Sweet Revenge on Your Alma Mater
If high school for you was about as fun as an unlanced boil, you may be in for a treat.
An information service called SchoolMatch is offering any of you with access to the World Wide Web a chance to--get this--rate your old high school.
Ratings, it's hard not to notice, have become common currency in today's marketplace of reputations.
Money magazine makes a splash when it ranks the country's most livable cities, and U.S. News & World Report causes a stir each time it assigns quality rankings to American colleges and universities.
SchoolMatch may well prosper with its strategy of tossing graduates into the mix of parents, teachers, administrators and neighbors whose opinions it solicits for its rankings (it sells its evaluations of school districts for $34 a pop).
The project may help some parents with a relocation decision, and--knock on wood--it may even put the harsh glare of publicity to work in pressuring some schools to improve.
But there are a couple of externalities that the service may have overlooked.
As both Money and U.S. News have learned, no amount of explaining the methodologies used in compiling such ratings will prevent critics (mostly wounded, second-tier rankees) from blasting the exercise as poorly conceived, subjective hokum.
But even more significant, the presumably middle-aged education specialists who designed this school rating system appear to have forgotten a basic reality of growing up: high school is recalled by most as an experience that was forced upon us--at an age when our personalities are, well, still in their formative stage.
Those years in captivity leave a bittersweet residue on the psyche that seems to endure well into the adult years, even after the onset of parenthood.
So even when a responsible citizen like myself logged onto the ratings game a quarter-century after receiving a diploma, my thought processes unfolded something like this:
``Please select one of the following surveys, then click `continue' at the bottom of the page,'' the instructions intoned in that style that sent my mind reeling back to the terrors of taking SATs.
I was then asked to whether I agreed with a series of statements asserting basic qualities of my former school.
Leadership: (Are there efforts, for example, to improve school effectiveness, and is the school organized around student priorities?)
``Hey,'' I told myself, ``I still haven't forgiven Principal Harmony (Nickname: the Figurehead) for caving in to that parents' pressure group and reinstating the school's ancient dress code.
A true leader would have defended the rights of the young to wear bell-bottoms, Army jackets and those Jesus-type sandals.
Emphasis on Learning: (Are resources well allocated, and are there minimal distractions?)
``I might not have been so distracted if my locker hadn't been the only one the cheerleaders failed to decorate for `Pep Week' before that championship football game,'' I thought.
``The most important thing I learned was mastered on my own steam, which was to not come on too eagerly when vying for a date with Terri Cline.''
School Climate: (Is there pride in the physical plant, and is there much parental involvement?)
``I hardly took pride in the vice principal's policy of banning hats in the building and applying Butch wax to the heads of longhairs,'' I recalled. ``The only parents I remember on campus was after juniors in the Future Hoodlums of America hurled eggs at a block's worth of homes across from school.''
Monitoring: (Is there a systematic procedure for measuring achievement and curriculum areas that need improvement?)
``I remember the school `establishment' posting an honor roll and publishing an end-of-year list of which seniors got in what colleges. But the more accurate monitoring was done by the girls' service clubs, who assigned `private class ranks' to all kids based on their proximity to the in-crowd.''
High Expectations: (Is each staffer dedicated to all students reaching their potential in learning and personal growth?)
``My English teacher Mr. Emory gave me an A for my book report on Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex even though I'd read only the first 10 pages. I've counted on similar expectations ever since.''
On reviewing the completed questionnaire, I was suddenly overcome with dread.
My tabulation showed my old school headed for one of the poorest ratings possible.
A wave of long-dormant school spirit washed over me. Frantically, I began deleting all my answers and started the questionnaire over.
On this second go-round, I entered the identical flunking ratings.
But this time, I took advantage of the nature of the Internet. I logged on not as a graduate of my own high school, but as an alumnus of its cross-town rival.
Charlie Clark is a regular contributor to The Idler
