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Is there a correlation between incentives and performance?

Action Plan:

1. In an 8th grade cycle class, offer a movie as an incentive for all students to complete a given task. 2. In an 8th grade self-contained class, offer food as an incentive for all students to demonstrate behavior appropriate to a task and time period. 3. In a 7th grade academic class, offer extra points as an incentive for those students who frequently fail to complete assignments to complete a given homework assignment. 4. In a 6th grade self contained class, offer an individualized incentive to each student who completes a given assignment independently. 5. In a 7th grade resource class, offer an incentive for students to demonstrate independence and effort on a given assessment. 6. Measure the difference between successful outcomes before and after incentives. Translate the difference to a percentage. 7. Have a control group for each experiment to measure against.

FINDINGS
 * Using Friday labs as an incentive for 7th grade science students to behave is working like a charm.
 * Offering a movie for 8th grade cycle class students to complete a given task worked well.
 * Not offering an incentive for 7th grade academic students, i.e., acting as a control group results in only two students out of the entire team who did not complete their assigned work AND offering the incentive for students to use an outline to write an essay provided they completed the outline prior to the essay also worked for all but those same two students ERGO, those two students might need a movie, food, or other incentive OR will simply not respond to an incentive.
 * Offering a treat for 6th grade self contained students works to keep the students focused on completing a given assignment PROVIDED there is not some other lingering issue or drama at work.