Prof Plans Cell Phone Rewards

Teachers may not be the biggest fans of students’ cell phones, but one Harvard economics professor has embraced them as a possible incentive rather than a distraction.

At a lecture on Oct. 10, Professor Roland G. Fryer Jr. told students in Economics 1816 “Race in America” about a plan he is working on that would reward high-performing public school students with cell phones and cell phone minutes, according to multiple students in the class who asked not to be named because Fryer stressed the plan’s confidentiality to them.

The project is part of an initiative, introduced by New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in June, to motivate low-income students to perform well on standardized tests.

“This is one of several student motivation proposals the Department is developing,” David Cantor, a spokesman, wrote in an e-mail.

“It has not been approved by the Chancellor or Mayor,” he added.

Fryer, who has been leading this project and was appointed the Chief Equality Officer for the city’s Department of Education earlier this year, asked students not to talk to the media about the cell phone proposal, people in the class said.

Fryer said on Thursday that he could not be interviewed because he could not obtain the necessary approval from the Department in time.

The Department is in talks with Motorola about providing cell phones for the program, a representative from the company told The Crimson.

Fryer studies material-based incentive programs, an area of research that has little empirical data to date.

“I don’t think anybody knows [how successful the program will be], because no one has tried it before,” said Ronald F. Ferguson, a lecturer at the Kennedy School’s Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality & Social Policy.

“One of the risks that people sometimes talk about is students becoming conditioned to only work for incentives,” he added.

“The counterargument is that students may learn what it feels like to be successful even when incentives aren’t there,” Ferguson said.