Pay For Performance Is Not A Recent Idea. The Concept That

“As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves (p.6).” His report opened the eyes of America and plastered mass media. Social promotion also played a big role with issues in education as well. To protect a student’s self-esteem, they would be promoted to the next grade even if their skills have not advanced to the next grade. Grade inflation took place, which is the tendency to award progressively higher academic grades for work that would have received lower grades in the past. Even during this time, low income teachers were a thing as well. Even teachers that were unqualified in math and science subjects were not qualified. Now thirty years later after the report was written, many requests have been taken into account.

Writer, Anne Stuhldreher, in her persuasive article, “They Earn as They Learn,” suggests that a financial incentive program in schools can lead to improvements in student performance on standardized test. She supports this claim through an encouraging anecdote recounting the positive progress a student has made due to the program, then she introduces the favorable observations made by a teacher employed at a school piloting the program, and finally by presenting the compelling beliefs and statistics provided by a principal, whom has witnessed student progress. Stuhldreher’s purpose is to persuade the readers to agree that paying students to perform well on exams can improve overall academic achievement. She adopts an optimistic tone for Americans

In “The Dangerous Myth of Grade Inflation”, Alfie Kohn explores the phenomenon behind grade inflation. Whether it is complaints or just the general idea that such an undesired occurrence has routinely taken place, Kohn certainly explores them all. He begins with addressing that the issue has not just transpired, but has been in existence over time as many have complained periodically. As Kohn notes on page 261, grade inflation is recognized as a poor occurrence, yet Kohn reveals the struggle as “truly substantive issues surrounding grades and motivation have been obscured or ignored.” Why is this so? Kohn goes on to explore the issue through some evidence and research, but finds that while grades have become higher more recently than before, that still does not prove inflation exists behind the rise in grades (261). By this Kohn reveals a trend to the reader with the facts, or lackthereof, behind grade inflation.

Recently, I read an article called “America Hates Its Gifted Kids”. This article is about how America; one of the greatest economical leaders in the world, is lacking substantially in educational intelligence. The country is also treating its gifted kids with little to no courtesy when it comes to education. The author, Chris Weller, has been a reporter for many different publishing businesses and likes to focus his reports mainly on how different worlds overlap. He talks about how the United States educational system focuses more on helping their lowest scoring children reach the minimal standards, while it is also taking away valuable time from the higher scoring children. I agree with Chris Weller entirely; The education system today takes

    When researching into the topic of grade inflation one begins to see a multitude of problems arise that have been previously ignored and have been left to continue wreaking havoc on the educational system. Mark Oppenheimer shares a similar points of view in his article where he discussed his opinion, that grade inflation is one of the much lesser issues and that we need to be focusing on other things.(other things, just quote his article). His ideas are countered by the ideas of people such as Rojstaczer who argue that grade inflation is becoming an out of control issue that needs to be fixed (add in quotes from the book and article)

The U.S. public education system contains tremendous inequality, much of which is maintained through the institution itself. We believe the system to be based on the principles of a strong work ethic and equal opportunity – key components of the dominant American ideology, which are in turn made reasonable by the schooling system. Furthermore, structural factors such as cumulative advantage, which explains how those who are successful gain additional success, offer an explanation for the inequalities in the school system that cannot be described or solved by money. Therefore, through the legitimation of the dominant American ideology and the process of cumulative advantage, the U.S. public education system perpetuates social inequality within the classroom and provides more power to those already born with greater life chances.

In today’s society one of the most important factors in selecting a career field is rate of pay. No matter whether the profession maybe, the dollar figure must be within a range that allows the employee to maintain a substantial lifestyle. The debate of teacher pay scales has raged on for years. Many argue that the current pay scale for teachers is a scale which rewards teachers merely for seniority. They argue that the current pay scale overlooks those educators which demonstrate exceptional performance. Teacher merit pay systems have been the most popular suggestions made to remedy the problems seen with the current pay scale. Although the current pay scale may not be completely effective, the idea of

There are myriad unforeseen consequences when schools use the traditional grading system. For the past century, traditional grading practices and policies that have contributed to much of the failure of student achievement. The use of the traditional grading system has slowly led to the major issue of grade inflation. Most often students’ grade tend to be inflated with the help of non-academic factors such as homework, participation and student effort. High school teachers tend include effort as part of the grade, giving high grades to students who work in class despite whether they

