Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Teacher telling class individual students' grades

Dude, I think this was once common (I remember top papers being posted on the bulletin board) but is no longer seen as a good thing.




I'm not sure how you would fairly determine if they "mind." Furthermore, maybe they don't mind at first but then they do very much mind later on the playground.

This time around, I actually heard about DD's 100 from another parent who heard my child's grade from her child. DD hadn't mentioned it to me! That was awkward.

Sorry, Bostonian, I'm with MON on this one. Twenty plus years later, I still recall teachers holding my work up for praise and leading me to be ridiculed in the hallways by my high school peers. The worst event involved my chemistry teacher singling me out as the only person who scored 100% on her exam. I could feel the loathing from my classmates and actually had one of the other students threaten to give me food poisoning before the next test. I don't know anyone who was motivated to do better by my academic success. I didn't learn the same way as most of my peers. They knew that I was different and every time a teacher held up my work, it just reinforced their perception. Sometimes I think that these teachers never went to high school.

Under FERPA regulations, the definition of "education records" includes those which are "(1) [d]irectly related to a student; and (2) [m]aintained by an educational agency or institution or by a party acting for the agency or institution", 34 C.F.R. § 99.3(a), with a specific exclusion for "[g]rades on peer-graded papers before they are collected and recorded by a teacher", 34 C.F.R. § 99.3(b)(6).

Yes, I saw that there was actually a Supreme Court case on peer-graded papers--interesting. So apparently you can completely circumvent this if you just have the kids grade everything. (I very much doubt this test was student-graded.)

I'd like to see something in plain English from a state educational authority saying that student grades on all assignments must be kept confidential. I suppose this may not exist because we all know that students do share their grades (not the same as a teacher sharing them, but I wonder how they handle that legally).

I can easily think of another instance where this school violated FERPA, if this is the law. I now understand some odd teacher behavior in that instance.

When my son was moved from private school where all of his peers were pretty much on a par with him academically to a public school where he stood out immediately as smarter, teachers singled him out for what they thought was praise. Instead he climbed into a shell of mediocrity and hiding his gifts. It has taken him until his sophomore year in college to regain his confidence and willingness to show his intelligence in a classroom settings.

It may be a well-meaning policy, but it can have devastating and long-lasting effects both on those who are singled out for high performance and for those who are reminded that they haven't met the mark yet again.

Truly effective teaching inspires students to compete against themselves and to collaborate and support each other. My kids have had maybe three or four teachers who knew how to do this, and the effect on the entire class was impressive.

I'm impressed that you see the problems with this despite your child being the one singled out for praise. You're right that it will also have effects your own child - both in creating envy and resentment with peers and the risk of your child's personality being one that causes a negative reaction to public praise pointing out that they're different and better.

Maybe there is a sex difference here. I think more boys than girls may be motivated by competition. My classmates did not loathe me for being one of the best students. Instead I was often the person they asked for help from, especially in math and science.

There are likely cultural differences regarding the value of competition. In many countries class ranks are displayed publicly, with little regard to students' feelings. The Tiger Mother famously wrote, only half joking, that her children were not allowed to

• attend a sleepover

• have a playdate

• be in a school play

• complain about not being in a school play

• watch TV or play computer games

• choose their own extracurricular activities

• get any grade less than an A

• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama

• play any instrument other than the piano or violin

• not play the piano or violin.

Yeah, I read her book and I am not striving to be her.


I found it interesting that DD did not mention the grade or the public acknowledgement to me. After the embarrassing conversation with the other parent, I asked her how she did on her math test (we had studied a bit the night before) and she said, "Fine." Fine? "I got an A." I hear you got a 100%. "Who told you that?" She seemed satisfied about the grade, but clearly sheepish/bewildered/weirded out by what had happened. I need to talk to her about it again, perhaps.

Good grades ARE valued and admired in her current school. Culturally, it's different from a regular public school. However, I feel like that can only go so far.

Exactly. My kids were all in sports so that they learned to use competition to their advantage as a motivator.

The tiger mom is an extreme example of our society's over-emphasis on industriousness. IMO, we overvalue this quality and undervalue the idea of slowing down to think a bit and get it right. Don't get me wrong: it's great to get stuff done, but overdoing this approach can lead to problems (e.g. crushing homework loads, crazed test prep lasting for months or years, and inferior textbooks being rushed to market to beat the competition).

In the process, perceiving industriousness as all-important allows us to undervalue giftedness.

Individual results will vary.

I mentioned how I was not motivated at all by the posted Algebra II scores, so I guess I'll go ahead and mention how having my essays read to the class on a regular basis (and the teachers asking for my permission to read them to their others) said there was a lot more to my writing abilities than the letter grade itself could communicate. This motivated me to become a novelist. Life had a way of derailing that plan, but I still have every confidence in my abilities, and there's a project sitting on the shelf for the day when the kid is grown up and I have more time on my hands.

If someone was angry at me for doing better than them, my personality is not one that would ever internalize that. That's their problem, not mine.