Persuading Parents to Pay for Good Grades

Persuasive Essay: Why You Should Pay Your Children for Good Grades

“Show me the money.” Money is motivational. Although it is not the only motivational tool used upon employees, it is difficult to discount the fact that money is an important reason that people go to work every day. Without a regularly paid salary, few adults would continue to perform their jobs, at least not consistently, day in and day out, at a high level. This includes teachers. Yet children are expected to be equally as motivated as salaried adults when they go to school every day.

Children are often told to think of school as their job, and the use of money as a reward can underline this, providing motivation to do more than the minimum. “The rationale is that the school is simply shortening the time between school performance and pay-off that has always existed” (“Pay for grades,” 2008, p.2). According to finance blogger Khalfani-Cox (2014), even though her children are very internally motivated, offering money can be the immediate incentive that encourages them to make the extra effort to earn the A they are capable of, rather than being satisfied with a B. Performing well in school takes long-term cognitive planning. Students may lose focus midway through the semester, but consistently rewarding students with small incentives like money can encourage them to continue to invest time and effort to eventually win a much larger reward of a higher end-of-semester grade.

For less capable students, who struggle with school and inferior to their classmates, the motivation of money can be even more successful. They may struggle to compete with other students or find intellectual satisfaction in challenging material, but the reward of even earning a C might be enough to persevere, so they can eventually learn to enjoy learning and school. Money communicates that even their C is valuable. It is important to underline that this should not be framed as an either/or debate of personal satisfaction in learning versus money. Just like paid employees can gain great satisfaction from doing good work, so can students who succeed in school gain satisfaction from both work and payment. Students can be proud of their learning, their grades, and what they have learned, just as adults can be proud of their work, their performance reviews, and their salaries.

It is important to remember that students today are working more and more than ever before at school. Activities such as arts, gym, and recess have been eliminated by many schools, taking away one of the most powerful incentives to go to school for many students who are less motivated by academics (“14 pros,” 2019). Even students with strong work ethics and long attention spans struggle keeping focus for long hours a day, going home to do more homework, and balancing the exhaustion of extracurriculars and sometimes even additional tutoring. In short, school today feels more like work than ever before, and students deserve to be compensated for this additional labor and time away from childhood. Students’ shorter attention spans and need for approval can both be addressed with the positive reinforcement of monetary incentives, even small ones.

Khalfani-Cox (2014) also stresses that offering financial incentives for grades communicates to children the values of the family, namely that getting good grades are just as important as chores, afterschool jobs, and other things children do to earn money. She views it as an incentive for the future, as getting good grades when students are young can translate into better grades later on, and hopefully a college scholarship. It also arguably can save money on tutoring, repeating classes, and other financially costly aspects of a student struggling in school. Of course, some students will struggle no matter what, but even less academically capable students can be incentivized to maximize the impact of the support they receive via tutoring.

Offering money to students can also give them a greater sense of financial responsibility. Of course, many students receive money as gifts for Christmas and birthdays, or have part-time jobs. But a sense of earning money based on performance will give children an additional sense of pride and frugality in their budgeting. Children today require more financial freedom than ever before, given that they are making life decisions about money (such as choosing colleges, and how much debt to go into as a result of college) earlier than previous generations (“14 pros,” 2014). As well as offering students a source of savings income for college, arguably offering money for performance is not so different than is offering a merit-based scholarship for a deserving student.

Paying for good and improved grades has become so accepted, even some school districts are entertaining this possibility, especially for students who are struggling financially. The data regarding the benefits for this are admittedly mixed: one program in Chicago which rewarded students $50 a month for meeting goals showed a short-term improvement, but the benefits quickly declined, relative to the control group (Robinson, 2016). However, contrasting personal incentives paid by parents versus those offered by a school district may not be a fair comparison. First, no one is arguing that paying students for good grades is a replacement for good teaching, tutoring, and addressing the social and economic reasons some students may struggle. School districts must still strive for improving the ways in which they teach and address impediments to student learning. But parents offering a financial incentive to additionally motivate students can be valuable, when parents use rewards strategically, in a manner which reflects knowledge of their children’s needs.

For example, a child who is a struggling student can be offered a financial incentive simply for improving grades, even if this simply means pulling a C+ up to a B. A child who is a straight-A student in English but struggles in math can be offered a financial incentive for maintaining that straight-A average but getting a B- in Calculus. Parents can also offer bonuses if students continue to get high grades, versus simply doing well on a single project, eventually cumulating in a much larger reward at the end of the year in the form of affording a sought-after new toy. Rewarding students for not giving up and persevering with what they find challenging is important. It will not kill their love of learning but rather will hopefully enable them to find new aspects of learning enjoyable. Parents are also more conscious of the specific level of financial reward that will benefit their child.

School districts are often limited in terms of how much money they can offer students, but parents can tailor their rewards based upon the family’s income level, and also the amount of money the child is earning from outside jobs and other sources. In fact, for a child who is really struggling, a parent may suggest paying the student for higher grades rather than continuing in a job that is making a young teen too tired to properly function in school. Once again, this emphasizes the need to stress the long-term rewards of school, versus short-term incentives.