>

I was a National Merit Scholar in 2005.  My school didn't really acknowledge it (small, rural town in Texas).  I think I got a letter from the organization directly?
I was a National Merit Scholar a long time ago and if I recall, I received a letter from the organization directly. They should go back to that.
Edit: I’m talking literally 40 years ago >

I was as well, about 10 years ago. They sent the letter to my school. The only reason I knew anything about it was because another student who had a teacher as a parent. After a while the teacher went to the counselor to ask about results and found out she had the letters, and only then did she hand them out. 
I also got several big scholarships from one of my top 2 universities, but they sent those offers directly to my school instead of me. When I went to pick up my diploma after graduation, she handed me a massive package with all their scholarship offers. She just stuck them in my file and said nothing to me about them. I figured that school hadn't given me any and opted for the other university. She told me she didn't like delivering mail to students all the time so she just held on to them until they came to her office to get them. This was a small school, so it wasn't like that was a time consuming job to begin with, and I didn't even know they had any mail for me to pick up. >

Scholarship are different matters. Most likely, what your conselor didn't give you in time is not "scholarship offer", but "offer to apply for scholarships". But if you applied for those scholarships already and they were real scholarship offers, that lazy counselor might have broke the law by withholding your mail. >

They were real scholarship awards that congratulated me and gave me a deadline to accept. Some were automatically awarded based on merit (I was notified of those when I got my acceptance letter, but they also sent letters to my school) and a few that I applied or interviewed for. I had actually called the financial aid office a couple times to check on the status, and they told me they couldn't release info over the phone and I would receive a letter if I was awarded anything. 
I even called the school after to explain and ask if anything could be done. It was a private university and they told me it was standard to send award letters to the high school as well so they could announce them at graduation or academic banquets. They had an explanation but not a good one for why nothing was mailed to my house as well. They did reoffer certain scholarships, but most were already granted to the next applicant and they understandbly couldn't rescind them. 
It wasn't entirely her fault since the university dropped the ball too, but it was still frustrating. It's no big loss since I was leaning towards the other school anyways and, looking back, I'd make the same choice. >

That's interesting. Then my guess would be that counselor might be intentionally withholding some of the scholarship letters from you.  Could be a number of reasons, jealousy, or some other kid was also applying for the same scholarship etc. 
College application process has become very intense in US. I don't understand that at all. I would think if any school didn't want me for whatever reason, I wouldn't want to be associated with that school at all either. >

Do counselors know the contents of every student letter they receive? My guess is no. Doesn't make it any less shitty... colleges should communicate directly with those they want to contact and schools should deliver items to their students in a timely fashion >

My kids were National Merit Scholarship finalists (not in VA, pre-covid). The first came within a couple of days of missing out on a full ride scholarship (tuition, housing, and meals) because the high school did not notify us. I luckily read something online and contacted the school because it sounded like my kid met the criteria to be a finalist. The school did not apologize or acknowledge how they almost screwed us over. After the first kid, we knew to contact the school early on. Missing out on the scholarships would have significantly changed the lives of everyone in our family (including us parents).
Make sure you keep track, don't expect the school to let you know. >

Better yet, have every single student in the school contact the school office daily to ask if the results have come in and whether that child qualified for anything. For several months around notification time. Until the school establishes a policy of notifying students and have demonstrated they can follow it. >

I guess it wouldn't have to be that drastic. If one person finds out the results are available and lets everyone know, you could just have 3 days of massive numbers of phone calls from every student that took the test. It isn't even that unreasonable, considering the stakes. >

This is just so weird. >

The part that confuses me the most is the Attorney General investigating possible civil rights violations (?) over the whole thing >

What's confusing? These schools withheld awards because they didn't want white and Asian children to receive recognition. That's a clear civil rights violation. >

Seriously, what "awards" does the school "withheld"? This is not something the sanctioned by any school or school district, more like forced on them. It is their discretion how, when and if to pass that information onto the student. >

The National Merit Scholarship Award. The school administrators withheld it intentionally, in a policy meant to deprive some students of their achievements to increase "equity." >

Does lying by intentionally spreading misinformation really makes you happy? It's very clear that this whole thing has nothing to do with the "national merit scholarship award", whose recipient get notified directly by the agency that gives out the reward, and also announced on their website. >

You sir, are lying. The National Merit Scholarship organization stated that it's the high school's responsibility to announce the recipients. This whole scandal started because many students were never notified. >

