For Immediate Release

UFT President Randi Weingarten on Cash Incentives for Student Performance: June 18, 2007

Jun 18, 2007 12:22 PM

“Teachers are always rewarding students for making an effort and therefore would be open to cash rewards for students striving for perfect attendance, displaying good behavior or reading a certain number of books within the school year. But paying students for attaining a particular score on an assessment test won’t fairly reward students who try their best but still fall a few points short of what’s needed for the award. In fact, it might prove counterproductive by frustrating those students to the point that they give up. So we have to be careful about the signals we send to kids. Incentives are fine as long as the gains are linked to effort rather than a hard and fast test result.”