So it looks like the school withheld awards from all students until after college admissions as part of a diversity program (so students wouldn't be judged on achievements during the college process). That's not just immoral, it's really stupid to handicap your students like that when you're the only one doing it
I think the goal with such programmes is to encourage a significant proportion of similar institutions to follow suit. I could see the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy (which is similar to TJ) adopting this protocol, even though it’s an anathema to the school’s historical practices and objectives.
I think there is some real truth stretching here for controversy. National merit is based on the PSAT. Not something you take and learn of in senior year during college apps. You get informed directly by the corp, not via your school. The article waffles over whether it was 2 months or 2 weeks.
My guess is that this is not actually about any significant award, but a little memo celebrating the fact that they got the award from the national merit corp a long time ago and already should have known about.
Trashy new org and trashy news.
Edit: and fwiw, this is a basically worthless award. Actually being a finalist can get you hundreds of thousands of dollars of scholarships. But the tier below that won’t get you almost anything.
Our school looked at adding an award for good community behavior, but the principal shot it down because they currently get too many complaints from parents whose kids don’t get the existing awards.
This is the fruit of a participation award culture.
TFA quoth: “ because TJ senior administrators didn’t distribute the letters of commendation from the National Merit Scholarship Corporation to students”
