Estimating a Coordination Game in the Classroom: Evaluating the Role of Student and Teacher Performance Incentives

政策制定者和教育研究人员越来越关注奖金作为改善教育成果的一种手段的有效性。在过去的十年中，在美国和其他国家进行了各种实地实验，以评估根据学生考试成绩向学生和/或教师提供激励的影响。激励计划的效果通常被发现是适度的，无论学生还是教师是否接受激励。Behrman et.（2011）研究是一个例外。这项研究分析了墨西哥教育部在88所联邦高中进行的为期三年的实地实验。实验结果表明，只对教师进行奖励的效果并不显著，而只对学生进行奖励的效果显著，同时对学生和教师进行奖励的效果更显著。实施任何奖励制度的一个问题是如何最佳地设计制度，奖励教师、学生或两者是否最佳，以及奖励多少。实地实验的局限性在于，它们只能提供关于所实施的激励计划的效果的信息，而不能提供关于替代设计的信息。墨西哥实验提出的一个关键问题是，例如，为什么教师的激励措施，只有在与学生的激励措施相结合，而学生的激励措施也是有效的。本研究开发和实施一个框架，研究机制的实验效果和分析替代的激励设计。为此，该项目开发了一个学生成绩模型，在这个模型中，学生和教师做出影响学习成果的努力决定。这些选择，沿着其他教师和学生的特点，共同决定考试成绩的结果。该模型可以解释在墨西哥的计划中发现的激励效果的模式。

There is a growing interest among policy makers and education researchers in the effectiveness of incentive payments as a means for improving educational outcomes. Over the last decade, various field experiments were implemented in the U.S. and in other countries to evaluate the impact of incentives provided to students and/or to teachers based on student test score performance.The effects of incentive programs have usually been found to be modest, regardless of whether the student or teacher receives the incentive. The Behrman et. al. (2011) study is an exception. That study analyzes a three-year field experiment conducted by the Mexican Ministry of Education in 88 Federal high schools. The experiment found no statistically significant effects of offering incentive payments to the teachers alone, but large and statistically significant effects of offering incentives only to students and a still larger effect of offering the payments to both the students and teachers.A question in implementing any incentive system is how to optimally design the system, whether it is optimal to reward teachers, students or both and by how much. A limitation of field experiments is that they are only informative about the effects of incentive schemes implemented and not about alternative designs. A key question raised by the Mexican experiment, for example, is why teacher incentives were only effective in combination with student incentives, whereas student incentives were also effective on their own.This research develops and implements a framework for studying the mechanisms underlying the experimental effects and for analyzing alternative incentive designs. To this end, the project develops a model of student achievement in which students and teachers make effort decisions that affect learning outcomes. These choices, along with other teacher and student characteristics, jointly determine test score outcomes. The model can explain the pattern of incentive effects found in the Mexican program.