The Why Axis Summary

We live in a culture where success is increasingly defined by a paycheck and is seemingly as important to the parent as the child. Raising children to be “successful” is increasingly becoming an obsession for upper-middle-class-parents, who encourage certain activities and scores to provide their child with the best chances of attending elite schools. The article focuses on the inherent advantage upper-middle-class parents provide but fails to mention those who the parent’s action affects: their children.

Children who grow up in a poor area go to school where there are 50 kids in one class and individual attention is never given, and children of high class families will go to schools that have smaller class sizes and individual attention. Even when a poor child goes to a better schoolteachers will question if the work done is their own and also only expect hard work from the rich kids. “if you are a child of low income parents, the chances are good that you will receive limited and often careless attention from adults in your high school.” Theodore Sizer “Horace’s Compromise,” “If you are the child of upper-middle income parents, the chances are good that you will receive substantial and careful attention.” (203) These quotes from another author showcase that school in America is often times based on the social standing of the parents.

Margaret Heffernan once said, “For good ideas and true innovation, you need a mix of human interaction, conflict, argument, and debate.” In the article it is debated if there is any benefit in monetary rewards for students. Teachers, and parents alike are always trying to find the best way to reward and inspire there students to do well in school. Matthew G Springer is a professor of Public Policy and Education at Vanderbilt University. He is also the director of the National Center on Performance Incentives. He wrote this article to display his research and studies.

is through socioeconomic status. According to Sean Reardon, a main outcome of the widening income gap for families has been a widening gap in achievement among children, which he refers to as the income achievement gap (Reardon, 2011). Therefore, the children of the poor remain at an educational disadvantage when their parents’ income becomes as much of a predictor of their educational achievements, as their parents’ educational obtainment. To emphasize the results of the income achievement gap, Reardon states, “As the children of the rich do better in school, and those who do better in school are more likely to become rich, we risk producing an even more unequal and economically polarized society” (Reardon, 2011, p. 111). For example, as standardized testing shifted towards standardized achievement testing to determine a student’s academic achievement, parental investment in their children’s cognitive development began to increase. Educational disparities occur when affluent families can very easily afford tutoring outside of the classroom for their children to perform highly, while children being raised in impoverished homes are at a disadvantage, and at a lower chance of doing well on these exams. This becomes problematic when SAT reading, math, and writing scores increase with income as exemplified by the disproportionately small amount of minority students in higher education (Brand lecture,

The other four classes were not offered extra credit at all. The six classes that were given the extra credit opportunity were the experimental group, or incentive group. The four classes that were not given the opportunity to receive extra credit were the control group, or no incentive group. The students took the quizzes when they wanted to, in a testing center on campus. Each of the 7 quizzes were available for 10 days except for the third quiz, which was available for 9 days only because of the university’s schedule. Graduate students were present in the testing center at all times to monitor the process and give feedback to students on the quiz they just took. The data in this study was collected through direct, naturalistic observation and the experimental research method. Naturalistic observation occurs when a researcher studies subjects without disturbing them or intervening with the subjects or their environment in any way. The experimental method involves manipulating one variable to see if it has an effect on another variable (Weiten, 2016).

How far a student can go in life is already pre-determined by the generation before him. Success is no longer made up of solely intellectual ability, but rather if the streets the student walks through is gang-ridden or not, if their parents are absentees, and other conditions in which the child grows up in. Valerie Strauss expresses these concerns in her article, “What the Numbers Really Tell Us About America’s Public Schools” in which she discusses how income levels correlate with students’ success rate which is further accentuated through Kamiak and Mariner High School’s Standardized Test Results. “Motivation, a Major Factor in U.S. Student Test Performance” by Dian Schaffhauser continues this idea of external problems affecting low scores

Fifty years after the declaration of war on poverty, an increasing number of children still grow up in poverty in this country. Poverty is now more determinative than race as a predictor of student educational success (Reardon, 2013). The achievement gap between the poor and the more economically advantaged child has actually widened over the last three decades (Reardon, 2013). If we are to provide all children with equal and excellent educational opportunities, it is imperative that we utilize the most effective strategies and enhancements to overcome the educational disadvantages that poor children experience.

Everybody loves a good success story. When the underdog, usually a lower class high school age student, defies the odds and comes out on top, beating his circumstances to get where nobody thinks he should go, everyone goes crazy for it. So crazy that Hollywood gets in on the act, with movie productions such as The Blind Side, Life of A King, and Slum Dog Millionaire. Sadly, these stories are not commonplace, in fact, they are very few and far between. More often than not, students from lower class families struggle to get by, as a result putting school to the back burner. Less than 75% of students in lower income households graduate high school, and even fewer go onto college (http://nces.ed.gov). From this group, excuses began to come out, the main reason underlies them all; they have become a product of their circumstance. The position they were in restrained them, forcing only one path, a

In the article “Who Gets to Graduate” by Paul Tough examines a problem about low income students are less likely to graduate from college than students from middle class or wealthier families. In the United States, school systems are not created equally. Middle and upper class students have access to safe and modern schools equipped with everything they possibly need to stay in that high rank because they came from a family who has the money to support their studies. Students from low-income families don’t have a lot of the support, stability, and money from home that higher-income students can take for granted.

The school finance reform is focused on the distribution of funds across rich and poor district schools. The reform was based on the thought that rich neighborhoods and households were better in spending on education. These scholars would access better programs and their family backgrounds could put them in the most precious and advanced institutions. Poorer neighborhoods on the other hand struggled to raise fees and sometimes students were forced to drop-out due to financial challenges. The historical development of the school finance reform has always sought to fund schools differently based on students’ family backgrounds (White, 2014). Poorer schools are given priority, low income districts also enjoy more federal aid that high-income district schools. The significance of school finance reforms was poised on previous researches. Studies indicate that a student educated in a school that received 20% higher funding than that of his peer, the scholar was likely to perform 20% better and his chances for adult poverty were 20% lower (White, 2014). Low-income government schools, either at district or state level, will perform better if given adequate financial assistance.

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

Yet, within experimental research settings it may have too many constraints that are beyond a non-experimental applications. Reed (2008) points out that in a classroom environment there could be various confounds reinforcing the target behavior. In such environments understanding the associations between treatments outcomes becomes difficult to decipher (Reed, 2008; Iwata, 1991). With such complexity taking place in an educational environment it is difficult

Sadly, numerous children who don’t meet the mark with Common Core standardized tests, receive placement in special classes. They then become passed on through school without acquiring any assistance in preparing them for college. They leave high school without any aspirations of furthering their education, as in these classes, there is added encouragement to enter the workforce straight out of high school. Another reason these children don’t pursue college is a lack of money as “lower-income families often struggle to cover costs of education” (Mather and Jarosz 13).

Although some children who live in poverty try to succeed, some don’t try at all. Not trying makes the gray matter lessen. The less gray matter the harder academics gets for them. Most drop out and causes them to be in the same situation for the rest of their

One might contemplate an aspect to life may be the pondering existential question; what motivates people to do what they do? The human experience is exceptionally complex due to different variables attributing to our individual experiences. Though each person 's experience is particularly unique to themselves, as a general phenomenon, people seem to have some similarities in experience that bring us together as a bonding universal community. Through many different theoretical lenses, we can look through the study of psychology of how motivation contributes to human behavior of why people do what they do.