Should Students Get Paid For Grades Essay

People should not pay kids for grades. There would be less money for things like field trips and other school activities. In addition, money can’t buy smarts, motivation or school success. And they would not because they are interested in learning, they would be only be learning because they are interested in earning money. People should remember that paying kids for grades won’t help their motivation or school success now and it surely won’t help when they go to college and aren’t paid for their grades. This is an important topic because many people don’t understand and think that kids should be paid for their grades. The significance of my claim is that 66% of people said that kids should be able to be paid for their grades and that they need to do more research on this topic.

If students were paid for grades, there would be less money for field trips and other school activities. Many of these students aren’t on track to graduate from high school, much less go on to college. New York City’s Spark program (now in its second year), awards fourth- and seventh-graders cash for high achievement on a series of math and reading tests throughout the year. A fourth-grader can earn up to $250 a year, while a seventh-grader can earn up to $500 (Greatschools Staff,

2016). This is an example of how paying students for school would work. When asked how school field trips are financed, the largest percentage of respondents selected the option that indicated that parents are asked to pay part or all of the cost of trips (districts are required to lower the fee for needy families). About 28 percent of respondents noted that the district pays the entire cost of trips from the budget, while another 28 percent said that the district gets funding for field trips from outside sources, such as an education foundation (School Board Notes, 2012). This means that, with most schools paying partly for each person and the parents paying the rest, they would not be able to pay at all for each person, they would have parents/families pay it all. At one elementary school, there were about 5 classes per grade, with about 30 students in each class, meaning there were about 150 students per grade. Buses are about 24 seats, and if they put three students in each seat, plus chaperones and teachers, they would need about 3 buses. Bus rentals cost about $240 including chaperones and teachers. Schools normally do about three field trips per year for each grade, which, according to this, would cost about $720 per grade. This cost doesn’t count the actual ticket, so it would be very hard to pay for buses and the tickets and then add in paying the students as well as teachers.
Money can’t buy smarts, motivation, or school success.

Barbara Marinak, an assistant professor of education at Penn State University, says the research on monetary rewards is quite clear: They don’t work. “Any type of ‘extrinsic’ reward, by and large, undermines motivation,” she told National Public Radio last year (Flannery, 2015). As said by Barbara Marinak, if they are rewarded, they are less motivated. The difference? Simply playing kids for good grades or test scores doesn’t actually give them any more skills, Fryer theorized. The system needs to be more complicated – and more specific to the needs of children – to be effective (Flannery, 2015). Just giving them money for grades won’t make them any

smarter.
Students would not go to school because they are interested in learning, but instead they want to have the chance to earn money. All of the positives about having a part-time job have one big caveat. Students cannot usually be employed more than 20 hours per week or their grades begin to suffer, they do less homework, and they are more likely to drop out (Gisler & Eberts, 2016). Your grades could suffer more if you were without a job than if you had a job during school, however, the busier you are, the more focused you become. Working really makes you more structured; you have a lot of things to do in a short amount of time, so it’s important to keep up with it all (Laskowski, 2009). So, if they got paid for grades and don’t go for a job, you won’t be structured as if you had a job.
Many people believe that being paid for grades would make kids strive to do more. "It's an ego booster in terms of self-worth. When they get the checks, there's that competitiveness -- 'Oh, I'm going to get more money than you next time' -- so it's something that excites them," (Mills, 2009). Why would they want students to be competitive with their grades? At most schools, they don’t even want you to show, or tell people what your grades and test scores are. Though it is true information, why would they encourage students to tell each other how much money their grades are worth?
People should not pay kids for grades. There would be less money for things like field trips and other school activities. Also, money can’t buy smarts, motivation or school success. And they would not learn the same as if they were there to learn, not there for money. People should remember that paying kids for grades won’t help their motivation or school success now and it surely won’t help when they go to college and aren’t paid for their grades. This is an important topic because many people don’t understand and think that kids should be paid for their good grades. The significance of my claim is that 66% of people said that kids should be able to be paid for their grades and that they need to do more research on this topic.