Pros And Cons Of Merit Pay

From the NF article “Many teachers also say paying students for good grades creates conflict with students and teachers getting money.” This means that students will be bragging about how much money they get about getting good grades. This also means that teachers will be having problems with the kids. The effect on this is that kids will not get along because the other student will be bragging about how much money they got, and the other student might of not gotten as much money. In addition paying students affects the student and teachers relationships. This shows that paying kids (students) is a bad

“I believe that some of this acting-out behavior is due to the pressure that is starting to be applied when the child starts in middle school and life-goals start to be identified.” (A Generation Struggling) In this example, this is not accurate because the rich kids actually can have standards to become successful, the Greasers do not set up expectations in education for themselves, they are rather expected to be drop out nobodies. This quote is reasonable because yes, Socs can be pressured ad not feel accepted or worth their parent’s expectations, which may be very difficult to deal with, but the Greasers don’t even possess standards of achievement in their lives. "Unfortunately, upon graduating from high school, a growing percentage of these affluent youth will discover the world is not circling around them. For those who enroll in college the message is “Work Hard and Party Hard” which may be their academic undoing as they fail to attend class or turn in assignments. Expectations for good grades may create stress on the student as they (or their parents) can no longer bully the professor into assigning a higher grade.” This opposing thesis is not valid because these kids which “struggle” with academic success, which is a struggle with some of heir lives, focus on the fact that they are so pressured to do well in school without their parents and have to be a exceeding well off person based off their success.. in which they should be grateful on of their greater problems.

They try to improve their score because everybody else has a better one than them so they feel they are not good enough. Should teachers be quitting due to the stress of testing? No, because they don't really go through as much stress as the students do when they are testing and the teachers should also be able to handle these things and not just quit because they think it is too complicated(Occupytheory). Does it affect the way teachers teach their classes? Standardized tests do affect the way teachers teach because they can only teach certain things and not what they think that the students might need.

If the paying is just for the makeshift, it is wasting money. The money that parents paid could used for their children’s future. (Introduction)(Intro) If students work hard in school, they can earn a reward for future, but if they being paid for grade, they earn reward at school but not in future (Good). Again, paying for grades is makeshift for the class grade and it is not for your long period life. To make students success in the future, paying for grade is not good idea.

The lower level classes would go over material at a slower pace. Going at a slower pace is not a good thing because then they won’t get to all the material that has to be covered. They also got less work done in lower class levels. This is why having classes combined with low and high will improve the amount of work being done for both. Not only does it make it fair if they are thought together, but also lower level students won’t feel as if they are not smart enough to be in a higher-level class since they are all mixed in one room.

If all the students are worried about is getting good grades to get those scholarships, then they are in school for the wrong reason. I believe that the point of going to school is to learn material not to take the easy route to satisfy yourself by getting good grades. I would rather fail something and learn from it, than pass with flying colors and not learn anything at all just because I wanted the money. Yes there is more of a reward for getting good grades rather than learning the material but what are you really getting out of it if you are not learning anything. Rags to riches, which means you might be the rag and at the bottom while you are in school, but if you learn something in school and work hard you while eventually be on the rich side of things.

Because of this, teachers are leaving their profession. Teachers feel it is unfair they are not being evaluated by all their hard work. Scores are not true indications of student capabilities for reasons such as my personal story of test anxiety. Teachers feel they are only teaching the test, not the full necessary curriculum. All the stress and issues schools and teachers are faced, are left up on the students.

According to Alison Bell from Lexile Measure, she says “You begin to question not only your capabilities but how much you care.” Alison Bell has a good point, you can’t just force kids to take tests and be alright with it. They actually need to be motivated and that starts from home. “Some students cheat just for fun to see if they can get away with it, but most cheat because they do not have time to study and and are in time-crunch” says Christine Probett a managing professor at San Diego University. This shows how students cheat because they do not care about their grades. Their guardians or whoever they live with needs to help them be an educated person so that they could have a bright future.

Teachers work so hard to train themselves to be able to teach students and interact with them. It is hard on teachers to deal with children who do not want to learn or could care less about what they are teaching. This creates emotional stress on teachers, very similar to that of professional athletes before big games. Teachers job security are determined by their students test performance, which can be unfair since some students just do not care. Professional athletes jobs can be determined by their performance as well, but the results lie in their hands.

The accountability of the scores is meant to encourage teachers to adopt better and more effective methods of teaching, as well as to urge students to work harder. However the effects are more detrimental. Because of testing, students are more likely to be frustrated and discouraged at having to move so fast to cover all the ground needed. If a student is having a bad day or just is not a good test taker, all anyone can say is “tough luck.” The teachers will only focus on the select subjects tested on, and then only the select aspects they believe will be covered in the testing. Depending on how desperate a teacher is for good test scores, inappropriate preparations can be made before testing, sometimes even to the point of cheating.