Habits of Highly Ineffective Principals: Um ... Confidentiality?

The true HIPster is acutely aware of his school's scores and how NCLB is bearing down on his job as a result. Fearful for his bloated salary, he flails out with any half-baked idea that might have an effect on the school's results, regardless of the damage it does to students. After all, he's HIP.

You could give them gang tattoos, too.

"Anaheim Union High School District has killed a controversial incentive program that assigned students color-coded ID cards and planners based on state test scores, required those who performed poorly to stand in a separate lunch line and awarded the others with discounts. The program was designed to urge students to raise scores on the California Standards Tests, but it also raised concern among parents and students who said it illegally revealed test scores and embarrassed those who didn't do well."

Yeah. "Urge" them to raise scores. Or maybe "humiliate" them might be more accurate. "Here are all the smart kids in the school and none of them are you." Other than painting a target on the smart kids' backs (because you haven't really solved that bullying problem, yet, have you?), all that this accomplishes is to divide the students against each other and raise resentments higher than they were naturally.

And to have to carry around binders and ID cards that announced continuously that you were deficient -- who thought this was a good idea? A HIP.  It's akin to saying "All you Black kids in this line. All you Asian kids in the Yellow Line. Hispanics in the Brown Line. Normal kids in the White Line."  I can cite psychology experiments (one quote above) that demonstrate what's wrong with this idea and history is filled with stories of whole societies that took this idea and ran amok.  Never mind the confidentiality laws - you CANNOT announce a students scores on tests.

No matter how desperate your job prospects are.