked differently on different kids. Most (including Hispanic kids and poor kids) did better when they were being paid. But the ones who spoke very little English and took their standardized tests in Spanish did not benefit from the incentives, a mystery that Fryer addresses at some length in his study but cannot entirely explain. (See pictures of Detroit schoolkids sharing their dreams for the future.)
达拉斯的孩子在实验中最年幼，这也许有所助益，让他们更容易接受改革。这很难确定。另一个需要注意的是，达拉斯模型因人而异。大多数（包括拉丁裔孩子和贫穷孩子）在得到报酬的时候做的更好。但是几乎不会说英语、使用西班牙语完成标准化考试的孩子并没有从奖励中获得益处，这个谜题怀若澜在其研究中有所解决，但不能完全解释。（参见图片：底特律小学生分享未来的梦想）Meanwhile, in Washington, each school got to choose three of the payment metrics, and some of the elements ended up being outcomes like test scores. But the students were also paid on the basis of attendance and behavior — two actions that are under their direct control. Under this hybrid model, the kids who got paid did better on their standardized reading tests. Because of the small size of the school system, the Washington sample was less well balanced than those in the other cities. But its results contain one remarkable finding: the kids who were helped the most by the experiment were the ones who are normally among the hardest to reach. "The typical reform helps girls more than it helps boys," Fryer says. "[This] is the opposite. In D.C., all the results are being driven by the boys. That's fascinating."
与此同时，在华盛顿，每所学校都可以选择三种付款标准，其中一些内容最终会成为最终结果，比如考试成绩。但是学生也会因为出勤和行为获得报酬——这两种活动都直接处于他们直接控制之下。在这种混合模式下，拿到报酬的孩子，标准化阅读考试做得比以往更好。因为学校体制规模较小，华盛顿样本比其它城市更不均衡。但其结果包含着一个显著发现：在这项实验中获得帮助最多的孩子，是那些平时最难接触到的群体。“典型的教改对女孩的助益多于男孩。在特区恰好相反，所有结果都是由男孩子驱动的。这实在令人着迷。”When I talked with Washington students, teachers and principals about the experiment, they appeared to have very low expectations for its long-term impact. Many of them, speaking from experience, seemed to think that nothing as simple as money could reach a certain hard core of kids. "The children we had challenges with before, we still have challenges with," says Vealetta Moore-Parker, a guidance counselor who runs the incentives program at Burroughs Education Campus.
当我与华盛顿的学生教师及校长们谈论这项实验的时候，他们对其长远影响表现出非常低的期望。他们中间许多人，从经验上讲，似乎认为，没有什么东西可以像钱那样可以轻易直达孩子最核心的部分。魏列达说：“我们过去要和孩子作斗争，现在依然如此。”他是巴勒斯教育校园奖励计划的辅导教师。Nevertheless, according to Fryer's results, kids with a history of serious behavioral problems saw the biggest gains in test scores overall. Their reading scores shot up 0.4 standard deviations, which is roughly the equivalent of five additional months of schooling.
不过，根据怀若澜的结果，过去有一系列行为问题的孩子在综合考试成绩上具有最大的收益。他们的阅读分数飙升0.4个标准差，这大致相当于多学五个月的学校教育。Kids may respond better to rewards for specific actions because there is less risk of failure. They can control their attendance; they cannot necessarily control their test scores. The key, then, may be to teach kids to control more overall — to encourage them to act as if they can indeed control everything, and reward that effort above and beyond the actual outcome.
孩子们对针对具体行为的奖励做出更好的反应，因为失败的风险更小。他们可以控制自己的出勤，他们不一定能控制自己的考试分数。那么，关键在于，可能需要教会孩子更全面的控制——鼓励他们做事的时候权当自己真的能够控制一切，然后奖励这种努力，而非实际结果。The Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), one of the most successful charter-school networks in the U.S., has been doling out financial incentives for 15 years, using a model that happens to align perfectly with the results of Fryer's study. KIPP students get paid for actions they can control — getting to school on time, participating in class and having a positive attitude — with "money" they can redeem for supplies at the school store. Over the years, KIPP leaders, who now run 82 schools nationwide, have learned a lot about which rewards work and which do not. They have found that speed matters, for example. Recognition, like punishment, works best if it happens quickly. So KIPP schools pay their kids every week. (Interestingly, the two places Fryer's experiment worked best were the ones where kids got feedback fast — through biweekly paychecks in Washington and through passing computerized quizzes in Dallas.)
知识就是力量计划（KIPP），美国最成功的特许学校网络之一，少量发放财务奖励已有十五年，使用的模型完美符合了怀若澜的研究结果。知识就是力量计划学生从其可以控制的行为当中获得报酬——按时到校、参与课堂、积极态度。他们可以用“钱”在学校商店兑换用品。多年来，知识就是力量计划领导人，现在全国范围内运作八十二所学校，了解很多奖励可以做到和不可以做到的知识。他们发现，速度问题，比如认可，如惩罚，只要发生的够快就非常有效果。因此知识就是力量计划学校每周付给学生报酬。（有趣的是，怀若澜实验最好的两处地方都是孩子们得到反馈最快的地方——在华盛顿两周付给一次支票，达拉斯两周一次计算机化测验。）Just like grownups, kids need different kinds of incentives to get through the day, some highbrow and some low, some short-term, some longer-term. And money and other external rewards can be a gateway to more substantive motivators. KIPP fifth-graders get a lot of prizes like pencils; high school kids can earn freedoms — like the privilege of listening to their iPods at lunch. "Our ultimate goal is to get kids to be intrinsically motivated," says Joshua Zoia, who founded the KIPP Academy in Lynn, Mass. "But we have to get kids hooked in. We have to meet them where they are."
