If I offered you a thousand dollars to take off your shoes, you'd very likely accept--and then I could triumphantly announce that 'rewards work.' But as with punishments, they can never help someone develop a *commitment* to a task or action, a reason to keep doing it when there's no longer a payoff.

Assessments should compare the performance of students to a set of expectations, never to the performance of other students.

Those who know they're valued irrespective of their accomplishments often end up accomplishing quite a lot. It's the experience of being accepted without conditions that helps people develop a healthy confidence in themselves, a belief that it's safe to take risks and try new things.

Punishment and reward proceed from basically the same psychological model, one that conceives of motivation as nothing more than the manipulation of behavior.

Educational success should be measured by how strong your desire is to keep learning.

How we feel about our kids isn't as important as how they experience those feelings and how they regard the way we treat them.

To control students is to force them to accommodate to a preestablished curriculum.