Fifty years ago I got a National Merit Scholarship, and the way I found out was a photo in the local paper. My Dad found it. First time I ever saw him cry. >

I live in Fairfax County. TJ high school is one of the elite high schools of the nation (ranked #1 by US News and World Reports). It's very competetive to get into. They've been under a lot of scrutiny the past couple of years over their admissions policy. It doesn't surprise me that someone was waiting for a reason to raise a red flag, warrented or not. >

This is it entirely.  The parent complaining is the same one who started the trans bathroom scare in Loudon. >

I am shocked that people who think that merit is a racist concept would do such a thing. >

Merit is not  a racist concept, but judging anyone only be test scores is not meritorious. >

From your dumb comment using bigger words than the shelf displaying all your participation trophies, you must have “participated” a lot. >

Projecting is such a tell tell sign of certain people. >

Did they delay?  Or is this just another excuse being used by anti-public education activists to attack schools?
Because when you scratch the surface, it becomes clear that there is no state-wide policy on notification, and delays have been happening for years.  Also the National Merit Scholarship announcements are still sent through snail mail to the school... yep even in the 2020s they still put it all into a big envelope and mail it off. >

The school seems to be admitting they fucked up, but have to investigate as to why so.....yeah this seems a little different >

From a different article:

In a call with Yashar, Kosatka admitted that the decision to withhold the information from parents and inform the students in a low-key way was intentional. “We want to recognize students for who they are as individuals, not focus on their achievements,” he told her, claiming that he and the principal didn’t want to “hurt” the feelings of students who didn’t get the award. A National Merit spokeswoman said that the organization’s officials “leave this honor exclusively to the high school officials” to announce. Kosatka and Bonitatibus didn’t respond to requests for comment. >

She's not talking about not notifying the students, she's talking about doing it in a low key way versus having a big assembly/announcement. Read your own linked article please. >

Ehhh it's worded oddly, but I think it's meant to say they did withhold the announcement and that the reason for doing so was intentional in a "low key" way.  The entire controversy is that students didn't know about their awards in time to put them on their college application, not that they didn't get a big announcement at an assembly or something. >

A few different things happening here.
There are students who become National Merit Scholars, who are notified directly by the National Merit Corporation. 
There are also students who are "commended" students who are basically semi-finalists...so a couple notches above a participation trophy. That's what this woman's kid was. 
The NMC doesn't notify these kids, but sends certificates for the school to hand out. 
They sent those certificates to the school in September but didn't include the proper postage, so it bounced back, got resent, and reached the school in mid-October, then the school notified the kids in mid-November. 
I don't see why the school is even obligated to notify the kids at all, but so be it. 
Those whole story seems incredibly forced. Some helicopter mom is going all Karen and right wingers are trying to make it about "wOkE cUlTuRe" but there isn't much here. 
I said elsewhere on this thread that literally the same exact thing happened to me when I was in high school, btw. I was a commended student and only learned about it when a university sent me a letter inviting me to apply for a scholarship. It wasn't a big deal then, and it's not a big deal now. "Commended" just means that my PSAT score was above a certain number. Guess what? Colleges had my actual SAT score by then and nobody really gave a shit about the PSAT score. And if they did, they had that too. 
Think of it this way: If Pizza Hut decides to do a scholarship for kids who eat the most Pizza, and also wants to give out certificates to kids who ate a lot of pizza but not the most, but instead of notifying the kids directly, sends those useless certificates to their schools for the school to pass out, would the school be obligated to participate in Pizza Hut's weird shenanigans just to appease hysterical parents of kids who are kind of good at eating pizza but not good enough for it to really matter? >

I somewhat agree that these award wouldn't move the needle on college applications, but it really DOES appear that there was a coordinated effort by a number of schools in Virginia to intentionally withhold this information from students and parents.  Why they did that is up for debate, but it does at least appear that it was somewhat based in desire for "equity".  
We can of course argue about the process and why the schools are the middle man (valid point there), but it seems odd that only a certain subset of schools in a certain state had a problem doing this. >

Not so odd, this district did a review, following last month's article, while other districts didn't.
The district should not have done a self-audit to begin with, because there's literally nothing that says any school is obligated to notify any student or parent of these "awards." 
What have they done wrong, exactly? >

