The two articles I chose argued whether or not students should be paid for getting good grades. There were a ton of arguments about whether it really motivated students in the right way. They both brought up the point that scores were better after being motivated, but they both had different opinions on whether or not it was good. The first article I read, argued the fact that, no, students should not be paid for getting good grades. This article claimed “The only motivation most students get from rewards is the motivation to get rewards.” What they mean by that, is the students will not have motivation to succeed or to do good, but the motivation to get rewards. So the students only focus on the reward, whatever it might be. Another …show more content…
Scientists say that students will only learn until they get their reward, then they stop. It also discourages students who may not do the best in school. When they don’t get a good grade, it makes them feel bad about themselves. In many of these articles, I’ve also found debate with whether students should just be paid for good test scores or if students would be paid for simply good grades. Test scores would defiantly cost schools less money, but that provides the issue that students would just slack off throughout the year and not strive for good grades, and then study hard and work hard just during test time. But if they were paid for good grades, maybe at the end of a quarter or semester, it would cost the schools more money, but provide students with more motivation. I read another article that said that paying students teach them the wrong lesson, which was that really everything is about money and that is “A harsh reality they aren’t ready for.” In my personal opinion I have to disagree with this article. I do understand that adults do not want the students to get the idea that money is everything. But really, students and children will have to face that hard reality eventually, so why not teach them and give them a taste of what it’s like before throwing them out into the real world where money really is everything, and they had no …show more content…
Schools in New York City have started a thing called “New York City’s Spark program” Which gives fourth and seventh graders money for good grades on a series of math and reading tests they take throughout the year. Fourth graders earn up to $250 a year and seventh graders can earn up to $500 a year. In Washington DC they’ve started the “Washington DC’s Capital Gains program.” This gives middle school students money for five different things: Attendance, Behavior, and three academic measures, which are decided by the particular school. The Paper Project in Chicago, tries to get ninth and tenth graders to get better grades, and every six weeks students who have succeeded receive half of their money in a check or bank deposit, and get the other half when they graduate. There are a few examples here, but there are many more schools throughout the states that actually participate in this. Another way some schools are looking at this is giving money for good grades to students who live in poor neighborhoods. Students who live in those poor areas usually get the worst grades and drop out of school. The article pretty much describes the fact that the poorer students will stay in school and want to succeed more, if they can benefit from it and maybe help their home lives a little more, they will actually make an attempt, or more of an attempt, to
Some classes should not have grades, such as writing. If a teacher asks a student to write a paper about a highly debated topic, such as abortion, and the students opinion differed from the teachers. It is possible that the teachers
California is one of the largest states in the country and has one of the biggest state budgets, but in the past several years, its school system has become one of the worst in the nation because of enormous budget cuts in efforts to balance the state’s enormous deficit. The economic downturn at the end of the 2000s resulted in even more cuts to education. It is in environments like this one in which students from poor backgrounds become most vulnerable because of their lack of access to support in their homes as well as other programs outside of schools. Their already financially restricted school districts have no choice but to cut supplementary programs and increase class sizes, among other negative changes to public schools. The lack of financial support from the state level as well as demands for schools to meet certain testing benchmarks by the state results in a system in which the schools are no longer able to focus on students as individuals; they are forced to treat students as numbers rather than on an individual case by case basis.
“Beginning in 2007, his [Roland Fryer Jr.] project paid out $6.3 million to students in 261 urban schools...from low-income families” (Sandel 52). As a result, paying students for good grades has an impact on many people, not only students but teachers as well. Students should be paid for good grades because they will be able to save the money they earn for the future, it will motivate them to do well in school, and it will increase their scores on AP exams. With the money that students earn for their good grades, they can save it for their future. According to student Brett Upperman, “‘Kids need money so we can save it for college.
