I don’t think my son’s high school has an honor roll at all. If it does, it must require all As with some sort of secret acknowledgment for the honorees. I never even thought about it although I guess it would have been nice to have some type of academic honor to list on applications.
Think strategically here. Is this really about making things fair for other future students or your daughter?
If it’s about making things fair for other future students, consider fighting this battle after your child has been accepted to college and you are no longer dependent on the goodwill of the school GC, possibly admins and certain teachers for the college application process.
IMO, very few students are motivated by these types of awards and the ones that are don’t tend to make grades of C or below anyways. So again, this would not be something I’d waste any political capital on, especially at the risk of alienating people you are going to need very soon. But if you feel strongly about this, it won’t hurt if you at least delay fighting WW3 until you don’t risk hurting your daughter in the process.
I agree with waiting until after your daughter has her LORs for teacher and GC before having this fight.
Also, our school didn’t send honor roll notifications either. There was a list posted somewhere on the school’s website.
Sound advice, @milee30. The guidance counselor agrees with me 100%, so that is not an issue, but I see the wisdom of not pushing this too far lest my D be labeled as a kid who makes trouble for the administration.
60% of students at my kid’s HS are on some kind of Honor Rolls. Imo Honor Rolls should be for kids in top 10% to 20% of classes. But really not important. My kid didn’t even apply for Honor Roll societies.
My comparison with NMF is that it is an honor that may not be achieved because of a bad grade in the past, so it is not unusual. Maybe unfair, but it is the rule. NMF (or CB) doesn’t really care that the student has improved or could have taken an easier class and received a better grade.
My kids went to a school with no minus or plus grades. To get the ‘athletic scholars’ designation, one needed all A’s. I thought that was a little rough, but that’s the way it was. The next year, needed all A’s again to get it again. There were other honor rolls at the school that had different requirements (gpa, grades that year, grades that semester) but the athletic one was the toughest standard. Did it mean more than ‘Dean’s honor roll’ or ‘President’s honor roll’? It depends on who is judging.
“But really not important. My kid didn’t even apply for Honor Roll societies.”
Neither of mine are into that, either. The school award thing just doesn’t seem to matter to them, and that’s OK with me since I don’t think the awards have any meaning either. Last year when it was time for the annual awards ceremony for my younger kid, the afternoon of the ceremony he asked if he could just skip it. A paraphrase, but in his words “The ceremony is long and boring. If I win anything and am not there, they’ll just mail it to me. Let’s just go get ice cream instead.”
I love that kid.
And he was 100% correct. We avoided sitting through 3 hours of nonsense and a week later a box arrived at our house with his awards.
“The purpose of the honor roll program is to recognize and honor secondary students who have attained outstanding academic success and to provide positive reinforcement that inspires all students to strive even harder and perform at their highest level in all subjects.”
IMO, since a “D” is by definition below average and does not show “outstanding academic success”, I have no problem with not being on the Honor Roll because of it. At the end of the day, being on the Honor Roll is not really that big of a deal but certainly is should not reward students achieving a “D” for at least semester. I’m sure this student knew the Honor Roll rules and she didn’t maintain the minimum standards. It is what it is…
@socaldad2002, I think the question is whether the student should be penalized for two full years. Despite what I said earlier I do think it’s a little harsh. I have a kid who had a very rough sophomore year for understandable personal reasons. In two years she’s gone from academic probation to high honor roll. I don’t think recognition of that growth is necessary but it is nice. Some kids do need the ego boost of public accolades and if the OP’s kid is among them I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.
The policy should be clearly spelled out in the school’s handbook. There is likely a copy on the school’s website you can view/download.
Could she have solved the problem by doing better in Geometry? Yes. Is her failure to earn an academic letter for sophomore year a major roadblock to her future success? No.
But it is specifically the two-year ban that irks me. It doesn’t provide the “positive reinforcement” or reward kids who “try even harder”, to borrow from your honor roll language above @socaldad2002 , unless you think the modern teenager understands positive reinforcement that is delayed for two years. It only rewards the kids who always do well, and those are probably the kids who need the motivation the least.
I always felt that as a parent I should try, within reason, to give my kids whatever they are not getting elsewhere (ex. from schools, peers, internally). So if your D is missing that positive reinforcement for her academic improvement/success that is something you can provide – go out for dinner as a family, buy a small token, plan a special activity (whatever is meaningful to your child) to celebrate a strong year’s academic performance.
