Incentives for Teachers
October 25, 2006
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Teachers in some places (Kenya, Tonga, etc.) have little incentive for showing up to class.
They can't get fired (perhaps moved to a different school at best), so their incentive for
doing their acgtual work is low.

There are few repercussions for students not showing up to class either at some places, though
not at others (e.g., Tonga).

Some of the reasons for not showing up to class may be one of:
- teachers possibly not earning a subsistance wage, and therefore having to hold a second job;
- teachers often holding permanent positions and can't get fired (easily).

Public sector jobs in those countries often suffer from the same level of attendance -- it's
the job security.  In India, there's two types of teachers -- the equivalent of tenured (who 
make ~$100/month) and the equivalent of non-tenured (who make ~$50/month).  The second group 
have more incentive to do a good job teaching.

The reason why teachers don't get fired could be cultural (where one can easily show regret,
e.g., through tears, and reconcile back into their job) or social.

Creating an incentive for one group may actually affect positively the incentives for
another group.  An example is girls scholarships increasing the attendance of girls and
ultimately increasing the attendance of boys.  Another example is increasing student interest
(e.g., through the implementation of DSH in a village school) that results in increasing the
motivation for teachers too.

Some ways to address the incentive issue by using technology may be to use cameras in the
classroom.

Interestingly, incentives generated by scholarships are so much cheaper compared to incentives
brought about by the introduction of technology.  Scholarships tend to be on the order of $10
a year.  This gives a cost realism perspective.

Adage: "Never assume that the students are like you."

One important insight is that there's a set of large scale studies that need to be carefully
executed in order to assess the effectiveness of even minor learning interventions.  In 
comparison, the Digital StudyHall is a much more elaborate intervention, so the complexity of
deploying and evaluating it -- and the care and accuracy that would need to go into it -- is
frightening.

In some countries, national pride is a huge incentive.  For example, in Russia people believe
in the strength of their ballet programs and their mathematics preparation.  This is deeply
part of the cultural identity.

Much of this relates to the three types of incentives that affect people's behavior -- economic,
social, and moral -- and how they are not equally powerful, with economic (rewards or penalties)
having among the least lasting effect.  (A discussion and examples of this appear in a recent
book "Freakonomics" by Stephen Levitt.)

Money is viewed differently through different cultural lenses.  In some places, there may be
an expectation that one distributes the economic goods that they get, and so it's .
In contrast, teachers may get excited by textbooks.

In Cameroon, education is a respected thing, but because most jobs don't require education,
it is perceived as a luxury -- and really a useless activity -- particularly because there is
not much upward social mobility in that agricultural country.

As far as deploying technology as a solution, other interventions may be even more effective
and desired.  Particularly, in a rural school in India, many students repeatedly asked why
they didn't have furniture (e.g., chairs) in the classroom, rather than why they didn't have
computers.  Those kids would probably much appreciate the presence of chairs, rather than
a more hi-tech intervention like the introduction of computers.