They did a review because several schools got caught doing this by the parents.  As you note right wing people are constantly on the lookout for this type of stuff yet it seems to only be appearing in this certain area.  It is definitely very odd and I’m not exactly sure why you want to try so hard to pretend otherwise. >

Because at some point common sense needs to prevail. At what point do we stop treating nonsense as anything more than nonsense?
Not several. One. And again, that one school did leave the certificates on students' desks, but about a month later than usual, mostly because they received the certificates a month later than usual, since the sender didn't use enough postage.
One of the kids forgot to tell his overbearing mom about it or something, she got mad, and some right wing news outlets then printed secondhand quotes out of context to turn it into a "woke culture" scandal, and Gov Youngkin tried to capitalize on it by instructing his AG to investigate, so then other schools did a review and found what I imagine they would find in any other district (and what I know was the case in my own high school). 
But does that mean that reasonable people like you and me now have to pretend like Youngkin isn't doing exactly what we all know he's doing: trying to make something out of nothing to get his base riled up for a news cycle or two? >

That is the stupidest reasoning. I was a national merit scholar 20+ years ago, but the school didn’t make any announcements as to who was or wasn’t one. None of my classmates knew or cared who was or wasn’t one. >

A classmate and I were both ~~consolation prize~~ "commended" scholars (no one at our school hit the cutoff for semifinalist that year) and there was a whole song and dance in notifying us, getting called up to the office over the PA system, big show of congratulating us...
It was embarrassing as all hell for me to get the "Oh, congrats, you came so close to earning money :)" sentiment rubbed in publicly, and I likely would have been happier had I gotten an even lower score that didn't result in the nominal honor. >

Dude, you were in the top 3% of all test takers. That's not a "participation trophy." You should be proud. >

Given that the only threshold that functionally mattered on that test in terms of financial compensation + usefulness on college apps was actually getting named as a semifinalist, I really couldn't care less that I qualified for the consolation pat on the head for being close-but-not-quite-there (and to that point I'll admit I should have written "consolation prize" and have now edited it to that, it's early here). 
Classmates of mine who may have been in the top 4% or 5% of all takers achieved functionally the same academic feat without getting heralded in front of the whole school as someone who almost got on the glide path for additional merit aid, but didn't. I am not proud of fumbling that kind of bag.
Yes, the losing Super Bowl team should obviously take note of the fact that they did better that year than 30 other teams. But they still lost. >

this attitude sucks though. obviously everyone wants to win but the idea you have to be #1 or youre a loser doesnt help anyone. Its not how real life works either
getting recognized by the school for doing well academically should be a good thing, just like athletes get recognized for like winning regionals even if they dont win a national title >


you have to be #1 or youre a loser

When there's such a drastic cliff in compensation/accolades somewhere along that ranking scale, like the case between semifinalists and commended scholars, scoring just below that cliff will often lead to my kind of sentiment. I didn't want to be the person with the best PSAT score in the state/country, I just wanted to be on the right side of that cliff. And if I'm not on the right side of the cliff, I'd prefer to not know how close I was.
I'm the kind of person who'd be more comfortable taking 8th in an 8 person race than taking 4th - at least in the former case the podium was never really in my cards. I'd probably be a lot more perturbed about my GPA if I was 3rd in my class but beaten out for salutatorian by 0.01 points than my actual middle-of-the-pack results. Others have a different mindset, and I won't personally yuck their yum.

Its not how real life works either

True, but only because other points-based grading systems with these kinds of cliffs offer retakes and 2nd looks - whether the bar, the ASVAB, or applying for immigration to a country that uses score-based qualification methods. The PSAT was one-and-done, and our school threw us into it IIRC our sophomore year with barely any explanation about the importance of prepping for it and the potential sums attached to a sufficiently high score. >

The schools need to stick to teaching. When the chips fall, some kids who end up working in trades will earn more in stable income than the ones at fancy colleges. >

The problem with trades is the same problem why everyone can’t just learn coding for a better job. Eventually, the market gets saturated in an area and even the trade wages go down. 
You can earn a college degree and make shit money (plenty do), but the same is true for every option. You can go to trade school or apprentice and still make little money for years.
Instead of making it blue-collar vs white-collar, maybe we should be looking at who is benefitting from that division. >

I don't know much about NMS. But I went to school and Nova and was a National Merit Scholar commended student, and they sent the commendation directly to me. I dont think this is normal
Edit: Im from Fairfax