<p>It’s somewhat common Georgia for good students to dual enroll at a local college and graduate high school with a year or two of college credits. The problem with this is that in this particular county, GPA’s are calculated on a 1-100% basis, and they automatically count college A’s as 100%, whereas a high school A can range from 90-100%. This girl, who was somehow assigned to a high school but that she had never attended (article doesn’t say how or why), was able to get valedictorian over someone who had apparently been #1 in the sitting class since her freshman year simply by getting a lot of A’s at this college.</p>
<p>From my days taking dual enrollment credits, I remember it being a bit harder to get A’s in my magnet high school than it was to get A’s against people at a community college.</p>
<p>Huh, at my school, you have to be a junior to start dual enrollment. At a nearby school, where the focus is dual enrollment, you have to be a sophomore. Seems odd to let freshmen (what, like 14?) take college classes.</p>
<p>Or did she transfer from another school and only do dual enrollment at this new school? That’s possible. My school has a “rivalry” with another school (something I never bought into and I think is stupid, given both schools’ primary aim of education), and one year the valedictorian from my school transferred to that other school senior year and bumped their 4-year valedictorian out of the spot, graduating first in the class. After that year, they made a rule that you had to be there two years before being eligible.</p>
<p>They need to stop personally attacking McCahill. Regardless of whether it’s fair or not, they should have more maturity to know she isn’t responsible for how the system works.</p>
<p>According to the article, it was an opportunity available to everyone, so if the student decides to go above and beyond and succeed well, she should get the highest credit. Not undermining Perlotto’s success, either, but she didn’t sacrifice as much as McCahill. These aren’t just community college courses, they’re University level. </p>