This is old news to me. My high school did the same thing. Many vals though I don’t think anyone actually called themselves that. Several students went on to ivies and other top schools.
I’ve never understood the val obsession. Perhaps it comes from graduating with some 1600 other students.
I think having all classes be honors is every bit as ridiculous as having dozens of valedictorians. Talk about making a term meaningless.
I don’t think its a big issue that kids who take music or whatever aren’t in the running for Val. I agree with those who say that the Val thing isn’t that big a deal. My kids’ school doesn’t seem to have trouble getting enough kids to sign up for those unweighted arts classes. If they had to put together a matching band they might but for what the school wants and needs, there are plenty of kids signing up. And I don’t know if the 4-6 kids at the top of the class would have otherwise taken mire arts classes anyway. I hope they took the classes they wanted to take and didn’t just plot to maximize their GPA.
Now I do think that some of those arts classes maybe should maybe be weighted as honors because they can require a LOT of time. The top level choir class that my son took for 3 years is every bit as demanding as an honors class. So I think it would be fair to weight it.
In my kids’ school they are required to take a certain number of fine arts classes.
@kelsmom if you have a 222-person tie then you really should just go with categories, I agree. If you have a 2 or 3 person tie I think that’s fine. I don’t think who’s #1 matters enough that you need to keep reinventing the wheel to decide who’s really #1. The 2 or 3 Vals in my son’s class were all outstanding students and all went to highly competitive colleges. They all had straight As and equally demanding course loads. I don’t see any reason to try to invent a way to detemine which one was really the best.
This news about valedictorians is especially painful all of us salutatorians out here.
My Ds high school no longer ranks as is par with most of the competitive suburban Chicago high schools these days. They do recognize the top 5% of the class at the Senior Honors Assembly and again at graduation. Students get a medal and they get to walk first at graduation. So in theory, though, they ARE “silently” ranking, otherwise there would be no top 5%!.
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@kelsmom, how would you propose picking one Val if you have a tie?
Pick the one they like the most. That seems to be how a lot of things are given to students in high schools.
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Actually that would likely happen…a popularity contest.
A couple years after my kids graduated, there was some controversy about some other awards. Clearly, in a few cases, they weren’t being given based on “merit”…but on popularity. Some of the awards clearly had a method for determining who should get the award (such as most hours for community service), but it was awarded to a student who the faculty seemed to like best.
There was also an error the year one of my son’s graduated. The school not only names the “top student”, but also the Top Five…and that Top Five group is named at graduation. As the 5 were named, it was immediately noticed that the #2 student had not been named. Everyone was sort of looking around wondering “what the heck”. After the ceremony I called the mom and she was (naturally) very upset. Turns out the GC had wrongly put in a DE grade which then dropped her GPA below Top 5. Even more strange was that when the Top 5 list was presented at a faculty meeting a few days before graduation, the AP English teacher spoke up and asked why Julia’s name wasn’t there. The GC dismissed the teacher’s concerns…big mistake.
Our awards assembly for D’s class had some Oopses, IMO. Awards given out to students who didn’t meet the criteria, or where there was a judgement call, many thought the judgement was poor. These award assemblies are always a little frustrating.
^ At least your HS awards HAD criteria. Neither the Principal nor the head GC at my older child’s school could tell me what awards were given or what criteria was used to determine who got them. It took a lot of self control for me to not ask if they just made them up on the spot.
In one award program I attended at that school, one child received so many awards that by the 5th or 6th one she was sheepishly laughing as she went up to the stage. She was good student and a nice kid, but the school changed the class award ceremony into the “Jamie show”. They were throwing so many awards at this kid, I think they were making some up.Talk about a waste of time as well as a waste of an opportunity to recognize some other deserving students.
In another case, 4 of the 5 citizenship award went to the same kid. In a class of 400+ students, they could not find a few more good citizens? Not looking too hard were they?
In another situation, the top 5 students (not my child’s class , but it happened that I knew the kids and parents) all took very difficult classes, tons of AP’s, were all involved in school activities,etc. All admitted to very selective universities. Four of these students received multiple awards. One of them got …nothing. How this child was completely overlooked was a total head scratcher.
A lot of folks complain about “fairness” in choosing val/sal and top 10, but at least the criteria was defined (top GPA at end of senior year). The names and GPA came out of a computer, a whole lot more “fair” than the awards assemblies.
If schools went back to the 0-100 grading standard, you wouldn’t have as many Vals. a numeric grading scale would really sort out the top students.
Do all 222 give a valedictory speech?
48 straight hours of “The future belongs to you”?
My son’s school grades on a 4.0 scale, that’s why it’s frustrating to see certain colleges accept weighted scores for scholarship purposes. However, they do “weight” Honors and AP classes by adding three and five percentage points , respectively, to the final grade. Their nod to the increased difficulty level. While it’s technically possible to have a 105 % in an AP class, it still won’t get you a GPA above 4.0 .
Some of his favorite classes don’t offer an Honors or AP level, he still took them, simply because he enjoyed them. Maybe not the most logical decision in order to get into a highly selective college, but I think it gave him a more well rounded high school curriculum.
In other news, Dublin High’s football team elected 22 captains. All players on the school’s basketball team were named MVP. 
“In other news, Dublin High’s football team elected 22 captains. All players on the school’s basketball team were named MVP”
That reminds me of story from a friend that when his D was in college she was in a club of a 100 with one president, 99 VPs.
D’s HS weight honors and AP courses. So they are officially on a 5 point scale. Orchestra and symphonic bands are honors courses so it’s the musicians that have an advantage when the valedictorian is chosen. Nearly every Val and sal in the past several years is in the orchestra (that’s probably part of the reason the school has two orchestras). The absolute highest weighted GPA a student could have would be a 5.333, however I’m not sure a student could take all honors courses in their freshman and sophomore years. The highest GPA I’ve heard of is a 5.12. I think their system works well.
Our school is like some others on this thread; we rank on a scale of 100 rather than GPA, so I’ve never seen a tie. It was close this year, with DS and another student within few one hundredths of each other. And there was a little bit of controversy this year as a well because the high school introduced an honors option for music, in which students who chose honors music would be required to participate in multiple outside music programs as part of the grade. DS has done chorus, concert band, chamber singers, and jazz band all four years, and did the new honors option this year, but honors music wasn’t allowed to be weighted because it would change the class ranks 
. So DS is sal rather than val. But honestly, it’s such a small thing in the long term; we’re fine with how it all worked out and while DS was irritated for a while, he’s gotten over it and is so very ready to graduate and move on.
Sal/val seems pretty arbitrary sometimes; choosing music classes, or one bad case of flu at a bad time, or any of multiple other possibilities can change who is val or sal. I really like the cum laude/summa cum laude/ magna cum laude options that some schools here have.
Not sure what the HS is trying to accomplish by naming 222 Vals. If they are trying to give their grads some kind of advantage in the college app process, then it probably won’t help since Common App asks for class rank, which gives an indication of relative academic performance in a grade inflated environment.
If the HS is trying to make their students feel better by achieving some dubious accolade, then that’s just sad. No wonder the US continues to slide in global education rankings. We’d rather win something meaningless than risk losing something meaningful.
222 vals? There’s only 211 people in my HS’s class and we’re the only HS in my town XD
Yay small towns for not having enough people to create so many vals
Sadly, my school does 4.0+ = valedictorian too. Hated that system, because I had the highest in my class.
Neither Ds high school used weighted grades.
It did not affect the ability of students to continue their education.
Colleges have the description of school & coursework.
Most colleges, are not looking to put together a freshman class of vals/sals, so I dont get the angst over one school having one, and another with thirty.