@donnaleighg “@Hanna you’re absolutely right; in my opinion you have expressed the most valid reason to complain about uneven celebration of achievements. However I’ve detected more of a “it’s not fair” mentality here which I think is really kind of silly.”
When I originally posted this I was thinking of it as a sort of ridiculous political correctness run amok. More of a sarcastic eye roll that I think they are complete idiots, not angry because it is unfair.
I really think that the benefit of posting academic awards accrues to the parents and families who are not up there and have no idea how their student is doing. Maybe if they see that they might just ask just a few more questions. Maybe they will begin to understand how their student is really doing, instead of how they like to image he is doing. Then may they could do a better job of encouraging, supporting, and guiding their student to be successful in high school and college. jmho
Funny enough, none of the FSA admits I remembered being called were school athletes…especially ones who were state champions. Was an interesting experience seeing armed forces Reps who were uniformed Colonels/Brigadier Generals or Navy Captains/Real Admirals giving speeches honoring admits to their respective FSAs.
Funny @cobrat. At my kids’ HS it was actually very “in” to be in the band. Very! They went on tours, and had some really interesting and fun events for band members only. Small HS with about 800 students and about 120 were in the band. Pretty high representation.
And our band and athletic folks worked together a LOT in terms of schedules. For example…a band trip always took place between sports seasons. And sporting events did not take place on the weekends of All State or Regioanl Music Festivals.
Our Parent Athletic Council was the largest Parent group until the music parents got well organized in about 1997.
If you google “Stanford” in US news, you will get news stories about basketball / football, but almost nothing about scientific research done at Stanford. This is a sad reality in the USA. Colleges are famous for their athletic programs, rather than their scientific prowess.
At my son’s high school framed yearbook photos of the Top Ten Graduating Seniors, based on cumulative GPA over four years, hang in the office for the next year. My son graduated 5th in his class. He was so thrilled by this accomplishment. I think it is a wonderful tribute in addition to the trophy case for all types of athletic and academic awards.
Taking down the pictures is silly. I am kind of amazed you had 30 semi-finalists! Must be quite a school.
That being said, I really wonder about our school taking “credit” for NMFs and perfect SAT/ACT scores, as to me it really is based on innate ability and not on hard work, good teaching, or other things controlled by the school. A kid that misses the cutoff for NMS by one point or gets one question wrong on an SAT test is no less qualified than the NMF/800 kid in most cases.
The same thing could be said about winning vs losing in sports. The only teams whose pictures are featured on the school web site are those that won something like state championship - regardless of how well another team did. I am not saying we should have “everyone wins” but perhaps the message that you only deserve recognition if you win and that coming in second or missing a cutoff by a point or two is not worthy of celebration adds to the pressure kids feel.
I agree about the awards. So many seem to be more of a popularity contest among the top students, than a true distinction between the best students.
Well, in school districts (and there are many!) where, for example, the math teachers are barely qualified—in fact might not have the requisite certification at all, but be emergency hires—it’s going to be hard for any students to score very high on the PSAT.
There are reasons that standardized test scores correlate incredibly tightly with household income. This is merely one of them.
That was not meant as a put down of teachers or their importance. Results on AP tests or even SAT subject tests would be directly related to teaching. Decent teaching and good schools will allow kids to do well on SATs, but not to be NMFs.
Our school does not inform the students, that’s right, does NOT tell them, if they were a national merit commended et al. I had to call the HQ to ask. The HS only awards the certificates in May, nearly nine months later, at senior award night. Parents had to call the school, call the NMS HQ to get information. It’s crazy. The HS is clueless.
That would frost me to no end and I would raise that one up the flagpole and contact the local newspapers if I got an unsatisfactory response. They somehow don’t seem to have trouble figuring out that the football team has won, do they? Ugh.
That really makes no sense for the HS not to tell. The kids that are semi-finalists need to apply to become finalists. I think the school is required to tell the students. Collegeboard should be requiring them to do so. I believe the kids are notified directly by collegeboard, but not as early as the HS’s report.
Thankful for our school district. Students are called down and given award, pics are taken, they are put in newspaper and put in glass case for a fairly long time by the Principal’s office. The school board recognizes them with a reception where they are awarded a nice resolution by the school board. More importantly, they are asked to submit the name of the elementary, middle school and high school teacher that made the most difference for them. THE THREE TEACHERS for each National Merit Semifinalists are invited to the reception and recognized. The program lists all the teachers that have ever been recognized and if multiple times, all the years. What a great celebration! State Senator and Representatives were there as well. When they become National Merit Scholars, a handwritten letter was sent to them by the Superintendent of the district and the local elected officials sent a framed resolution from the State Legislative chambers honoring them for their achievement. Finally, on Senior day, the session started with all the National Merit Scholars being honored in front of the whole high school, followed by service projects of the year, man and women of the year and book awards sponsored by elite colleges. Our school system makes great efforts to recognize the academics and I share this not to brag but so that other school systems may at least take the idea of sharing the recognition with the three teachers.
There is a kind of pattern to these discussions.
Somebody says that their kid’s high school did something unfair.
The responses seem to fall into three categories:
Gee, that does sound unfair.
I don’t think it was really unfair; there was probably a good reason for what the school did.
It was unfair, but you shouldn’t be upset about it.
I think there can be some validity to all of these responses, but my overall view is that high school procedures should be fair, and that’s it’s a shame when they aren’t.
Yeah, but who is to decide what is “fair”? My kid wins the city ceramics award, and I think that deserves a pic on the Wall of Honor, and its “unfair” if it doesn’t happen. Meanwhile, someone who aces the PSAT gets on the wall, but someone who scores a ACT-36 does not bcos the ACT doesn’t do national merit…
Since “fairness” is in the eye of the beholder, that is a naive pov, IMO.
Schools, districts have to draw a line somewhere.
(Personally, I don’t care where the line is since HS is just that, HS. There are thousands of them and they come in all kinds shapes and flavors, all with different policies and procedures.)
@bluebayou “Yeah, but who is to decide what is “fair”? … Schools, districts have to draw a line somewhere.”
True, but it is not a question of whether ACT 36 students or National Merit students or the students in the top 1 or 2% for gpa are more deserving of a place on the wall for academics. The issue is that they don’t put any academic awards on the wall.
Furthermore, they were not saying that it was about drawing the line somewhere. They specifically said that it was because seeing other students recognized for academics made a student feel bad. I wonder when they will stop keeping score at high school football games, because that crying kid on the losing team felt bad? lol
And then there’s my least favorite type of response on these threads:
An overgeneralization of the boneheadedness of a single school or principal or whatever into a claim about the unfairness of everything done by high schools, everywhere.