I just suddenly remembered that my elementary school had this reading programme thing they were a part of and it really makes me wonder if this was a common experience or not cause I feel like i've never heard anybody else mention something like this. Basically, my school (and maybe the entire district) was worried about literacy rates and so decided that for every grade level it would be mandatory to use a specific website to track every book that you read. Your log-in info was directly connected to your student ID, and you had to read a certain amount of books per week or else your grade average in English would automatically fall. In addition to this, we were also required to leave a review for everything that we read so that our teachers could make sure that we actually did, which I remember was the worst because when you're 9 years old re-reading your Hungry Caterpillar book just to meet your quota, it feels like, what is there to say?? 'Boy, that caterpillar sure was hungry!' Sigh. But anyway, as you continue to read, you would level up on the website. I really don't remember how the system worked, but I do know that the more you read the more avatars you could unlock, and they were all these really ugly early 2000s stock animation CGI things. You know the ones. There was a bit of a clout thing going on also because our teachers would display the statistics in class which would also show people's avatars and badges and turned it into a competitive thing where people would just keep reading baby books over and over so that they could get the most points and it was a whole mess. But back to the point about how if you don't meet the quota they set then your grade drops - the entire time I was in school, and especially in elementary, I was a straight-A student. But I cannot tell you how stressful it was any time I saw on that weekly report that my grade was dropping cause I had forgotten to read, or how many times I remembered that a quota was due and had to scavenge my bookshelves for something short I could read to that I could submit it in time to get credit for that week. And the thing is I don't think this system actually did anything to encourage reading OR to improve literacy. ALL of us were reading toddler books, at ages 7-10, just to avoid being penalized, and I didn't start reading at all again until my last year of middle school just from how bad of an experience all that was and affected the way I saw books, as a source of academic stress rather than just for love of reading. So... did anybody else's schools have similar systems??