Should Parents Pay Children for Good Grades?

Money as Motivation: School as Work

"Show me the money." Money is motivational. Although it is not the only motivational tool available to employers, it is difficult to discount the fact that money is an important reason people go to work every day. Without a regularly paid salary, few adults would continue to perform their jobs 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 each day.

Children are often told to think of school as their job, and the use of money as a reward can reinforce this idea, 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 highly internally motivated, offering money can serve as an 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 requires long-term cognitive planning. Students may lose focus midway through the semester, but consistently rewarding them with small incentives like money can encourage them to continue investing time and effort in order to eventually earn the much larger reward of a higher end-of-semester grade.

It is also important to remember that students today are working harder than ever before. Activities such as arts, gym, and recess have been eliminated by many schools, removing one of the most powerful incentives to attend school for students who are less motivated by academics ("14 pros," 2019). Even students with strong work ethics and long attention spans struggle to maintain focus through long school days, return home to complete homework, and balance the exhaustion of extracurricular activities and sometimes additional tutoring. In short, school today feels more like work than ever before, and students deserve to be recognized for this additional labor and time away from childhood. Students' shorter attention spans and need for approval can both be addressed through the positive reinforcement of monetary incentives, even small ones.

Benefits for Struggling and High-Achieving Students

For less academically capable students who struggle in school and feel outpaced by their classmates, the motivation of money can be especially powerful. These students may find it difficult to compete with peers or to derive intellectual satisfaction from challenging material, but the reward of earning even a C might be enough to encourage them to persevere — and, over time, to discover a genuine enjoyment of learning. Money communicates that even their C is valuable.

It is important to emphasize that this should not be framed as an either/or debate between personal satisfaction in learning and monetary reward. Just as paid employees can gain great satisfaction from doing good work, students who succeed in school can take pride in both their performance and their payment. Students can feel proud of their learning, their grades, and what they have mastered — just as adults can be proud of their work, their performance reviews, and their salaries.

Khalfani-Cox (2014) also stresses that offering financial incentives for grades communicates to children the values of the family — namely, that earning good grades is just as important as completing chores, working after-school jobs, and other activities children do to earn money. She views it as an investment in the future: earning good grades when students are young can translate into stronger academic performance later on, and hopefully a college scholarship. Financial rewards may also save money in the long run by reducing the need for tutoring, grade repetition, and other costly consequences of academic struggle. Of course, some students will struggle regardless, but even less academically capable students can be incentivized to maximize the benefit they receive from the support available to them.

Financial Responsibility and Long-Term Thinking

Offering money to students can also give them a greater sense of financial responsibility. Many children already receive money as gifts for holidays and birthdays, or earn it through part-time jobs. However, earning money based on academic performance gives children an additional sense of pride and encourages frugality in their budgeting. Children today face financial decisions earlier than previous generations — such as choosing colleges and determining how much student debt to take on — making financial literacy all the more important ("14 pros," 2014). In addition to providing a source of savings for college, offering money for academic performance is arguably not so different from awarding a merit-based scholarship to a deserving student.

Conclusion: Rewards, Not Bribes

Of course, money is not the most important thing in life. But money is not inherently bad. It can be exchanged for meaningful experiences — like a college education — as well as goods and services. Rewarding children with money is not harmful, especially since rewarding children for good grades is exactly that: a reward, not a bribe. Finally, as Khalfani-Cox (2014) notes, it is unrealistic to expect a child — or an adult — to feel passionate about every single task or responsibility they undertake in life. Money offers a source of transactional reward, but also a means of ensuring that children continue to apply themselves in school and, hopefully, someday discover their true passions.

References

14 pros and cons of getting paid for good grades. (2019). ConnectUs. Retrieved from https://connectusfund.org/14-pros-and-cons-of-getting-paid-for-good-grades-should-students-get-paid

Khalfani-Cox, L. (2014). Here's why I pay my kids for good grades. The Money Coach. Retrieved from https://askthemoneycoach.com/pay-kids-good-grades/

Pay for grades. (2008). Education Partnerships, Inc. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED539172.pdf

Robinson, E. (2016). Should we pay students for good grades? Chicago Booth Review. Retrieved from https://review.chicagobooth.edu/economics/2016/article/should-we-pay-students-good-grades