A Progressive Middle School in Rhode Island cancelled an Honors Night event to celebrate academic achievement because it rewards success, which they say is too “exclusive“.

The public calls them out – they reverse course, or well, try too, and fail miserably.   Here’s the announcement and the walk back.   You decide:

Dear Cole Families,

We would like to take this opportunity to notify you of a change to our annual spring events at Cole [Middle School]. Honors Night has been a longstanding tradition in our community — one that was created in the Cole Junior High School era.

Members of the school community have long expressed concerns related to the exclusive nature of Honors Night. Therefore, we have made the collective decision to recognize students during team-based recognition ceremonies and graduation. This will afford us the opportunity to celebrate the individual and collective successes of all students and their effort, progress, and excellence.

Additionally, our Cole varsity athletes will receive their medals and trophies at an after school ceremony.

Best wishes for a nice weekend.

Kindest regards,

Alexis Meyer and Dan Seger  (Principal and Vice-Principal)

OK, you getting this?  Because it’s too “exclusive” to honor the top performers they cancelled the event in favor of an ‘everybody equal’ ceremony.

What do they do next ?   They tell everyone they didn’t communicate the change well enough.   GASLIGHTING ALERT !

Here’s the “walkback”:

Dear Fellow Members of the Cole Middle School Community:

Over the past several days, we have been in contact with many members of the community who have shared feedback about our decision to recognize and celebrate student excellence by individuals and teams in a team-based event during school hours. We have certainly appreciated the range of feedback we received about how best to celebrate excellence at Cole.

In light of our conversations, we have decided to honor excellence as we had planned, but at a traditional evening event.

In retrospect, our original communication would have benefited from more clarity regarding the change in the format for honoring student excellence. We are exceedingly proud of the outstanding achievements of Cole students and obviously had no intention of failing to acknowledge and celebrate exemplary student accomplishment in its many forms. Rather, our intention was to create a venue where all kids who meet the high expectations that we set for them are recognized and celebrated in a manner consistent with our core values about student learning and performance. Cole Middle School’s long-standing tradition of high expectations and high performance remains the cornerstone upon which we will continue to encourage student learning and achievement.

It continues to be an honor and pleasure to work with and learn from the members of the Cole Middle School Community. We deeply appreciate the thoughtful, on-going feedback. We look forward to the opportunity to celebrate and recognize our students in a fashion that is worthy of their achievements. As of today, we are planning on an evening in June to celebrate student excellence at Cole. Further communication will be shared with you by the close of this week on the final details.

Respectfully,

Alexis Meyer

Dan Seger

We really didn’t say what you thought we said…. but just in case you think we said what we say we didn’t say….. we’ll not do what you thought we said, and we’ll do what we originally planned to do that we said was not good.  OK ?