Maclean’s Interview: Roland Fryer

Q: Now you’re studying pay-for-performance, this idea of giving kids cash rewards or cellphone minutes if they get good grades. Is one of the animating principles of that research to rebrand academic achievement and make it cool?

A: That was a by-product. The program really was built because when I first showed up at Harvard it was like landing on the moon. I was worried I was not going to be good enough, academically, because I went to public schools, a public college, and here I was, showing up as a professor, supposed to teach kids who’d been in private schools since they were born. It turned out that I just wasn’t ready culturally. When I went to my first dinner party—of mylife!—I saw 10- and 12-year-old kids from the host family sitting around the table. They could see that everyone around the table was held in high esteem they had garnered through education. When the party was over and I was back in my car, I thought, “This isn’t fair. We didn’t have these examples to light the way.” Not just within my own family, but within my own extended network of interactions, I didn’t have an example of, “Look, you can go on to college, and here’s what you’re going to get.” So I started thinking about how we can make education more tangible for kids, and make it pay off a little earlier than 10 years down the road.

Q: So do incentives work?

A: The New York pilot is a two-year program, and we’re just starting in D.C. and Chicago, so we don’t have any formal results to report yet. But the kids are engaged, and they’re reporting in D.C. that parents are showing up to PTA night more to argue about kids’ grades—I think that’s a great by-product—because they’re being rewarded based on their grades.

Q: How much resistance was there from educators and parents to the idea of rewarding kids for their grades?

A: The vast majority of the resistance came from higher-educated, more affluent families that weren’t in the schools we were actually going to. CNN did a poll, and 70 per cent of blacks thought this was a good idea, and 50 per cent of whites did. Part of the resistance echoes part of the [problem] with public education: we consult mainly adults, and do things that are comfortable for adults. I think if the answer lay there, we’d already have found it. One thing we’re trying to do at EdLabs to push the envelope is to ask children how schools can better serve them. And the most important thing [about pay-for-performance] is that I never met a kid who didn’t like it. Though in D.C. a few weeks ago, there was a kid who surprised me. He said, “I don’t think we should be paid for school. I think I should pay to come to school, because it’s such a valuable resource.” I was so impressed. An hour later, we were giving out the first cheques in the auditorium, and this kid’s name was called, so I put his cheque in my pocket. He said, “What are you doing?” I said, “You told me you didn’t believe you should be paid, so I’d like to honour that.” He looked at me in a way that only a 13-year-old could, and said, “I never said that!”