Seattle Schools Community Forum

A Florida mom was really upset when she received notice from her son's middle school when he was named to the school's honor roll. Why? Because he received a C and a D and she didn't believe he deserved it.  From Gawker: "The bottom line is there is nothing honorable about making a D," the Pasco County, Florida mom told a local news station . "I was not happy, because how can I get my child to study for a test when he thinks he's done enough." In addition to the D, Douglas also got three A's and a C, giving him a GPA of 3.16 — more than enough to be counted among the school's best and brightest. But thanks to his mom, the Pasco County schools superintendent has announced that the honor roll policy will be changed to allow only students with all A's or A's and B's to be considered for inclusion. "It makes my job at home so difficult," Tillack said of the current policy. What does your school do...

Update: The NY Times had an article on the decline of science fair participation. At his State of the Union speech, President Obama said something to the effect of it being just as important who wins the science fair as who wins the Super Bowl. It got a good round of applause. Pondering this, though, I have to wonder. In SPS, it seems like there is a ton of work and effort all towards the goal of academic achievement for our students. But: We have a gifted program that gets spotty attention from the administration and attacked from within/without (people in the program worry about quality and loss of the program, some people outside the program wish it didn't exist). There are individual school programs that compete in academic programs like debate, Latin and robotics but only in competitions outside the district. Schools are spotty on whether they have honor roll in middle and high schools. When my son was at Eckstein, I was told they suspended it because "it hurts k...