Reward Vs. Punishment: Which works better in the classroom?

Goals: The goal is to determine if students with minor behavior problems will respond better to being rewarded for things done correctly vs. being punished every time they do wrong. There will also be an element of team peer pressure to assist with motivating these students to behave correctly.
Activities: Individuals with model behavior will be given reward tickets that they can cash in for various rewards. The class with the best record or most reward tickets at the end of the year will receive a class party.
Resources: Reward tickets will have to be made or purchased. Office referrals will need to be collected and analyzed for repeat offenders and number of various offenses. Daily charts will have to be kept for individual classes. A tally of reward tickets will have to be taken at the end of the time period or school year. Copies of the previous year’s discipline referrals. An end of the year pizza party will be provided for the class with the most number of reward tickets.
Timeline: We would start the reward tickets on the second six weeks and continue to use this rewards system every other or every even numbered six weeks. The last week of regular classes will be the timeline for the completion and pizza party.
Persons Responsible: I would be responsible for the implementation of the plan that will be carried out by the individual teachers. Each teacher will be responsible for handing out the reward tickets and keeping track of the total number of tickets per class. I would be responsible for collecting the data on discipline referrals, repeat offenders, and major discipline problems. I will also be responsible for looking over the previous year’s discipline referrals to properly analyze if we have an improvement in the overall behavior patterns of individual students as well as the school as a whole.
Monitoring: Throughout the course of the year, there should be a decrease in the number of repeat offenders and overall discipline referrals for minor offenses. There should also be less discipline issues than the previous year. Weekly reports will be compiled of the number of tickets handed out and the number of discipline referrals submitted to the office.
Assessment: As data is collected throughout the year, there should be an increase in desired behavior. Every six weeks I will analyze data like office referrals, repeat offenders, and number of reward tickets handed out and compare the periods when reward tickets were given vs. the period of time when reward tickets were not given. There will also be a report submitted by each individual teacher describing the overall behavior and attitude of the students during each six week period. This report will provide information on if the behavior and attitude got worse or better. There will be another assessment at the end of the school year when the classes that are not in the running for the pizza party realize they have no shot at the desired goal. Finally, a total number of discipline referrals compared to the previous year will be tallied.