ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, April 21, 1997 TAG: 9704210005
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: HAYMARKET
SOURCE: ANN O'HANLON THE WASHINGTON POST
When Tyler Elementary School tried to end honor roll, the debate went a lot further than ``My child is an honor roll student'' bumper stickers.
Amanda Baker watched her four older siblings make the honor roll year after year and waited eagerly for her chance. But when she got to kindergarten, the staff at Tyler Elementary School announced that they had postponed the honor roll until first grade. When Amanda got to first grade, they postponed it again.
Finally, in third grade, she made the honor roll and was thrilled. Then, one day last fall, the Prince William fourth-grader came home from school and said, ``Mom, you won't believe this. They don't have an honor roll.''
``I said `You must be mistaken,''' recalled her mother, Beverly Baker, ``Well, she wasn't mistaken.''
Baker and other parents whose children attend Tyler stormed the school's next two parents' meetings, demanding to know how such a thing could have happened. School officials explained that after phasing out the awards in the earliest grades, they concluded that pupils in all elementary grades were too young to be competing for the citations.
Now the county School Board has jumped in. Concerned about the actions of Tyler's administrators, the board is considering making honor rolls mandatory at the county's 41 elementary schools.
Board member John Harper Jr., a staunch supporter of that proposal, dismisses the idea that having young children compete for academic awards is unhealthy. At any age, the honor roll is an important incentive and reward for getting good grades, Harper said.
``To me, competition is what America is all about,'' he said. ``The more they compete, the better they become.''
Some elementary school principals and teachers say honor rolls push youngsters to work harder. Others argue that the awards take on more meaning than they should, making children cynical and competitive at an age when school should be fun.
Elementary schools that have quarterly honor rolls typically start them in third or fourth grade and include all students with A's and B's. Some schools issue special citations for children with straight A's.
The flap at Tyler started last fall when teachers at a staff meeting recommended, almost unanimously, that the school abolish the honor roll. Many Tyler teachers say the citations are highly subjective, because grading differs from one teacher to another. And, they argue, the lists are unfair to youngsters who work hard but simply don't have the ability to be A students.
After outcry from the parents, officials at the school near Haymarket agreed to restore the rewards, at least for this school year. They plan to revisit the issue next year.
Debbie Turner, mother of eight and owner of more than a few ``My child is an honor roll student'' bumper stickers, hopes the practice will continue. ``It is an incentive,'' she said. ``They really work for the praise of the teachers.''
Her fifth-grade daughter, Candice, 10, agrees.
``If someone's tried their hardest,'' she said, ``then they should get rewarded.''
But Judy Noble, a parent who has seen her children make the honor roll at Tyler and in middle school almost every quarter of their school years, wishes it would stop.
``I'm so anti-honor roll,'' she said. ``What do you do with the kids who are learning-disabled and working their butts off? I hate the whole emphasis on it.''
Noble, a former teacher, said grade-point averages are very arbitrary anyway, because teachers' policies on rounding off grades can differ widely.
At Tyler, teachers proposed making the honor roll annual and including it with other end-of-the-year awards, but many parents thought it was wrong to put academics on an equal footing with other categories.
Four Prince William elementary schools have no honor roll but do recognize academic achievement equally with other accomplishments.
An honor roll ``puts a lot of stress and pressure on at-risk kids,'' said Charles Ricks, principal of Henderson Elementary School, one of those four schools. ``And you're trying to build a positive image in those kids, too.''
But Annemarie Steimel, parent of an honor roll student at Tyler, rejects that reasoning. A teacher criticized the honor roll to her, she said, complaining that ``It's always the same kids on it.'' And Steimel thought to herself: ``That's not a good enough reason to get rid of it.''
Her fifth-grade son, Kevin, said he was upset the one time he didn't make the honor roll but is nonetheless a believer.
``I believe the honor roll is a good thing to have, because some kids work real hard to make their parents happy and to get the honor,'' he said.
LENGTH: Medium: 93 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: THE WASHINGTON POST. Jillian Steimel, 9, a third-graderby CNBat Tyler Elementary, won this certificate in February. The school
dropped the reward last fall, then restored it after a loud parental
outcry. School officials will revisit the issue next year.