This article examines motivational potentialities in remedial mathematics education within an ethical context, applying a model for ethical decision making in education developed by Shapiro and Stefkovich, in which three broad ethical categories are discussed: the ethic of justice, the ethic of care, and the ethic of critique. These ethical categories are applied to two broad categories of motivational strategy: motivation by intervention and motivation by policy. It is argued that individual interventions risk encroaching on student autonomy and are ethically contravened, whereas motivation-based regimens--such as graded homework, graded tests, and required tutorials--are recommended if they may be implemented in a way that privileges a standardized placement examination as the ultimate criterion for successful remediation.