Question

Imagine that you are writing an argument for schools to provide cash bonuses for students who achieve all As in a semester. Which claim is the most logical?

All students deserve the right to earn money for their work.
Students who earn cash for good grades will go on to have successful careers.
Providing students with a cash incentive could lead teens to be more motivated and successful.
Cash incentives will never work because students who are intrinsically motivated are more successful in life.

Answer 1

Claim 3: "Providing students with a cash incentive could lead teens to be more motivated and successful."

Why: it’s a modest, evidence-friendly causal claim. It links a clear policy (cash incentives) to plausible outcomes (increased motivation and success) without making absolute guarantees. That makes it easier to support with research on incentives, reinforcement, and student behavior and to qualify with caveats and safeguards.

Why the others are weaker:
- Claim 1 is vague and rights-based rather than directly tied to the effectiveness of the policy.
- Claim 2 overstates the case by asserting a guaranteed long-term outcome (successful careers) from a single semester’s rewards.
- Claim 4 is absolute and oppositional, shutting down the policy rather than evaluating it; it also ignores contexts where incentives do work.

Tip: strengthen Claim 3 by citing studies on monetary incentives and academic performance, specifying how bonuses would be implemented, and addressing possible downsides (short-term extrinsic motivation vs. long-term intrinsic motivation).