The Benefits Of Rewarding Students Education

Submitted By whiitemexiican
Words: 675
Pages: 3

The program that is stated in the article seems to be helpful. It obviously has had results that accomplished the goal of furthering students’ education, at least at South High Community School. In only two years the program increased the amount of kids who passed the AP test by twenty percent. Of course, this can also be contributed to the amount of kids who joined the program once it was open to everyone. However, it can also be argued that this success is because of the incentives given to the students, in this case the incentives being money. If one was to look at programs such as these in a psychological stand point, it would make sense why students would do better once they were being offered a reward for their work. Rewarding a behavior is the strongest way to make sure the behavior is repeated. High school students often complain about the lack of money they own; this program gives them the ability to acquire money just by trying a little harder in school. America, though considered one of the power houses of the worlds, admittedly does not have the greatest education system in the world. The PISA test is a test that is designed to test the basic skills of fifteen year old students in countries around the world. Out of the forty countries that took part in the test the United States ranked thirtieth in math and twenty-third in science. Programs like this help students to gain an interest in learning and ultimately would help the United States grow in the field of education. This program was able to gather steam due to the idea of rewarding a behavior. If programs like this were more widely available it can be argued that most other schools would have the same success as South High Community School. The reason that the success of the program is so detrimental is the fact that students who may not have chosen to further education are taking steps in the right direction to creating a better life for themselves. This is not only good for the individual students who are taking a part in this program, but, on a wider scale, it can be good for the economy. Students who chose to go to college after this program are opening themselves up to better job opportunities. People with better educations and IQ’s tend to be trend setters. This may be a way for new jobs to be created, further helping the economy. Other programs like this should be implemented. For example, a program in which if students were to have honor roll cumulative throughout high school they could a scholarship to pay off a year or so of college. This