Honor Roll Causes Suicides

[Qwertz]

A high school princpal in Needham, MA has decided that his school's tradition of publishing the names of honor roll students in the local newspaper creates an environment of stress and excessive focus on achievement which he believes contributed to four recent student suicides. The school is abandoning the practice of publicly listing the names of honor roll students.

The mediocratization of America continues.

-Q

[Eurynomus]

You don't agree with that? On what grounds? For a long time, I have been an advocate of giving everybody A's -- that way, at the end of the day, we can all at least feel good about ourselves.

[BrassDragon]

The mediocratization of America continues.

Point taken, but you have to remember, this is in Massachusetts of all god-awful places. This would surprise me much more if it happened in, say, North Carolina (though I might be biased).

[DarkWaters]

I could see some argument for not publishing an Honor Roll, as there might be some issues involving the privacy of students grades. Publically posting an honor roll discloses all students whose semesterly GPA is above a certain threshold and therefore discloses all students whose GPA is below that threshold.

Perhaps there could be another way to honor the achievements of the students with the highest grades, such as a celebration with desserts. My undergraduate university has a semesterly Dean's List dessert reception.

The very best students can still receive other forms of public recognition. I am certainly not against the principle of appreciating the best students.

Edited December 14, 2006 by DarkWaters

[DavidOdden]

Publically posting an honor roll discloses all students whose semesterly GPA is above a certain threshold and therefore discloses all students whose GPA is below that threshold.

...

The very best students can still receive other forms of public recognition. I am certainly not against the principle of appreciating the best students.

But doesn't any form of recognition of excellence by the same token amount to revealing the private information that the unrecognized students are below excellent, and thus hurtful and a violation of their rights? The only truly just system is to put all students on the honor roll, thus exposing privacy concerns for what they really are. That, or say nuts to that nonsense and actually recognize merit.

[DarkWaters]

But doesn't any form of recognition of excellence by the same token amount to revealing the private information that the unrecognized students are below excellent, and thus hurtful and a violation of their rights? The only truly just system is to put all students on the honor roll, thus exposing privacy concerns for what they really are. That, or say nuts to that nonsense and actually recognize merit.

Do you believe that grades should be private information? I think that they should.

Anyway, that aside, the issues that I was conflicted with were the following:

A.) It would be ridiculous if a school or university could not celebrate the achievements of its very best students.

B.) Sometimes high school standards for public recognition are so low where it is not so impressive to receive them so much as it is ignominious to not receive them. I still remember in my high school how 20-25% of the students in each class would be inducted into National Honor Society. Of course, we all know whose fault it is for not qualifying for mediocre standards.

My conclusion: Institutions of learning should proudly hold public accolades for their very best students. However, the standards for issuing such acclaim should be rigorous enough where it is worthy of celebration.

[DarkWaters]

Do you believe that grades should be private information? I think that they should.

I wish to revise this question. In its present form it insinuates that I am calling into question whether or not you think the specific cumulative index of all students should be publically accessible, which is not what I wanted to ask.

I am more trying to reconcile whether or not a university would have the right to post, to all university students, any partition of the student population into GPA intervals for any purpose. (e.g. a list of students whose index is between 3.0 - 4.0, a list of students whose index is between 2.0 - 3.0 and so forth.)

An honor roll, as discussed, would be posting such a partition for the purpose of celebrating academic achievement. Thus, if a university has a right to post an honor roll, then the institution must a right to post such a partition under certain circumstances.

I am just trying to identify the principles at work here. Are the principles that lionizing academic achievement is good and that students cannot claim a right to not have any information whatsoever, directly or indirectly disclosed about their GPA if it prevents the university from honoring such aforementioned achievements?

Edit: Do universities address this issue of privacy in some legal agreement with regards to terms of enrollment?

Edited December 15, 2006 by DarkWaters

[DavidOdden]

Whichever your intent is, in fact I believe that student grades should be private if and only if the university keeps such information private by policy, a policy known in advance and well-advertised. I would also support such a policy at my university.

I am more trying to reconcile whether or not a university would have the right to post, to all university students, any partition of the student population into GPA intervals for any purpose. (e.g. a list of students whose index is between 3.0 - 4.0, a list of students whose index is between 2.0 - 3.0 and so forth.)

As above, they have the right to do that which they said they would do, by policy. (This is as distinct from the federal law that prohibits the exercise of that right). There is great rational merit in publishing an honor roll, but none that I can see in publishing a general partitioning of students into grade bands.

I am just trying to identify the principles at work here. Are the principles that lionizing academic achievement is good and that students cannot claim a right to not have any information whatsoever, directly or indirectly disclosed about their GPA if it prevents the university from honoring such aforementioned achievements?

The principles are first, here is our agreement (policy), and you will chose to enroll in our university or not, depending on whether you can accept the policy. Being rational, we have a policy of recognizing and socially rewarding excellence, and we see no need to publicly castigate the average or poor student.

Do universities address this issue of privacy in some legal agreement with regards to terms of enrollment?

There is no issue of agreement: there is a federal law. Universities have offices which hire full-time harpies to shriek about possible FERPA violations, because they are afraid of the even bigger federal FERPA harpies who will rip your head off. Your implicit point about honor rolls and privacy is not total sci-fi -- it might well become federal policy some year.

