Schools across New England have been publishing their end-of-year honor rolls in the local papers. Many of these schools - from Rockport to Bedford, N.H. to Cumberland, R.I. - also include something called the “Effort Honor Roll.” This is the honor roll for kids who, well, didn’t actually make the honor roll but should feel good about it, anyway...From an op-ed column at the Boston Herald.
Ashton Elementary School in Cumberland, R.I., says that the Effort Honor Roll is to honor consistently outstanding effort at school. These efforts include “consistently exhibits politeness, kindness and respect toward others” and “consistently works to best of ability.”
And some schools that aren’t starting effort rolls have decided instead to stop publishing honor rolls at all. If nobody wins, then nobody loses, right?
21 July 2010
Yoda would be disappointed
Apparently there is a "try" -
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I have an 'effort honor role' exhibit. I worked real hard to produce this while on the stool of idiotic educational mediocrity.
ReplyDeleteBack when I was in middle school, the school had to remove the "Honor Roll" and "High Honor Roll" because to publish the names of people in connection with their GPA was a violation of the 1974 FERPA. This amazing law is also the reason that at my (state) university, if a professor wants to leave graded quizzes outside his office for pickup, he has to assign you a 'code name' so that no one could possibly identify your score. In protest, I'll let you know that my code name was DiverC805, federal law be damned.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in middle school, we were given timed tests to do 100 math problems. The results were posted on the bulletin board for everyone to see; I still remember the numbers were written in blue for first honors (>85) and in red for <60.
ReplyDeleteThis is the same kind of ridiculousness that is making little leagers everywhere not able to claim a win.
ReplyDeleteClue me in, Nathan. What's going on with Little League?
ReplyDeleteActually, I was taking some liberty... specifically, AYSO (youth soccer) has had some really weird ways of aligning teams within districts (or whatever the local organization is called) so that a team must have a balance of player skills, and everyone gets a chance to play. What's more, some organizations (not sure that AYSO is one of them or not, to be honest) have done away with scores at certain levels, so as not to have any "losers" in a game.
ReplyDeleteSome people in youth baseball organizations are afraid that their sport will be next, although thankfully it looks like the trend is slowing.