Elijah Curnutt

Mrs. Wenz

English 102

23 February 2024

A Purposeful Proposition (Alliteration)

Let’s face it, Arizona’s education system is failing. Year after year this godforsaken desert is

ranked dead last when it comes to academia, which reflects quite poorly on the state's

competency as a whole. One thing is clear, for there to be any hope that anybody takes Arizona

seriously, something has to change. There needs to be higher test scores, a greater sense of

responsibility in the student population, and more incentives amongst teachers to build up the

grades in their classrooms.

Of course, as everyone knows, a state’s placement education-wise is based primarily on the

most objective measure of intelligence, standardized test scores, so the first priority should be to

get those scores up. The higher ups in education are already very aware of this issue. Attempts

are made constantly to create an environment to foster higher test schools, but unfortunately

these methods are, for a lack of a better descriptor, too gentle. Like a Pavlovian dog, the only

way for the future of our state’s reputation to be upheld is to use strong motivation on the student

body as a whole. (Simile). As for how the students will be motivated, it just so happens that they

dropped the perfect material right into the laps of the school board. Upon enrollment, each and

every student gives the school their address and their families contact information, so we can

simply use this information to establish a system that painlessly euthanizes family members

when a failing test score is entered into the gradebook. The number of executed family members

would of course be proportional to the size of the family, we wouldn’t want those with smaller
families to feel discouraged by an unfair system after all (irony). Sadly there is a slight flaw in

this plan. There are students who have a not so great relationship(Litotes) with their families and

might not care if a couple of them were to kick the bucket(Euphemism). We could identify these

students by sending out family relationship surveys under the false pretense of being for

counseling. Then simply pivoting the threat onto their life instead of their families to motivate

them. Now some may say that such actions are inhumane and immoral, that surely positive

reinforcement would work better than a constant state of fear. However, throughout history the

stick is always more effective than the carrot(Allusion).

There is another party that has not been considered yet, teachers. While most of the

responsibility for grades needs to be placed on the students as discussed previously, some of the

weight must be placed on the instructors. Teachers are the foundation of the education system,

completely integral to the institution, but not entirely load bearing(Metaphor). So the question is

how would someone incentivise teachers to create a more electric environment(Alliteration) for

their students? It’s not possible to take the same route as with the students because not all

teachers have families that are easy to track down, and considering the profession they went into

they more than likely don’t have too much care for their own life. Which leaves just one option,

punish them financially. It is common knowledge that teachers are the greediest of all living

creatures looking for nothing more than to bleed schools dry, so a system could be constructed

that would remove a percentage of their salary based on the average grade of their classroom.

My proposal is for every percentage below an 80% their scores are, 1000$ would be removed

from the up to a whopping $40,000 they make per year (A robbery that I still do not know how

they got away with). This would incentivise them to grade much more liberally on assignments.

Say for example, hypothetically, a student were to submit an essay. Under this system their
teacher would be compelled to give them a good grade on that essay. Of course this wouldn’t be

honest some of the time, but average grades would rise which is the end goal here anyway.

With all of these changes, grades and test scores in Arizona will skyrocket well above what

they were before, and by my projections we might even rise to the height of 47th in the nation

education-wise! This is the single most important goal we can have as a state, so I implore you to

take my proposal into consideration. Thank you.

Word Count: 726