FWIW my D was in a small program in her HS where they got written evaluations rather than letter grades. Because of this she was not eligible to be inducted into the school’s honor society. Our reaction…oh well. She congratulated her friends who were inducted and moved on. It had zero impact on her life (including college acceptances).
Honestly this should be a non-issue. Focus on the positives.
“…unless you think the modern teenager understands positive reinforcement that is delayed for two years. It only rewards the kids who always do well, and those are probably the kids who need the motivation the least”
I think students understand that getting a “D” in any semester will hurt their chances for future “awards”, whether it’s one or 2 or 4 years later. Lots of kids understand that doing well in school, high school or otherwise, is important for future success. Let’s give kids some benefit of the doubt. Most get it…
Is this the hill you want to die on? Honestly- there are going to be SO many ways you need your schools administration during and after the college application process; some are actually important (the description of the HS your district sends to colleges lists that AP Physics and AP Chem are taught, even though the AP teacher retired four years ago and was never replaced) and some are not (honor roll, honor society, how many valedictorians get to speak at graduation). Think to the future- your kid gets waitlisted at her top choice college. Does the guidance counselor spring into action to pick up the phone and assure the adcom that if accepted she will attend- or does the memory of you making a stink over something trivial linger in the corridors of the HS?
I see no upside for you or your kid in making this an issue. And to be honesty with you- it isn’t that the honor roll criteria are unfair, per your title of this thread. It’s that you disagree with the criteria. Unfair would be that kids who take the bus to school can’t be in the honor role, but kids who walk or get driven can. That’s unfair. You disagree with the criteria which of course is your prerogative, but it doesn’t make it inherently unfair.
There are so many things you can be doing to improve your HS. Focusing on this seems to have a big downside with not a lot of upside.
I think fixing the how and why she got a D is the issue. We can’t have it all ways, us oldies that critique the everyone gets a trophy approach. At my kids school, all HR took was a 3.5 gpa. HR meant nothing. NHS meant nothing. A kid that gets a D in first year HS math isn’t terribly likely to be driven by such carrots as honor roll.
Who’s to say a kid who receives a single D freshman year won’t be a straight A student by junior or senior year? I had a kid who had a C- freshman year who was generally a very strong student. Combine a terrible teacher, a difficult discipline, a first semester at boarding school, and a parent newly diagnosed with cancer and that poor grade makes a lot of sense.
I wouldn’t spend a lot of time worrying about external rewards but let’s not pretend that a kid with a single poor grade, or even multiple poor grades, is somehow a lost cause.
@Sybylla, there is nothing I hate more than the Everyone Should Get a Trophy philosophy. And if in your comment you are implying that she is unmotivated or got a D because of lack of effort, that is very far from the truth.
I just question whether a freshman year with one D and mostly As should keep you from receiving an award for your sophomore year performance. The consensus here seems to be that the school policy is not that far outside of the norm.
Thanks to everyone for their comments/input. You have convinced me not to pursue this further beyond the conversation I have already had with her guidance counselor (who, as I mentioned earlier, agrees with me 100%, so there should be no negative impact on any future college-related issues).
Honor roll? The only time this was even noted at our school was when the newspapers used to print the honor rolls. They don’t do that anymore.
Really, honor roll is a non-issue. Can’t imagine why this would matter…at all.
The Alfie Kahn book is Punished by Rewards. It’s a great book. I sort of feel that if you have rehabilitated yourself so that your overall GPA meets the requirement, you should get the honor. It generally takes a lot of A’s to cancel out a D without putting an extra time limit requirement on it. Our middle school (and possibly the high school as well) had a special honor for someone whose GPA had increased by a certain number - I think it was .5 on a 100 point scale, but not sure. I only know about it because younger son was on the list one year.
As others have said, in the long run it doesn’t matter. Colleges look at GPA and course rigor, not whether or not your kid was on the honor roll.
980 in my graduating class, but only 1 Val. 425 in my kids’ class, just one val, one sal, one class president - all gave speeches. The Sal had a ton of medals and cords and honors and she clinked and clanked across the stage, but the Val just had one or two cords and I don’t remember him winning a lot of awards at senior night. The school made a big deal of the top 20 in the class, but they didn’t all get to be a val.
And they all lived.