QOTW: "Paying For Grades"---thoughts?
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QOTW: "Paying For Grades"---thoughts?
| Mon, 07-31-2006 - 9:49am |
I thought this would be a great question for this week; with many of us either just starting school or getting close to starting school!

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Morning ladies,
Well here in my house we do reward for grades.
DH and I ONLY pay for grades. We have told our kids from DAY 1 that it is our job to provide for them. It is their job to go to school and do well! We get paid on our jobs they get paid for theirs. We don't pay for chores or anything else.....we pay HUGE too. That is how we were both raised. If you do well in school, you will want for nothing. That is how it is in the real world....if you excel you are HUGELY rewarded. So we try to model that in our home.
We don't accept any grade lower than a B in our home. My DD has a learning disability and she would be allowed some leeway but her grades are all S's and E's. They don't make letter grades until the 4th grade....
I don't pay for grades. I was never rewarded and it had no effect on how well I did. Kristen knows its her job to do well, that I expect nothing less than her best. Here A's are not handed out so readily as in some systems. An A means that you are working consistently above grade level which for straight A's would basically mean you are so advanced you have already mastered everything about your grade. So our system discourages that sort of marking. However DD gets the majority of A's and a few B's. She has informed me that she will NEVER get a C. That was her own decision, I've never said anything about C's being bad, she figured that out on her own.
Some years she will get a year end gift. Not necessarily as a reward for the grades but simply as a celebration of the end of the school year. One year it was the Harry Potter book, one year a more expensive pair of jeans than she usually gets. This year it was nothing. It just depends but we almost always go out for dinner on the last day of school unless she's with her Dad. We usually go out to eat the first day of school too to celebrate the new start.
I'm not dead set against paying for grades. I know some people really get in a twist over it. I think alot seems to stem from how we were raised. I find most people who pay were also paid as kids and those who don't weren't. It seems to be working for us, so I have no inclination to change. Only once she asked why she didn't get paid and I said it was her job to get those grades and she was happy with that. She gets a regular allowance that is only behaviour based (not chore based) and really she wants for nothing so I don't think getting another $50 each report card would make a difference to her.
No, I don't reward for grades and my kids would not be motivated by financial or material rewards. My philosophy regarding education for my children is that they are in school to learn. I EXPECT them to learn their subjects and if there is a problem I EXPECT them to let me know/seek help. I also view school as more than the 6/7 subjects which are graded. It's also for social interactions and extracurriculars (school clubs, athletics, other interests), all of which are VERY important IMO.
With that said, my kids do get high grades (mostly A's and the remainder B's). An "A" here is similar to Tam's - consistantly exceeding grade level work.
Lynn
Edited 7/31/2006 12:18 pm ET by twins4lynn
WE don't pay our kids for grades, but I am not against it at all. My kids get good grades and I think they would feel they disappointed us if they didn't. We used to do the Chuck E. Cheese thing when they were younger (tokens for grades), but haven't in a while. I think we've "rewarded" them by going out to dinner a few times and such.
This topic brings up a funny story from my youth. My Grandparents used to pay us for grades. It was mostly my parents sending our report cards and then they would send us money. Anyway, my little sister took it upon herself to write a letter to them and said, "you owe me X number of dollars for my report card." We still tease her about it. They got a huge kick out of it.
I see nothing wrong with a reward for a good report card (we go to Friendly's for an ice cream) but I would not pay my kids to get good grades.
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It is a good thing that I don't focus too much on report card grades because the principal announced at the elementary school graduation that only one kid (out of approximately 140) was awarded all A's this year. This not a school of slackers, and where many kids were invited to take the John Hopkins Talent Search test. There is a lot of subjectivity that goes into grades. I asked two teachers and a principal to define what an A or a B was, and I got three very different answers.
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At this point, what they are learning is far more important than the actual grade. At least here, grades don't count towards anything. There is no gifted program, and there is no leveling until high school. The grades my kids earn in eighth grade will determine which classes they can get into at the high school.
That being said, I do make sure my kids are prepared for each test, and I have on occasion bribed them to earn a higher grade.
Edited 7/31/2006 3:58 pm ET by andovermom
I don't pay for good grades. Math, science, social studies & keyboarding come easy to him, but writing & spelling doesn't. (His reading improve a lot this past year) Even if I was to offer to pay him to do better in those subjects, he would still stink at them. So I embrace his strenghts & encourage him to do better in the areas that are troublesome to him. The spelling is a huge stumbling block for him. It would stress my husband out. (He was a county spelling bee champ when he was in the 5th grade.) But I can relate to it. (I had a teacher in Georgia who would paddle kids that failed a spelling test 2 weeks in a row. Needless to say, I got a few paddlings from her.) All I ask is that he studies (he has a Turbo Twist spelling thingy), does the best he can & brings home at least a D. (I know that sounds awful to some people, but he use to make mostly F's). If he brings home a C, it is exciting. He once brought home a B & I celebrated it by taking him to his favorite restaurant, Red Lobster.
He is verbally prolific but it's hard for him to get his thoughts on paper. Does anyone else have problems with there child being like this?
I'm no Dan Quayle, but we've sort of made good grades a "family value" in this house. :)When the kids were really little, before they started school, we would occasionally say things like, "When you start school, you'll have to work really hard so you can learn a lot and get good grades." Or if they'd ask a question about something, we'd give them an answer, then add, "you'll learn a lot more about that in school." We've never felt the need to provide any additional motivation for them.
However, neither child has a learning disability, which I think would require very different motivation strategies. Neither child inherited my tendency to academic laziness either, and they're both "law and order" types who wouldn't consider not doing an assignment on time. So I think in many ways, there really isn't a need to push them to work harder.
We've been criticized for this, but all we do when they bring their reports home is to say low key things like, "You've obviously worked really hard this time. I know you can keep it up" or "if you get grades like this when you're in high school, you'll have a lot of choices when you apply to college." We don't give any special dinners or rewards, partly because I'm afraid that introducing an additional motivator might backfire. Why mess up a good thing?
I used to think it was awful to give a child money for good grades, but I've come to realize that for some kids--particularly bright, savvy kids who tend to be a bit lazy--rewards like this are very effective. I think such a strategy might have worked for me when I was a kid and happy to earn a B in math by coasting rather than working for a A.
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