Maybe they should just talk to each other.
My s’s HS had magna, summa, etc but just one val and one sal. Whats wrong with just being able to say you are in the top 1-2% (well in the Dublin case the vals are in the top 20% which is completely ridiculous)
My high school gave numerical grades on a scale of 100, not 4.0, so ties weren’t too likely. The year before I graduated, though, there WAS a tie for val.
I don’t know if it was good or not, but the race for valedictorian kept me motivated to work as hard as I could! I don’t think I would have tried as much if I knew a bunch of us would be awarded the title.
They started the magna, summa, cumma thing awhile ago at my kids’ high school. The class president speaks and the student president of the NHS at the school speaks. Makes total sense to me if for some reason the high school can’t “figure out” who the top student is (I don’t believe this for one second.) The magna wear cords and are called the senior scholars and almost always it seems like the NHS president is one of the magnas.
How about every NFL team that has a record 9-7 or better will go to Superbowl?
At my high school they didn’t use the term valedictorian. The top 10 students were announced and sat in a semicircle in front. The #1 student was presented with a ridiculously large trophy which made me glad I was merely in the top 10. The stufents elected someone to speak and that person also got a huge trophy. I kind of line the idea of the students choosing a speaker.
All of the Vals and Sals spoke at my son’s graduation. The kids’ speeches were pretty good. A couple were really funny and all were pretty brief. I coukd have done with briefer introductions. Everyone who introduced the students seemed to speak longer than the kids did. Really, these are all very accomplished kids. No need to list every single thing they’ve done.
The origin of the word valedictorian comes from the Latin meaning the person selected to give the “farewell speech”. I’ve been to several graduations over the years and the student picked by the students has often tended to give the speech most relevant to the class as a whole. Let the students vote on the one they want to say goodbye for the class as a whole. If the school wants to break down kids into summa, magna category by some arbitrary GPA cut offs, list them in program.
Everyone is super in this school district.
This school district makes all other school districts in the nation pale.
I have an alternate idea. Have 200+ designated valedictorians vote on who they want to give the one
“farewell speech” of the class. Then after speech have the other valedictorians stand up and sing from Sound of Music song “so long farewell….”
There is a subtle problem with GPAs and valedictorian status.
Today, schools often determine who is valedictorian on the basis of weighted GPAs – that is, GPAs that are heavily influenced by the number of AP (and in some cases, honors) courses that the student chooses to take.
This heavily pressures students who rank high in the class to choose as many weighted courses as possible to protect their class rank and keep them in the competition for valedictorian.
They may have to sacrifice things that they greatly value in order to do this.
For example, in our school system, if you stay in the orchestra, band, or choir for all four years, you can kiss all possibility of being valedictorian goodbye because those classes are unweighted. It’s OK to participate for one year because everybody has to do one arts class and none of them are weighted, but if you continue to participate, you’re shooting yourself in the foot in terms of weighted GPA. You will have three more unweighted courses on your transcript than most of your competitors do. That’s a disadvantage you can’t make up.
Should a student who loves music really have to drop out of the orchestra, band, or choir to protect class rank?
^ That’s the school problem. You cannot blame on students. If every A in any class just counts as 4 then the problem is solved. No more competition. This happens in real life colleges and colleges can still tell who are the top performers.
We have too many PhDs in school districts but their policies don’t make much sense.
@coolweather, I’m not blaming the students. Not at all. It is definitely a problem created by the school system.
On the other hand, if every A in any class just counts as 4, then two things would happen: (1) students would be discouraged from taking AP or honors courses (because they are more likely to get Bs in those courses than in regular courses) even though this is not in their best interest, and (2) the valedictorian would likely be someone who never took a rigorous course.
So if a school system does it your way, they also incentivize undesirable choices. They’re just different undesirable choices than the ones incentivized by the current system.
I don’t have a solution. I just wanted to point out a problem that exists today but may not have existed when many of today’s parents went to school.
^ The school can still have some ways to select a meaningful val. For example, in order to be a val, the student must have at least a number of advanced classes.
The school can still opt to have no val at all.
But the true motivation for taking advanced classes is to satisfy intellectual challenges and to apply to selective colleges.
I see many school districts advocate AP classes but many students struggle in these classes.
Students should take classes according to their ability.
You make some great points, @coolweather.
What I wanted to add to this conversation was the idea that no matter how a school calculates GPA or class rank – or how they choose a valedictorian – they create incentives for certain types of behavior. Different ways of doing these things create different incentives.
Some students, especially those who are seeking scholarships that are only available to students in the top X% of the class, have to be scrupulous about doing whatever it is that the system incentivizes.
So school systems need to be very careful about what they incentivize.
@Marian I agree. Schools should carefullly look at reality and create incentives for student benefits.
@Marian - That was one of the reasons our local school district dropped class ranking and stopped designating valedictorians. Too many kids were avoiding non-weighted classes (including orchestra, band, choir, and visual arts) in order to maximize weighted GPA and class rank, and those who took these classes were likewise penalized. Without class rank (the schools in the district only list deciles), students are more free to take the classes they want without worrying about hurting their class rank.
No one seems worse off for this, and it does take a bit of pressure off high-achieving students. I imagine most colleges would rather see applicants who have been broadening their horizons by taking non-weighted classes instead of avoiding them on the (possibly incorrect) perception that the resultant lower class rank will hurt their admissions chances. I don’t understand why this isn’t the norm.
Our elite private HS has no val or sal and no class rank. Awards are usually given by faculty department based on participation, integrity, hard work, impact on a regional, state or national level, and trying to change the world,
At my high school there’s still only one valedictorian and one salutatorian. And it’s calculated by weighted GPA. Out class has more than 900 students and no one’s complaining, so it’s not like that everywhere.
Maybe the school can have one super final 4 hour exam for prospective vals to compete for the highest score. It could include any topic and involve creative and problem-solving exercises.
I wonder how many “real” vals are among those thousands that top colleges boast of rejecting? (honestly the number 1 top student in a serious high school).
Our son (2011) was a CO-val. They had three tie that year so they named 3 as CO-vals. There was also one Sal. This year (2015) there was one val and 2 CO-sals. They also announce the top 5% of the class. This process seems to suit everyone. The recent graduating classes has ranged from 250 to about 300.
I agree that having over 200 vals totally dilutes the process and renders it meaningless.
Our district does not have Val’s either. The few kids with perfect GPAs are honored at graduation. That makes much more sense to me than honoring the kid who chose to drop an art class to preserve his or her val status. Or avoid a class where they might get an A-. They were having to go to the third decimal place to figure out the top student, which seems to be a meaningless distinction.
But using the term Val for 222 kids seems ridiculous.