Should Students Be Paid for Good Grades?

time.com ^ | 01/14/09 | Laura Fitzpatrick

[Grut]

Why not? How many of us would be motivated to work for 'experience' alone? Pay now for work now is the rule we live by, even if the work doesn't bear fruit until later.

[Dixie Yooper]

Personally, I am convinced that **all** academically successful children are homeschooled.

Congratulations on sticking with the home schooling. Hopefully you did it without have to pay Patrick Henry College any fees for looking out for your best interests.

[gopheraj]

No matter if they finish school or not. The ones who will go on welfare or sell drugs will do it regardless or whether or not they graduated. School does not matter to them at all. Money does and not having to WORK for it.

[Forward the Light Brigade]

An inner city program to pay kids $100 if they learned to read seemed to work well. If students who do not know how to read, could learn, go into to principals office and read a random page of “Tom Sawyer” they would get a new $100 bill. It really seemed to work. That program worked better than all the packaged “learn to read” programs schools have bought with little success over the years. Money for accomplishment is a positive. If you learn to read—the world opens for you.

[Gil4]

You’re pretty generous. My scale is

A’s - $3
B’s - $1

I haven’t had to deal with anything below that yet, but I think C’s would bring pretty draconian measures, depending on the class.

I only have one in public school, and he was homeschooled through 8th grade. (He’s a junior now.) (The other 5 are still homeschooled.) We have a pretty good idea of what he is capable of doing, and as long as he is putting forth a good effort, I’m OK.

I can’t see him getting less than a B with a good effort. My daughter who’s next will probably struggle more - it just takes her more time to get it. But she does have good work habits already, so she should be fine.

The one who really concerns me is my 9-yr-old - very smart, very flighty. He’s the one my mother wished on me with her “when you grow up I hope you have kids just like you.”

[wintertime]

Do you realize that **you** and your son are doing 99% of the teaching and learning? The school is merely sending home the curriculum.

You are evidently doing an **excellent** job of “afterschooling”.

I noticed that you copied the first sentence of the paragraph but neglect the second and third sentences. The **entire** paragraph states:

“Personally, I am convinced that **all** academically successful children are homeschooled. If they go to school, as your child does, it is called “afterschooling”. The only thing the school is doing is sending home a curriculum for the parents and child to follow”

By the way, congratulations! You are a very good parent.

[The Spirit Of Allegiance]

ping

[Amelia]

Public Education Ping

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[metmom]

So what if they get an A? It doesn’t mean they earned it.

I can see extortion and blackmail and threats against teachers who don’t co-operate.

[metmom]

ANOTHER REASON TO HOMESCHOOL

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[Clintonfatigued]

“whether they are a brilliant tool for hard-to-motivate students or bribery that will destroy any chance of fostering a love of learning.”

Public education, by its very design, destroys love of learning.

As long as it the payments don’t invlove using taxpayer funds, I’m for it. After all, businessmen and employees who excel on the job get bonuses and raises.

[Citizen Blade]

I remember asking my dad why he rarely congratulated me for getting good grades in school. He told me that he didn’t believe in congratulating people for doing what they were supposed to do in the first place.

I can see the wisdom in that- seems like a lot of parents make a huge deal when their kids do the most mundane things correctly.

[mysterio]

My parents told me in high school my job was to get good grades. They provided me with access to a family car, and I produced good grades, which got me a full tuition scholarship.

It was a very effective motivator to keep my nose in the books. And the academic scholarship was significant enough that I was scared to death to lose it, so I studied my bum off in college. Same with my grad school assistantship.

[hunter112]

When I got custody of my thirteen year old son, his stepmother and I came up with an elaborate way of getting him back on track, and this included withholding and granting of privileges for grades. It worked, we got this kid from having to have gone to summer school to pass from the 7th to the 8th grade at his mother's home, to being accepted to both state universities by the time we were done with him.

But I believe that such payment-deprivation plans should be carried out only by the parents of the kids. Any money that somebody thinks they want to spend on this should be diverted towards making parents more engaged with their kids' school work.

[wintertime]

Congratulations on a tough job well done.

[Tired of Taxes]

That is a beautiful story. Parents and/or individuals choosing (out of the goodness of their hearts) to reward students with payment is fine. (Btw, I think that’s a story you should send somewhere to be published, like the Chicken Soup series, for example.)

[Tired of Taxes]

Such a plan is too open for abuse by teachers, students, administrators, politicians... There are too many courses that are graded subjectively. For example, students could be graded more on what political beliefs they hold, with higher grades going to students who share the same beliefs as the teacher.

[Tired of Taxes]

As long as it the payments don’t invlove using taxpayer funds, I’m for it.

I agree.