Which is said by Stanford Dornbush, director of the Stanford Center for Youth Development, “Students who receive money for grades will in the long run have lower academic performances.” If students receive money for grades they will not succeed in the long run because they are only motivated because of money. The effect of this is teaching kids to only accomplish stuff for money, which can cause them to become greedy. Obviously, students will not succeed in the long run academically if they are galvanized by
This program is generally focused to gather statistics on grade school inequalities that effect the entirety of the state. Researchers have suggested that school funding levels and student success rates are largely unrelated. The ability of schools to educate their children is affected solely by the teacher’s ability to teach. Yet for a number of years there has been a steady debate centered around the essentially counter-intuitive idea that the relationship between school resource levels and student performance is the only connection to California’s academic gap/ 1971, the California Supreme Court ruled this system of granted unequal funds to millions of children unconstitutional, promising California’s the state would standardize finances across all school districts. To do this California created Proposition 13 in 1978. This proposition reduced the local property tax revenues available to schools, and the state had to provide even more financial support to maintain similar funding levels across districts. Though it leveled the playing field for the middle class, this tactic created no growth in academic equality. In order to ensure a balance in opportunity to academically excel, California needs to scrutinize the funding system, to utilize all financial resources in ways that
First off, the reason why students should get paid for having good grades is that it takes a lot of time and effort to get those grades. For many students it takes many hours of late night studying and constantly going over flashcards to achieve the elusive 4.0 GPA. Shouldn’t these students be compensated for all of their hard work. Many people would say that the students are expected to do this and should not be rewarded but as we all know very few students actually try to put in this kind of work and shouldn’t those who try the hardest receive a little
By paying them, they would learn many valuable lessons that will help them in the future. Students should be paid for good grades because it encourages them to work harder, it helps the economy and last but not least, it will allows students to gain more responsibility and would increase their self-esteem. Some responsibilities would include taking care of their own belongings and learning to spend money when it is only needed. Obviously, being paid for good grades will give a brighter future to students and they will always be confident in themselves at whatever they
If a teachers goal is to instill a love of learning, paying students to read books or study does not really do that. Therefore, I believe that when teachers instill the habit of using rewards or incentives like paying them to do well on tests it tends to become a serious problem. It becomes a problem when the teacher stops giving students these rewards because the student feels that there is no point in doing good on a test or homework assignment if they are not going to gain a reward from it. Paying kids for doing something they should do anyway can lead to a very unattractive bargaining attitude, where kids demand, ‘what do I get if I do
Teachers are often shamed if they give a student low grade that they believe they don't deserve. Although, if they constantly granted them the score they felt they earned, would they really be benefiting and learning from their mistakes? I believe that if students were praised only when they have accomplished something they have succeeded in, they will then learn from that and try to become better, rather than thinking they've succeeded in that subject and not doing anything to fix the mistakes made.
Although learning has its own rewards, some students respond better to money. This essay explains how students will be paid and the reasons that they should receive money for getting good grades. Some reasons that students should be paid are: if students received rewards for having good grades, fewer students would drop out, graduates would be better educated, people would seek higher education, less crime would be committed, less people would rely on the government, and graduates would be more qualified for better jobs. In 2009, an experiment by MDRC was conducted in two community colleges in Louisiana State for low-income students. One group of students was offered $1,000 each semester if they could attend college at least half time, and maintain an average above a C while another group did not receive the supplement.
The programs can teach children to work hard for money or work hard for success. In Chicago, Roland Fryer developed a program that helped 3,750 high school freshman in 20 schools. The CEO, Arne Duncan, had a fear that there would be a high rate of students who would drop out in ninth or 10th grade. Fryer’s program stated that at the end of every 5 week grading period, students had the chance of earning $50 for every A, $35 for every B, and $20 for every C in English, math, science, social studies, and physical education. Duncan had found a way to “keep high school students in the classroom” while working to improve the curriculum that they learned (“Cash for
For most students the reason grades are important to them is because they determine if they get to go out with their friends or not, because most students that don’t have good grades are grounded and not able to leave the house. If schools got rid of grades, and they are not interested in what they are learning, would they learn anything? Grades are there to be pushing students like this to learn with incentives, not to tell them what to do. Eventually they will want to learn, but without grades to push them, they would never be pushed to learn and reach their
In conclusion, students should be paid to do well in school because it has many benefits to the student. Those benefits include motivation to get good grades, the money would help the student financially, and the student would learn how to manage their money more effectively. School is a big part of every person’s life, so it should be more rewarding to the
Should We Pay Our Kids for Good Grades? I’d like to meet the parent who HASN’T bribed their kids at least once. We’ve all been there a tricky situation where us kids simply will not do what parents want them to. So they tell us they’ll give us something in return if they comply a treat, more screen time, or money just so we’ll do what we need them to do.
It is the type of motivation that counts, not the amount” (Kohn). On the outside grades may look like it is really working and it is really pushing students to do better but students aren’t really working hard for the right reasons. Instead grades motivate them to find ways to cheat the grading system so that they can have the perfect grades. People have to understand that grades do motivate students but does it really motivate them in the right way. There are many other ways to grade papers so that it can be clear whether the student really understand and can pass the class or if they are just pretending to understand.