Should Students Get Paid For Good Grades Research Paper

For decades parents have been rewarding their children with a few dollars when they have come home from school with straight A’s on their report card or a good grade on a test. However, many public schools across the country have introduced the idea of taking cash rewards for good grades into their own hands, and have begun paying their students hundreds of dollars for receiving good grades or performing well on state assessments. Some people argue that kids should do well in school just for the sake of education, not for cash. However, rewards encourage students to study more and try harder to achieve academic excellence. Students should receive monetary rewards for academic excellence due to the fact that this will teach them many valuable

A major improvement on state test scores due to cash incentives is evident in a Harvard University study during the 2008-2009 school year. This study showed improvement on the DC-CAS standardized tests equivalent to as much as five months of extra schooling by Hispanics, and other students with behavior issues in several Chicago public schools, according to Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee. Within the first year of being paid for good grades, these students were already showing major growth on standardized tests because the monetary rewards influenced them to work harder and study more all year. Another example of dramatic improvement on state test scores within a short amount of time comes from a public school in Santa Ana, California. This school offered 8th graders up to $250 for doing well on the standardized math test and had their scores more than double in one year. David Muir from ABC World News Tonight discussed these results with a student that attends a school that does not participate in paying students for good grades. He was able to get the student to admit that if he knew that he would get paid for finishing the test well, he would probably do better. This kind of growth on state test scores is caused from the monetary incentive to score well and improves the school

For example, in a Stanford University experiment, researchers broke a group of preschoolers up into two groups. One group would receive a gold star for their drawings and the other would not. Both groups drew enthusiastically the first time, however, when asked to draw again without a reward, the gold star group cut its drawing time in half, as though they’d lost their motivation and enthusiasm to draw because they were no longer receiving a reward. Another opponent to the cash rewards system, Barbara Marinak, an assistant professor at Penn State University, told the National Public Radio, “The research on monetary rewards is quite clear. They don’t work. Any type of extrinsic reward, by and large, undermines motivation.” Many people, like Marinak, believe that students should receive good grades and excel in the classroom simply for the love of learning, and see monetary rewards as a bribery system. However, this is not the case for many students that go to schools that are using the cash rewards for good grades system. Kelsey Christian, an 8th-grade student from Mansfield Massachusetts liked the idea of cash rewards and told a reporter from Junior Scholastic magazine, “A little bit of money would motivate me a lot, it would give students something to work for.” A child with the desire to learn will continue to learn even when the money is not offered.