In today’s society, every child in the United States has to attend school from preschool to the end of high school. A total of 13 years, or till s/he reaches 18 years old and decides to drop out. School exist to help students realize their full potential, to equip students with the skills they will need to achieve success and contribute to society, or to foster the development of independence, critical thinking, and strong ethical values. We would expect every student to be excited about going to school every day and doing their best, but there are others who are not as excited.. There are many students in the United States that take advantage of the free public education system that is offered, and become successful from the education they’ve received. But not all students take advantage of the education system and don’t do the work that they are supposed to, and do bad in standardized test. In the article by Jennifer Medina named “Next Question: can students be paid to excel?” it states that “School districts nationwide have seized on the idea that a key to improving schools is to pay for performances, whether through bonuses for teachers and principals, or rewards like cash prizes for students.” Many people believe that this will help improve students’ performance while the time the cash reward program is offered. But many other people including me, believe that this is not a good idea for the students overall. Los Angeles middle schools should not offer cash rewards to students to improve their academic motivation and performance because they will be thinking about the money rather than their own motivation to become educated and successful in life.
As a student their job is to come to school every day and complete the work ...
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...zes will ultimately lift achievement.” From this we can see that children should be inspired to learn own their own. It’s like saying you feel better when you work hard and earn what you worked for instead of having it handed to you.
As you can see, some schools have tried to pay students to excel, but it is not working. Students should understand that there is more than money in this world, but learning from your own motivation is better than having money offered to you to do well in school and standardized tests. Not only that but they should be thinking about their future and were they would see themselves in 20 years. Los Angeles middle schools should not offer cash rewards to students to improve their academic motivation and performance because they will be thinking about the money rather than their own motivation to become educated and successful in life.
The oversite committee then evaluates the success of their money allocation and incentivize the success of the public school’s education. “Americans do not appear ready to pay the price.” (Barber, p. 215) Money is the most powerful motivator, and if the success of school districts reaps the benefits of more financial resource, educators will fight to be the best. This new desire to be the best, is possible with the equalization of opportunity from the allocation of funds to the poorer schools. The race to the top would already be won by the larger, richer, and more powerful school districts without those foundational funds. “Because we believe in profits, we are consummate salespersons and efficacious entrepreneurs.” (217) Barber’s essay supports the idea of incentivized results. Not only would districts compete with other schools, but their standards would be raised year after year in consequence to the oversite of the
The exhortation of using incentives to receive and analyze responses reoccurs throughout the book periodically. Levitt and Dubner believe that incentives can be categorized into three different types: moral incentives, social incentives, and economic incentives. Moral incentives are defined as circumstances in which someone acts purely out of conscience or guilt. Social incentives are observed when a person’s actions are solely linked with shame or glory. Economic incentives are when people act with financial interests and benefits in mind. One example portrayed in the book is the day care center in Israel. When parents start getting charged a late fee for picking up their child at the daycare facility, more parents show up late. Before the fine was placed, parents would pick up their kids on time with a moral or social incentive. After the fine was placed parents acted with an economic incentive, which wasn’t as bad as a sense of guilt. Further data shows evidence of relations between incentives and cheating in the Chicago Public School System. In 1996, the school system started to give bonuses based on the standardized test scores of teachers’ students. If a teacher’s students showed improvements on their test scores, the teacher received a monetary bonus. Researchers found after studying score results from 1993–2000 that a spike in cheating occurred in 1996. A three-year study showed that on average cheating occurred in at least 200 Chicago classrooms per year. Therefore, Levitt and Dubner’s theory of incentives is
When it comes to education, it is about helping people discover, refine, and develop their gifts, talents, passions and abilities; and then helping them discover how to use those gifts, talents, abilities in ways that benefit others and oneself (Bull, 2015). However, with education, there are many places where this does not happen and learners may fall between the cracks. Schools are heavily measured on testing, student outcomes and student numbers that it has become the main focus to excel the school district—but what about the students? I recall a time where I was sitting in a classroom and the teacher was going over a math lesson. Many students struggled and were having a difficult time following along with the task. The teacher started
In certain instances, schools won’t allow a child to get lower than a “C” average. We are handing out degrees to these children without them even being aware of it. I’ve had some of my own friends who did not pass all their required classes in middle school and still were allowed to receive their high school diploma on graduation day. This national trend needs to be reversed and it starts with allowing our children to receive awards with no worth. Once children accept the fact that life is not always fair, they will be better prepared to face the challenges and obstacles ahead in the real
One major affliction of the American public education system is money, or the lack thereof, and the impact funding inequality has on educational quality. Benjamin Barber, in his article “America Skips School,” says the federal government only funds about 5% of public education (121). Public school funding comes primarily from local property taxes, meaning suburban schools can have up to twice as much money to spend on education than those in urban areas (Barber 122). Increasing federal financial aid in public schools could solve the problem of funding inequality by providing lower income schools with more available resources without taking money from other schools or increasing local taxes. Increasing funds would allow schools to provide better facilities and repair “leaky, broken-down habitats” often found in impoverished school districts. More money would allow all schools to hire better teachers and improve ...
