Group offers students recognition _ for a fee.

Byline: Lynn Franey

KANSAS CITY, Mo. _ The National Society of High School Scholars says it has attracted 70,000 members since it was founded less than two years ago.

For $45, a student gets benefits that include a membership certificate, monthly newsletters, invitations to luncheons across the country and a shot at scholarships.

Based on the number of members, the Atlanta-based society has collected $3.1 million.

Scholarship money awarded? Just $60,500.

Founder and president James W. Lewis won't say how much it costs the society _ a for-profit company _ to provide the benefits. Nor will he reveal his pay or the salaries of his handful of staff members.

Lewis has done nothing improper by creating the National Society of High School Scholars as a for-profit enterprise. It gives excellent students the praise they deserve and desire, he said.

"I founded it because it was important to recognize a diverse group of outstanding high school students," Lewis said in a telephone interview.

The society is unlike traditional nonprofit high school honor societies, such as National Honor Society, in several ways. It doesn't have campus chapters. It doesn't require that students be nominated by their schools. In fact, students can nominate themselves. And several Kansas City area schools say the society never verified with them whether students met its stated requirement of a high grade point average.

The National Association of Secondary School Principals knows of about a dozen high-school-level national honor societies. None is a for-profit enterprise.

Yet neither is Lewis' society exactly like national recognition programs, such as Who's Who Among American High School Students. Those programs charge for copies of their publications, but not for students to receive the recognition.

But the society's characteristics concern experts in the field of honors and recognitions.

Experts generally advise high school students not to pay to receive honors or to become eligible for scholarships. Students should join only societies that have strong school connections, they say.

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