Private Success

Recently news services are reporting that the Texas Commissioner of Education has released a correspondence eliminating any celebration for students who pass the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills because these events, when held without the attendance of TAKS failing students, in essence, identified students who failed the TAKS. Citing the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act as the law justifying the Commissioner’s viewpoint, this identification violates FERPA, but his correspondence continued to authorize student celebrations for honors in accordance with FERPA. Schools can identify students with commended performance as long as they give parents the option to decline such an honor.

The Commissioner and his masters at the U.S. Department of Education- masters since the state in now just an underling of the Fed., appear to be tirelessly concerned with student privacy, or are they more concerned with celebrating success, since they cannot defy the reality that in their game success is not necessarily for all students. This also could be a continuation of the assault on success so not to damage self-esteem. I wonder if parents throughout the country have been given the option to decline recognition for honor roll or the plethora of other awards that schools use to identify students who are successful. Or would most think that this option was absurd?

Schools are a difficult place to protect privacy. When students fail TAKS, they are placed in remediation classes and all of the faculty and most of the students understand that students in those classes failed TAKS. When students are retained, their peers know that they failed. Many students who receive special services are identified by the presence of a teaching aid, special classes, or classroom modifications. There is no intent on the school’s behalf to identify these students to the public, but the reality is that you cannot ensure that these issues remain private due to the nature of the school environment. Because of No Child Left Behind, school systems continue to create an environment of winners and losers, focus the bulk of financial resources on the system’s losers, and then don’t want to recognize the winners for fear of disclosing the losers. It always amazes me that the Texas education system is filled with student objectives requiring students to think critically, but the education power structure functions in a malaise of irrationality.

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