Many high school students have a job that they go to after school which takes up their time that they could be using for homework and studying. If we were to pay these students for their good grades then they would no longer have the need for a job and could get even better grades and would even be able to take harder classes because of the extra time they would have to study and for homework. With the extra time that students would receive they could progress their education even
Some parents reward their child for the outstanding grades on their report card; nowadays schools have programs which reward the students instead of the parents. The Cash for Grades Program is a program which rewards cash incentives to all hard-working students in the school system. This program is “jointly funded by public money and private donations” (“Cash for Grades”). People from the community or successful companies financially support this program because they understand the role of education in a child’s life, even if it will cost them to donate money for the children. “At each evaluation, they can earn $50 for every A they receive, $35 for each B and $20 for every C” (“Cash for Grades”). The goal of the program is to reach out and help children from all social classes, either by cash or motivation. Many programs like the Cash for Grades Program such as Gr...
Did you know that schools in some places are actually giving kids money for good grades? If schools wish students to be self-motivated and have a desire for learning because it’s valuable to them, then schools should not pay students for excellent grades. Paying students for good grades can lead to kids having pressure to earn good grades. In addition, the students who are payed will not succeed academically in the long run. Also, they are not self-motivated so when they are not getting paid they will stop trying. From pressuring to get good grades, not succeeding academically in the long run, and not having self-motivation, there are several negative effects of paying students for marvelous grades.
Effective teachers are inadequately rewarded in the United States. School districts, such as those in California, are just starting to implement merit pay. According to a study conducted by the National Center of Performance Incentives (NCPI), only about 500 school districts out of the 14,000 districts in the US implement merit pay for teachers. These numbers do not include private schools. Unfortunately, teachers, parents, and students hurt because many schools, private and public, base teacher pay on seniority and degrees rather than achievement and performance. Under such a system, novice teachers, are laid off during budget shortages. Moreover, with the current “single salary schedule” system, teachers are inadequately paid, especially when compared to other professions. Because the single salary schedule creates many issues, a solution needs to be proposed. Merit pay, a system based on performance, solves such issues. With this system, teacher performance outweighs teacher seniority. As a result, quality teachers will be rewarded adequately in terms of money and recognition. Outstanding teachers will no longer face unreasonable layoffs and will finally be paid more than their ineffective peers.
The student life focuses mainly on education where students have to go to school, perform well in high school and get the grades to go on to their desired college/university in Canada. The schooling that a student gains in the first 25 years of their life is used to get a job in the future and make a living; however, some students might not be motivated enough to ace their education. The benefit of excelling in education is not easily sought out for some students; hindering their future aspirations and limiting their success. Grade 12 is where all marks are imperative and having the best marks will allow the student to pick what he/she wants to do. If students were rewarded with cash, in a sense, would they not be more motivated thus achieving higher grades?
1.2 million students drop out if school every year or 7,000 every day or one student every 26 seconds. That’s almost the population of New Hampshire dropping out of school but that’s only in one year. Kids should be paid to have good grades at school, in low-income households. Some people will argue where will we get the money from to pay the kids.
Students should be paid for having good grades. According to Psychology Today the United States has fallen behind other nations in education. In addition to this, approximately every one in four students in the U.S. drops out of school before graduation. The main reason for this is that students have little to no motivation. Students are either bored by school, or they are distracted by the other things that go on in their lives such as sports, jobs, friends and their own family life. 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.
School is a place kids go to learn and they should want to learn. In fact, research by Edward Deci shows that most children are by nature, motivated to learn. This is important because some schools are starting to pay their students money to get good grades and its not right. If students are naturally motivated, schools shouldn't have to pay them. Shouldn't the good grade be a reward in itself?
In high school, there are a huge amount of problems, some of which relate to students. In these “student problems”, it may not be possible for some students to afford to continue attending school. Other students may have enough wealth, however they may have a different problem of not putting effort in school; rather than trying to aim high, they would be doing just enough to be getting by. A solution that could tackle both these two problems would be rewarding the higher accomplishing students. High school students should be paid for achieving a level 4, as it would lower poverty rates and motivate students to put forth more effort in order to achieve higher results.
“Should students be paid for good grades?” This question gets obvious responses from the majority of students that you ask; yes. I would even be inclined to say yes; who wouldn’t want to get paid for that? It is our job, and most students would do well if they were paid. However, I feel that being paid for school would give us a false motivation, assuming that the parents would be the ones paying the students during high school only. In addition to a false motivation, I believe it would give us a sense of entitlement, like we are owed for doing the things we are supposed to do. Lastly, being paid for school would not be fair to certain people.