Employers Should Require a 2.0 GPA for Hiring Teen Workers
PRO (6 arguments)
Definitions:
Employers: Employers at jobs that you need a work permit for as a teenager; like a fast food job, service jobs, and manufacturing jobs.
Should require: as in what we should do to promote education in America. This debate will be focused on promoting education and benefiting the teenagers of America
Teens: 15-18 year-old applicants
2.0 GPA: As in a 2.0 GPA in only the subjects that the employer deems relevant (minimum of 2) Why? Because that’s the average grade. It’s a “C”. Many other institutions also use it as the cut-off bar, illustrating the fact that it is an already well-established spot to place the minimum requirement. A 2.0 GPA is the minimum requirement for an Associate’s or Bachelor’s Degree. Other institutes that use 2.0 GPA as their minimum GPA requirement include the NCAA, the High School Athletic Association, and other college sports and clubs.
That’s right – all teenagers already have a job: going to school. It is a job mandated by the laws of all 50 states. In California, the parents or legal guardian of students between the ages of 6 and 18 are responsible for seeing to it that their students attend school until the student attains the age of 18 or graduates from high school. Our society places such a high priority on graduation from high school, that laws actually make it mandatory.
California Compulsory School Attendance Law
How does this benefit the employer? In many ways: (1) it gives employers an objective tool to fairly evaluate all teen candidates, much like colleges use SAT scores, (2) numerous studies have confirmed that the GPA is a strong indicator of school attendance, thus, employers who hire a student with a 2.0 or higher GPA know that the employee is likely to be reliable, (3) the 2.0 GPA is a “C” average, which gives employers the knowledge that the student possesses at least an average understanding of academic topics that will affect their job performance, like math, reading and writing, (4) the employer can feel good about helping parents and society to encourage teens to stay in school (numerous studies have concluded that graduating from high school is a major indicator of a student’s future earnings and life success).
A study conducted in 2002 called “The Correlation Between Attendance and Achievement at Garey High School”; Also a study by the University of Connecticut in 2009 found a 75% correlation between attendance and GPA meaning that those students who have low numbers of absences tend to have a higher G.P.A. Also a University of Pennsylvania study on Philadelphia School District from 1994 through 2001 found similar results.
Many school athletic programs have had these minimum GPA requirements for years and have found that students rise to meet the minimum.
In schools that had strong academic requirements, athletic directors reported students adjusted to the requirements once they were set in place. In a study by the U.S. Sports Academy, one athletic director in New Mexico stated that kids know what the minimum grade point average is to be eligible so they will do what is required. In fact, he even thought that they could raise the grade point to 2.5 and the student-athletes would adjust in a matter of time. The Los Angles Unified School District instituted a rule that stated, "To be eligible for participation in extracurricular activities students must maintain a C average in four subjects and have no failures" (Eitzen & Sage, 1989). In 1984 the state of Texas introduced a "No Pass No Play" rule that stated that athletes could not have any failing grades if they were to participate in a sporting activity (Richards, 1987). Initially, a large group of students became ineligible to compete and there was strong opposition from coaches and parents. But in a matter of two years, in both of these instances, the percentage of students who were declared ineligible was the same as before the rule was enacted.
US. Sports Academy
Teens might as well know now, when they can do something about it, that their GPA will continue to effect their future opportunities beyond high school and college.
According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers' "Job Outlook 2005" survey, 70 percent of hiring managers do report screening applicants based on their GPA. And minimum GPA’s are not just used for employment but to get into college, to receive grants and financial aid, and to participate in extracurricular activities as well. The majority of states even have a minimum GPA requirement for teens to get their driver’s licenses. Twenty-seven states have laws in place that allow a student's driving privileges to be suspended due to poor behavior at school. Five of the 27 specify that students must uphold satisfactory progress academically.
Huffington Post
GPA is how schools measure success and is one standard by which employers can determine those students who do well under pressure. It takes a certain level of responsibility, maturity and commitment to succeed in the job market, just as it does in school. The pressures of after-school employment is not for everyone.
In the Handbook of Marriage and Family, the authors find the “Longer hours of work for teens are associated with higher rates of tardiness, more conduct problems and lower grades. Employed students when compared to nonemployed students, had lower grades, spent less time on homework and had lower educational expectations and expressed more disengagement from school. Employed 10 and 11th grade students who worked long hours experienced an increased use of alcohol. There are psychosocial costs associated with teenage employment because it interferes with identity formation, peer groups and academic success.
In the book Juvenile Delinquency by Larry Siegel, he found that “while gainful employment sounds like a healthy choice, research shows that adolescent work experience may actually increase delinquency. Kids who get jobs may be looking for an easy opportunity to acquire cash to buy drugs and alcohol; after-school jobs may attract teens who are more impulsive than ambitious. Some aspects of the work experience, such as autonomy, increased social status among peer and increased income may neutralize the positive effects of working.
In a Tough Job Market, Teens are Suffering Most, CNN, January 18, 2010
It is incredibly devasting for an individual and for society as whole for a student to drop out of high school that anything we as a society can do to encourage students to graduate is well worth the effort, even if a small percentage of students find a way around the system or are hurt by the requirement.
Every year, close to 1/3 of 18 year olds do not finish high school. The dropout rates for minority students, students from low-income families, and disabled students are even higher. A high school diploma earns a person on average $8,400 more a year or more than $420,000 over a lifetime. But this is not just a problem affecting the individual dropout. It is a community-wide problem that affects everyone. A study by the Economics Center for Education and Research in Ohio found that high school graduates contribute more to a state's economy and require less state assistance than high school dropouts. High school dropouts commit about 75 percent of crimes in the United States and are much more likely to be on public assistance than those who complete high school. The cost to the public for these crime and welfare benefits is close to $200 billion annually. Because dropouts earn only about 60 percent of what high school graduates earn and only about 40 percent of the income of college degree holders – resulting in about $50 billon dollars in lost state and federal tax revenues each year. Dropouts are much more likely to have health problems than non-dropouts. A 1% increase in high school completion rate would save the United States $1.4 billion annually in health care costs.
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