To begin with, students should not be paid for exceptional grades, as a result it robs their feeling of accomplishment. According to “Parents paying their children money for excellent grades is a horrible idea”, by Gisler and Eberts, “ Many parents don’t realize that giving money to children for grades robs their feeling of accomplishment.” This means, giving children money they only do their work if they’re getting paid, and they don’t learn as much. The effect of this is that they don’t get that feeling of them doing their work all by themselves with nothing supporting

    When researching the topic of grade inflation, one begins to detect a multitude of problems, such as the effects it holds on the students and teachers, and the deflating value of grades themselves. These issues have been long ignored and continue to disrupt our educational system. Mark Oppenheimer shares the same point of view in his article, “There’s Nothing Wrong With Grade Inflation,” where he discussed his opinion, that grade inflation is one of the much lesser issues and that we need to focus on more pressing matters. Meanwhile, others such as Rojstaczer hold strong counter arguments. He argues that grade inflation is becoming an out of control issue that we should focus on fixing.

Pay for performance is an incentive program. A way to compare is when in sports a player can make more money for doing better or meeting certain goals. So if a pitcher pitches a no-hitter he may receive an additional bonus on top of his salary. Pay for performance concerning health care is looking at not only success rates but overall outcomes. This means Patient A has a surgery she comes through without complications, and she heals quickly, is discharged and when she comes back for a follow-up everything is moving along as the physician plan. This is a good outcome. Now if the same patient, acquires an infection,does not heal in a reasonable amount of time or dies then the outcome is not favorable and pay for performance is affected. because pay for performance is difficult to measure in long term situations many times, the outcomes are measured in sections such as various components that create a patient’s overall health rating. for instance, Patient B is 300 lbs suffers from high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes pay for performance would look at each component and see if the health services being provided are aiding in the betterment of the patients health. At the core pay for performance is more about accountability, keeping medical professionals abreast of what is really going on with patients regardless of income or background.

I think this system does give rise to the creation of an elitist/entitled group. Similarly, Michael Sigman echoes this effect, “grade inflation promotes ego inflation, the opposite of healthy self-confidence.” The author of Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement, Jean M. Twenge, says with the reward system for participation it, “builds this empty sense of ‘I’m just fantastic, not because I did anything but just because I’m here.’” The author used a term, Lake Wobegon effect, which I never heard of; I was interested to know what the principle was. What I learned was that the effect is when we overestimate our abilities when compared to others: Most importantly, we like to consider ourselves 'above average'. High achievers (or those who consider themselves to be such) think themselves in the top X percent, where X may be 25, 10, 5, 2 or 1, depending on the frame of reference.” With this system, of the ‘top X percent,’ it gives the illusion of superiority though it may not have any substance if everyone is given

Academics regularly debate of whether the education system is meritocratic, which is a system in which advancement is based on individual ability or achievement. With this system hard work, ability and effort are rewarded so everyone who studies has an equal chance of success. This idea of meritocratic seems fair, you get rewarded on what effort you put in, but in modern societies, there are huge issues on inequality so a student’s educational attainment, could be heavily influenced by what class, gender or race they are.

Over the past four weeks, the actions that I performed really prepared me for this paper. First, I had to select a topic. Since it had to be school based/something related to school, I wanted to talk about the county that I did my K-12 years at; Prince George’s county. Over the summer, I remembered when Prince George’s County was on the news. It was said that an investigation was taking place because of how quickly their graduation rates has risen over the past four years. I checked with my professor and my tutor to see if this was a good topic to write about and the feedback that I got was amazing. I was then told to search about “Grade Inflation” and I was shocked at what I saw. I did not know that grade inflation was something real. I never knew that it existed.

Pay for performance is a quite rational theory. According to the U.S. Merit System Protection Board (2006), “Pay for Performance refers to a pay strategy where evaluations of individual and/or organizational performance have significant influence on the amount of pay increases or bonuses given to each employee” (p.1). This theory hope to use different salary to motivate and punish the employees according to the evaluation of their working performance. However, in the real world, it is very hard to implement in every organization, particularly in government and nonprofit organizations.