I too would prefer the summa, magna, cum laude award to kids with certain GPAs, while having just one val and one sal.
I too would prefer the summa, magna, cum laude award to kids with certain GPAs, while having just one val and obe sal.
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Why?
emeraldkitty, because graduating with a perfect GPA on a 4.0 scale deserves recognition (summa), even if there’s a bunch of you, but the person with the highest GPA on a 100% scale deserves to be the sole val.
There could be years where the Val doesn’t reach perfect GPA, so doesn’t get summa.
Val never meant much anyways- there are valedictorians in the country that wouldn’t place in the top 10% of some schools.
Our large suburban school back in the day just had honor grads—top 5 percent of the class. Our current smaller school has ‘honor’ graduates that make up about 40% of the class. Again, when half the grade makes honor roll and the next quarter makes merit roll yet their standardized test scores are pathetic (and gym counts in your GPA!) it suggest grade inflation. Small school has val and sal but the honor graduate with a different uniform is a bit too unselective.
I’m glad that my kids were more interested in the academics, than in what grade they recieved.
One of their colleges doesnt even give students their grades unless they make a special request, yet it is considered one of the strongest colleges in the country.
If you are a big fan of generous grading, your kids may want to avoid these schools.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/grade-inflation-colleges-with-the-easiest-and-hardest-grades/
My high school did a 100 scale for grading and it worked really well- to a point. We wound up with one Val, one Sal- both brilliant and hardworking, you have to be to be Val and Sal when you need a 99+ to contend, everyone was thrilled they were chosen because they deserved it- but then about a million random people got miscellaneous random awards. Like me- I’m way too lazy ever to dream of something like that but because of my “reputation” I got an award. Some people received awards to sort of justify other achievements (like acceptance to elite programs) even if they didn’t make any sense (one girl was a legacy at her program but she was going to THAT PROGRAM so obviously she deserved some kind of award…)
So Val and Sal worked out nicely but they they kind of messed it up.
At my kid’s HS the graduation speech is not from a val or a sal, not even top 20% or top 222 or whatever; just some random person some unknown committee appoints mysteriously.
I agree this whole process got trivial a long while ago. But then, why are there so many HS either? That’s another result of “choice”, and having there by a school on every corner kow-towing to infinitely variable sets of “special interests” - there are no “standards”, regardless of what Mr Coleman or his friends wishes to asserts, and there’s really no common denominator for comparison or measurement, it’s all just kinda silly.
That said, hopefully there will be humans at the other end of the evaluation chute somewhere to recognize all this silliness.
A high number of students move in and out of my daughter’s high school. For students who actually go to the school for all four years of high school it is almost impossible to become valedictorian or salutatorian because the school does not allow students to take AP classes until junior year (a practice that they are just now changing), and AP classes are the only grades that get weighted. Honors classes are unweighted. So this year as it has been for several years, the valedictorian and salutatorian were both students who moved in as juniors with weighted GPAs from other places because they got to take courses with weighted grades earlier in their high school career. There is no calibration on the part of the school. So even though there are not 222 valedictorians but only one, it still starts to lose its meaning. The valedictorian’s speech was atrocious too.
At my school, there were five of us told the week before graduation that we were in the running. Having taken unweighted classes in addition to my normal schedule and done an internship through my school’s work study program, which is unweighted, I knew I had pretty much no shot because all of that extra stuff brought down my weighted GPA. However, I was in the top five and we were all told to prepare a speech. I dutifully did mine and turned it in. The morning of graduation day, we were brought into the principal’s office to find out who was who. After announcing the winners, which I was not among, the principal told us that each of the top five had been at the top at one point during the past week. So if they had cut off the grades a day sooner, I might have gotten to make a speech. The whole thing is meaningless.
I had to shoo away a gaggle of 7 valedictorians to get a beer out of the cooler at a recent HS graduation party. They’re everywhere.
I’m surprised by how much discussion this has generated. As a parent of kids in the Dublin School system, I can attest to the fact that their system of awarding valedictorian status works fine as for the kids (and parents) it serves. The honor is not determined until after the completion of 7th semester grades in mid January so it really doesn’t factor into the college application process and I agree with others that stated that the actual transcript / class rank matters more in college admissions.
Our school district has numerous graduates go on to top colleges and universities every year and offers over 20 AP classes and a full IB program so they seem to be providing great opportunities for the students. My son was the actual number one ranked kid in his class and I can assure you that it did not phase him at all to share the valedictorian status. The commencement speaker was selected from all the kids who met the criteria and applied - my son was happy to let that responsibility go to someone else.
As he goes on to continue his studies at MIT, I hope one thing he has taken away from his high school environment is to pursue the things he is passionate about rather than spending time trying to do things that will make him look good on paper. Honors, titles, etc are all nice and make us parents feel good, but at the end of the day it’s the skills you have developed that make the difference.
@stsm087 - I absolutely agree! It makes much more sense to have 222 valedictorians than it does to have a group of students playing a four year game of “avoid the unweighted classes” in order to maximize their GPAs and “earn” a chance to become valedictorian. If the Dublin schools called it “Academic Honors” instead, no one would even notice!
At my dad’s high school (Tabor) back in the day, they actually voted for valedictorian among students in the top 10 percent. He was eight or so in the class, but he was “voted” valedictorian. I still think it’s odd.
My high school, officially, “does not rank”, but at the end of senior year they tell us which students are within the top 5 percent (we wear certain tassels at graduation) and who the sal. and val. are (they give speeches at graduation). If you ask your guidance counselor nicely enough, they’ll tell you where you stand, but my HS was deemed “too competitive” by past principals; eliminating widely-known ranks was a way to combat this.
My high school (also in Ohio) is making anyone with a 4.0 val. I think it’s to help out kids with scholarships, but will they still reward the same things to “vals” that aren’t number 1 in their class? Probably not. I agree, it’s kind of stupid, but everybody here thinks it’s just completely normal. It’s bizarre.
I graduated as a val with 17 other people. It was still really hard to earn that position, since you had to have a 4.0 u/w, take enough APs, and get a certain score on the SAT or ACT. But it was definitely not a top dog award - more like a top pack award. Our school didn’t rank at all but rather just had certain requirements for attaining valedictorian.
This may be an unpopular opinion, but I, for one, think that it would be beneficial to eliminate the idea of a “valedictorian” or even class rank as a whole. It turns into a game of who-can-take-the-most-AP-classes, causing top students to forgo classes they may be interested in for the sake of a numbers game.
High school should be about getting an education, not chasing recognition from peers or manipulating schedules to look good on a college application.
I say this as someone who just graduated as the valedictorian of their senior class. There is no practical benefit to maintaining my school’s current system. It breeds unhealthy competition and unnecessary parental intervention, not to mention demeaning other people’s worth and merit solely because of decimal places.
It also seems like, from this thread, that the parents care more about the recognition and prestige than the students themselves. That’s really sad.
Here’s a question - do students in the top X% really need public recognition in order to feel like they have self-worth? Surely they know that they are smarter than most of the other people in their graduating class. Why do they need a definitive number or title to prove it?
I don’t think it’s self worth, but only human for someone to want to be recognized. In so many schools, athletic endeavors are constantly lauded while the students who excel academically are ignored.
I can appreciate that, as it was certainly the case with my school. It was also kind of amusing how none of the athletes in my class are playing a sport at a Div. I school, even though they were lauded like no other all four years.
I think it would probably be best to give recognition to those who reach a certain threshold, GPA wise. That eliminates the “Person v. Person” competition.