I agree with mathyone. I understand why a student would feel the system was unfair. For kid mentality, it is a disappointment to lose out. The system could be made more fair by including scores from a set number of classes-that would be identical for all students at each grade ignoring other classes completely-or it can be a GPA that weights “advanced” classes more but also considers credits taken.
But even a “fair system” won’t identify the “best student”. That is because being “best” is a subjective judgement and because grades often have little to do with the extent to which a student is a genuine scholar (yes, even a 7 year old can be a scholar). Many genuine scholars opt out of the grade chasing game in favor of chasing interests and pursuing what fires their intellectual curiosity. So the best the valedictorian system can do is identify the best at complying with what the adults want. The kid who gets closest to the carrot gets the reward.