跟成年人一样，孩子们需要不同类型的激励，才能度过一天，有人高雅，有人低俗，有人看重短期，有人看重长期。金钱和其他外部奖励可以通往更实质性的激励。知识就是力量计划五年级学生获得大量铅笔之类的奖励；高中学生可以赢取自由——比如在吃饭的时候听音乐播放器的特权。左约书说：“我们的终极目标是让孩子们有内在驱动力。但是我们必须去拉拢孩子们。我们必须去迎合他们。”他创立了马萨诸塞州林城知识就是力量计划研究学会。When Fryer briefed Rhee, the Washington schools chancellor, about the results, she was shocked — happily so. "It is just so hard to show impact in education," Rhee says, citing past experiments that showed no payoff despite enormous effort. "We don't see results like this for a lot of other things we're doing," she says. So she went to the Washington city council to ask for more money to keep paying kids — and to keep studying what happens. "If next year's data show something different, so be it," Rhee says. "We'll take it year by year." The program has wound down in Chicago, Dallas and New York City, although schools in all three places continue to experiment with incentives.
怀若澜在向华盛顿特区教育局长李美姬简单介绍研究结果的时候，他惊喜无比。他说：“要展示教育效果非常困难。”他同时引用过去的实验，尽管付出巨大努力但是没有显示出一点收获。他说：“在我们正在做的其他事情上面，我们没有见过像这样的结果。”因此他前往华盛顿议会，申请更多金钱向孩子们支付报酬，并继续研究会发生什么。他说：“如果明年的数据显示有所变化，我们就顺其自然。我们将会一年年继续下去。”该项目在芝加哥、达拉斯和纽约表现不好，尽管这三处的学校会继续实验奖励。Fryer believes there's more good research to be done on incentives. But he doesn't think incentives alone can fix our schools; he is increasingly convinced that the answer will involve a combination of reforms and that the interaction among those reforms will matter more than any single change in isolation. And whatever we do, he says, we have to test it first — and fearlessly. "One thing we cannot do is, we cannot restrict ourselves to a set of solutions that make adults comfortable."
怀若澜相信，在激励方面有更好的研究等待去做。但是他不认为单独奖励就可以解决我们学校的问题，他越来越相信答案将会涉及若干教改的结合，并且教改之间的互动产生的问题远比任何孤立教改更多。他说，不管我们做什么，我们都必须先做实验，大胆地去做。“有一件事是我们不能做的，那就是我们不能为了成年人的方便而限制自己的解决方案。”Chyna is an eighth-grader at the Takoma Education Campus in Washington. Chyna likes to refer to herself in the third person, and when you ask her a personal question, she looks you dead in the eye, asks, "Honestly?" and waits for you to reply before giving you her answer.
秦娜是华盛顿州塔科马教育校园八年级学生。秦娜喜欢用第三人称指代自己，当你问及个人问题，他紧紧盯着你的眼睛，问：“说实话？”等待你的回答，否则不会回答你的问题。Chyna wants to be a lawyer or a radio personality when she grows up. But last year she had a hard time. She and a friend got into a fight with another girl at school. "We basically jumped her," Chyna admits. The police came, and Chyna found herself in a juvenile-detention center, waiting for her mom to pick her up.
秦娜想要长大后成为律师或者广播名人。但是他去年很艰难。他和一个朋友卷入了与同学另一女生的斗殴。秦娜承认：“我们基本上是在群殴他。”警察来了，秦娜被关进少年拘留中心等待他妈妈接他出去。This year is going better. When I meet her, she has just received her regular paycheck. She earned $95, her highest check yet. She squeals with happiness and hugs her girlfriends. When I ask her how she did it, she says, "I tried my hardest." She adds, "I tried to wear my uniform, because I knew I wanted some money because my birthday is next week." She has saved her past four paychecks for this reason. The money, she says, gives her just enough incentive to hold her tongue.
今年正在转好。我见到他的时候，他刚拿到他的固定工资。他赚了九十五美元，也是他的最高收入。他幸福的尖叫着，拥抱他的朋友。当我问及他如何做到的，他说：“我尽了我的最大努力。”他补充道：“我试着穿我的校服，因为我知道我想要一些钱，因为下周就是我的生日。”因为这个原因他把过去四次收入都存下来了。他说，这些钱，有足够的动机让他安静下来。"For the most part, I'm still Chyna," she says. "But once in a while I just snatch it back, 'cause I know that paycheck is coming." Then I ask her about the psychologists' argument that she should work hard for the love of learning, not for short-term rewards. "Honestly?" she asks. "Yes, honestly," I say. She looks me dead in the eye. "We're kids. Let's be realistic."
他说：“在大多数情况下，我仍然是秦娜，但是偶尔我会收心，因为我知道要付薪水了。”然后我问及他对心理学家的观点的看法，即他应该为了对学习的热爱而努力工作，不要为了短期奖励而工作。他问我：“说实话？”我说：“是的，说实话。”他紧紧盯着我的眼睛，说：“我们还是孩子。现实点吧。”Find this article at:
本文原文出处：http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1978589,00.html
怀若澜原始论文：
http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/papers_fryer
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