Achievement Awards Sent to Detention

The most recent spelling bee at H.G. Hill Middle School was, in most ways, routine -- until the end, when the winner was not announced. And at Brookmeade Elementary last month, for the first time in as long as anyone can remember, there was no assembly to read the names of honor students.

A Tennessee law rediscovered in December has cast doubt on routine school activities, banning principals from recognizing student achievement until they receive express parental consent. The law surfaced after a parent complained about a list of straight-A students sent home in a newsletter, saying it hurt the feelings of students not included.

Nashville’s director of schools has assured parents that awards ceremonies and honor rolls will resume as soon as signed releases are returned. But in the weeks since the ban, commentators inside and outside the state have bashed the school system for cosseting underachievers.

As principals scramble to comply with the law, parents and educators have found themselves examining the role of competition in early education. Exasperated with the discussion, one mother issued a playful ultimatum to other parents: If comparing performance is so healthy, she said, why don’t we all just tell each other our salaries?

“Every 10th-grader is judged on the same scale, no matter what their IQ is,” said Jeanne Taylor, who has a 3-year-old. “Why not judge all 40-year-olds on the same scale?”

The challenge began when Eakin Elementary School Principal Roxanne Ross sent home a newsletter listing honor roll students who were to be recognized at an academic pep rally in late December. Soon after, an Eakin mother called the metro attorney’s office, complaining that while her daughter was on the honor roll, the girl’s friends were not, and the list had upset them. The parent complained that she had not authorized the publication of her child’s name.

Attorney Rachel Fardon examined the Tennessee Code and discovered a strongly worded provision about schools’ rights to release data: The law says a child’s academic performance is as private as test scores, psychological treatment or parental income, and any publication requires permission from parents.

Nashville’s is not the first school system to grapple with privacy laws. In 2000, a complaint from an Oklahoma parent challenged an old teaching tool: having students trade papers and grade them as a teacher reads answers. The U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals judged that the practice ran afoul of the 1974 Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the ruling, stating that it constituted excessive federal interference in the nation’s schools.

At Nashville’s public schools, principals scrambled to comply. The rally at Eakin Elementary was canceled. Principal Greg Ketteman at H.G. Hill Middle School sent letters of congratulations home to the spelling bee winners’ parents instead of reading their names publicly. Michael Tribue, principal of McGavock High, was astonished to find that his school could no longer release the names of high scorers at basketball games.

The backlash became so strong that Pedro E. Garcia, Nashville’s director of schools, wrote principals that “students who do well should be rewarded, and honor rolls are an important way of recognizing their achievements.”

Jerry Narramore, whose 9-year-old attends Eakin, said he feels fiercely protective of the honor roll -- not because he was an honor student, but because he was a lackluster, apathetic one. “I think sometimes we worry about the wrong things. We are so mindful of kids’ feelings,” said Narramore, 55, president of Eakin’s parent-teacher organization. “Maybe this is sending the message to them that academic achievement is secondary to any other type of achievement at school. That is the wrong message.”

Karen Wright, whose eighth-grader attends Meigs Middle Magnet School, has left the permission slip unsigned, though, and hopes other parents will do the same. Although both her children often make the honor roll, she said, she has seen the damage to their self-esteem when they do not.

“They’ve been hurt,” Wright said. “Our fifth-grader, she struggled, struggled, struggled” during a recent grading period, and still found herself off the list.

Eakin Elementary’s Ross said she makes great efforts to honor a large number of students at the academic pep rallies, finding awards for 75% to 80% of them. Over time, the assemblies provide incentive for kids ambivalent about school, she said.

“What we see is that some kids don’t make A’s and B’s because they don’t do the work,” she said. “Sometimes they need a little fire, a little inspiration, and sometimes seeing their friend go up and get an award” can have a good effect.

Only one of Nashville’s public schools is relatively unaffected by the change. Steve Baum, principal of Julia Green Elementary, abolished the school’s honor roll a year and a half ago, when he arrived, because he believes that “most people respond better to intrinsic motivators.”

There was no outcry from parents or students, and Julia Green’s students continue to perform at exceptionally high levels, Baum said. His school stresses values such as civility, collaboration and “personal best,” he said, adding that competition is built into the system in middle and high schools.

Over time, competition teaches children how to cope with disappointments. But, he said, it should come gradually. “How much competition, when’s the right time for competition, that’s what I think we need to talk about,” Baum said. “All children know how other children perform. It’s no big secret who’s at the top of the class and who’s at the bottom of the class.”