[DarkWaters]

Thank you for your responses.

There is great rational merit in publishing an honor roll, but none that I can see in publishing a general partitioning of students into grade bands.

At my undergraduate university, there is a Dean's List (3.5+) and a High Honors Dean's List (3.75+). Both were published simultaneously. The difference between making both lists and just making the former list was almost invariably the receipt of one additional B. I am not sure how common this dual list practice is, but needless to say, this is a real-world example of a university imposing narrow (but certainly non-exhaustive) grade bands. It seems that in this case, posting both lists does not really add much more in terms of recognition than just announcing one of them. However, posting both lists simultaneously made a number of students vocally uncomfortable.

[skap35]

So competition (in this case competition to make honor roll) is a bad thing? I wonder if this idiot is going to be consistent in his case and ban all athletic activities as well. And lets not forget things like marching band competitions either. Last time I checked, publishing the names of student athletes who succeed is also a common tradition.

Speaking of that, does anyone rememeber the story about another high school that cancelled the football team because they had a losing season? The logic was similar to this case...since the football players had a bad season it gave them low self esteem.

[dizm]

So competition (in this case competition to make honor roll) is a bad thing? I wonder if this idiot is going to be consistent in his case and ban all athletic activities as well. And lets not forget things like marching band competitions either. Last time I checked, publishing the names of student athletes who succeed is also a common tradition.

Speaking of that, does anyone rememeber the story about another high school that cancelled the football team because they had a losing season? The logic was similar to this case...since the football players had a bad season it gave them low self esteem.

Exactly what I was going to reply to this story. The main purpose at school is academics. Schools should be putting high academic achievement on a pedestal as the highest accolade you can receive.

How about at graduation, there are no more valedictorians.

[softwareNerd]

...was almost invariably the receipt of one additional B.

Surely, even with a single list, at the borderline there would be a tiny difference (if any) between making the list and not making it. Wherever one draws the line, one is going to have that "issue". That's how reality works; if one is a minute late, one still misses the plane just as much as the guy who is 30 minutes late.

[DarkWaters]

Surely, even with a single list, at the borderline there would be a tiny difference (if any) between making the list and not making it. Wherever one draws the line, one is going to have that "issue". That's how reality works; if one is a minute late, one still misses the plane just as much as the guy who is 30 minutes late.

I am not sure if we are speaking of the same "issue" here. I consider it a reasonable complaint that posting both the regular and the high honors lists reveals too much information about the students who made the former and not the latter. I see no real necessity in posting both lists; I think just choosing the one criteria (i.e. either 3.5+ or 3.75+) for a single list would suffice. I do not consider it a reasonable complaint that having a high honors list is bad because it is possible for someone to fall short of the list by a single grade. As you stated, that is how reality works.

Anyway, I really like the comparison that skap35 drew between commending promising young athletes for their achievements and honoring students for their scholastic achievements. I should never have even considered that privacy concerns are a legitimate reason to protest a single, uniform honor roll. Please note that I was never against honor rolls. That would hinder my rational interests. :-)

Comment: the apostraphe key does not seem to be working at present. In Mozilla Firefox, it instead brings my cursor to the search bar instead of typing an apostraphe in this window.

Edited December 17, 2006 by DarkWaters

[DavidOdden]

I see no real necessity in posting both lists; I think just choosing the one criteria (i.e. either 3.5+ or 3.75+) for a single list would suffice.

I see a real necessity. The purpose of these accolades is to publicly praise people who have accomplished something academically, and especially to systematically assert that mental ability is not a moral crime. The problem is that while a 3.5 GPA has a meaning (i.e. you're not a total idiot), it isn't reliably meaningful, thanks to our friend student evaluations which leads to grade inflation and its cousin praise inflation. Even if you could fix the grade inflation problem, there is still a huge difference between the students who get 3.9 and so, vs. 3.5. I'm not dissing the 3.5 people, I'm just really praising the 3.9 people. Excellence is scalar; recognize reality by admitting that good people come in different degrees of goodness.

[DarkWaters]

I see a real necessity. The purpose of these accolades is to publicly praise people who have accomplished something academically, and especially to systematically assert that mental ability is not a moral crime. The problem is that while a 3.5 GPA has a meaning (i.e. you're not a total idiot), it isn't reliably meaningful, thanks to our friend student evaluations which leads to grade inflation and its cousin praise inflation. Even if you could fix the grade inflation problem, there is still a huge difference between the students who get 3.9 and so, vs. 3.5. I'm not dissing the 3.5 people, I'm just really praising the 3.9 people. Excellence is scalar; recognize reality by admitting that good people come in different degrees of goodness.

I agree with everything you said and I think that you summarized the situation well. Reflecting on this thread I think any of the concerns I have raised are insignificant compared to the more salient issues propounded.

Grades definitely are an imperfect metric of academic success. Too many students at the undergraduate level avoid challenging classes so as not to puncture their GPA.

I still remember one of students in my class (a junior in industrial engineering) inquired if the conference that I went to this November was "for nerds." I inquired if he would elicit the same response during a job interview if asked about his involvement at any professional conferences. No answer.

I will be looking forward to what kind of evaluations I have received after my first teaching experience. Wish me well.

Edited December 18, 2006 by DarkWaters