Why should students strive for excellence if they aren’t recognized for it?

OK, let’s all hear it for mediocrity! That may have to be the new cheer in Tennessee where schools are being forced to stop issuing honor rolls or even hanging good work in the hallways because attorneys and parents say such recognition may cause embarrassment for students who aren’t included.

Responding to complaints from a few parents who feared their children might be ridiculed, the Nashville school district temporarily has banished honor rolls and is considering canceling academic pep rallies and even spelling bees.

It’s a privacy issue, the district was warned. No academic information, good or bad, can be released by the school without specific permission. School officials are developing permission slips that will give parents of the district’s 69,000 students the option of having their children’s work recognized.

Will the school also have to seek permission from the parents of students who aren’t recognized so as not to cause any offense? By the same rationale, the schools surely would have to quit making public the box scores from its basketball games to avoid any potential embarrassment of players who didn’t play well.

The privacy laws that are causing this uproar in Nashville apparently are unique to Tennessee and are more stringent than the federal student privacy guidelines, which allow the release of such data as honor rolls. Concerns about singling out students for academic recognition, however, exist across the nation, including here in Lawrence, and have the potential to shortchange students who work hard to achieve academic excellence.

Lawrence high schools still compile honor rolls, but any differentiation between straight-A students and those who barely make the cut has been eliminated. A new elementary grading system has dropped letter grades altogether. Such a change may be appropriate for young children, but at some point in their lives these students all will face competition as well as public evaluations of their success.

A principal in Tennessee was quoted in the Associated Press article in Sunday’s Journal-World concerning the honor roll controversy: “The rationale was, if there are some children that always make it and others that always don’t make it, there is a very subtle message that was sent.”

Dropping the honor rolls sends a different subtle message to students who excel: It doesn’t matter; your achievement is not worthy of recognition.

It doesn’t seem like the right message to send to students who soon will find themselves in a highly competitive world that rewards excellence and shuns mediocrity.