My kids graduated from high schools in three states, and none of those schools selected valedictions. Two of the three sent students on to Ivies and other top-notch schools. None of them handled it the same, either.
The first school district (a top-flight district with several nationally ranked high schools) discovered that students were eschewing music and the arts and other non-academic courses to take only weighted classes, and were becoming less “well-rounded students” in order to out-compete their classmates for valedictorian. They would have eight or ten really top students separated by less than .01 GPA, with nearly 5.0 GPAs.
That district eliminated the weighting of classes, and established a three-tiered cum laude system based on GPAs. Student speakers at graduation were selected by competitive application, and student government members.
The second district issued honors diplomas for those with a GPA of 3.8 or higher, with a minimum of 7 AP classes. I wasn’t there when this was implemented, so I don’t know why. It was a small school, and there were not a large number of AP classes available Student speakers at graduation were elected by their classmates.
The third district, where my daughter just graduated, has no overall recognition except the annual academic letter for those with a GPA of 3.8 or higher for the year. Instead, at graduation, each department awards department honors. There is a minimum overall GPA, and a four-year 3.8 GPA in the department, plus some additional requirement specific to the subject. For example, music honors requires competition at state and a senior solo concert.
Like the first district, speakers are selected by competitive application.
Hearing that a school requires 7 AP classes for honors, but that there weren’t a large number of AP classes available, gives me pause…our school only has 3 AP classes available, in total! And we’re the biggest school in the county. Guess we really are rural, LOL. That’s all right, we love our relaxed country school.
“Frankly, this “recognition” does not go further than HS”
Which high school recognition does? - I do not understand your question, Dad0524.
I was saying that HS where there are still efforts to label some students Val’s / Sal’s / Assign the rank, simply wasting their time. Colleges do not care about this labels, they figure out applicant rank based on applicant’s HS GPA and HS class profile. Many (all?) even strip the weighted GPAs and re-calculate them also. So, what is the point of assigning these labels? If a kid had all As in HS and took the most rigorous classes available, the kid knows that her application will be in great shape. If a kid also manage to have a normal life, pursued many personal interests and , then what else is needed? The Val., Sal., labels will have no impact on the college application and that is why many HS’s simply dropped them, and do not even rank students and do not even calculate weighted GPAs.
I think the crux of this, for me, is that at many schools you really can’t identify the person with the highest academic achievement, at least by using the tool of GPA. In too many cases, you are simply identifying the person who prioritized GPA over everything else. I don’t think the incentives in that situation are positive.
@skyoverme If you choose to stick with a poor definition, that’s your decision. But “valedictorian” translates LITERALLY to “one who says farewell.” And what is the function of a valedictorian in a graduation ceremony? To stand there and look pretty so everyone can worship their superiority? No. To deliver the farewell address. Moreover, you completely ignored my subsequent points outlining how one might retain the competitiveness of attaining the position while focusing on the primary function rather than the secondary symbolic function that we’ve attached to the title over time. I’m perfectly fine with recognizing the top students in the class– in fact I think it’s a great idea to do so with a separate award. But you don’t seem to understand the real point of a valedictorian.
@MiamiDAP I was merely pointing out that most high school recognition does not go further than high school. I disagree that high schools that recognize a validictorian are wasting their time. My daughter was named 3 days before graduation and well after she selected her college, it meant something to her regardless of the fact that it did not impact her college application.
I stick with the definition from Merriam Webster dictionary.
I’ll also go with the common connotation.
You can go with the etymology of the word, but I assume that you do that with all words and would be insufferable to be around since you would say the President just means that Obama is the “person who sits before” and has no other meaning than that. LOL.
I ignored those because your previous points were so ridiculous.
Since you are the one who thinks it just means “one who says farewell”, you don’t understand. Or do you think everyone who says farewell is a valedictorian - like the Principal, the guest speaker, the favorite teacher or even the salutatorian, LOL.
I will now be a valedictorian by saying farewell to you since your arguments are so ridiculously silly, I just can’t believe you are serious.
(whew, now I can put on my resume that I am a valedictorian)
The term “Valedictorian” should definitely not be used for students above a certain GPA. That is changing the meaning of the word. The two accepted definitions I have found online are either…1) student with highest ranking (GPA) or 2) student with highest academic achievement. #1 is indisputable. You could have some ties, but not 222 in a school district. #2 allows for some subjectivity and could include GPA and other academic achievements.
My daughter’s high school had two awards in this area, and neither were called “Valedictorian”…one was an award for “all As” in high school. There were 15 of them of 334 graduating seniors. SOME of those were students who did NOT take honors or AP classes, so they didn’t have a higher weighted GPA than many others who did take honors and AP classes, and the second award is given to the student with the most As. Sometimes this second award goes to a student who takes the career classes at the “career center”, so it isn’t the same, but this year it actually went to a student who took a lot of AP classes…she just also happened to take more classes than the others who also got all As.
At my school they started doing a thing where the person giving the “Valedictorian” speech was chosen via audition. You had to be in the top 5% to be eligible to audition though. The reason they did this was because a lot of the valedictorians at our school didn’t want to do the speech but their parents made them anyways so it was a boring, half-a****, generic speech.
I had several friends who were valedictorians - at my school, you need a 4.0 unweighted GPA. They don’t consider your weighted GPA whatsoever.
However, one in particular had a significantly easier course load over high school than the rest. She only took 4 AP classes (2 of which were required by my school, AP Lang and AP Lit) and took a lot non-academic on level courses (ex. teachers assistant, on-level/beginning music/arts courses) whereas one of my other valedictorian friends took 11 AP classes. I’m sorry, but they are not equal. The first person I mentioned had a lower weighted GPA than I did, and I wasn’t even a valedictorian.
My school didn’t weight grades and didn’t name a valedictorian. At the time I was annoyed, since it felt like it mad my full-IB 4.0 less meaningful. It didn’t. It meant that there wasn’t a cut-throat attitude in my IB classes, which in retrospect I appreciate. There were some state-sponsored scholarships that went to the top 3 students in the graduating class, where they used ACT scores as a tie-breaker. I knew that I was graduating top of my class, and so did my guidance counselor and teachers. They can say that in their letters of recommendation.
And honestly, unless it’s needed for a scholarship, after you graduate no one is going to care if you were valedictorian.
@skyoverme Instead of acting like a petulant child because your argument was ill-formed and lacking in substance, you might want to consider actually addressing exactly why my suggestions were “ridiculous. LOL.” So how about we try this again? Sue22 already punched a few holes in your “argument” as well; so fair warning, you may have to try extra hard this time.
@medbound17 Well, since you have to resort to personal attacks, you just prove who the child is.
As to your post “A few holes?” Really?? Do you know how to count? Looks like you don’t know what the word “few” means?
Besides, saying it includes the definition includes the word “usually”, which could mean up to 99.9% of the time, and supports the common usage of the word.
But since you don’t seem to even understand what “a few” means, and you didn’t understand the first time I explained why your argument is ridiculous, I will use small words and type more slowly (with extra spacing after the big words)
.
Claiming…that … a … word’s … meaning …is … actually … the … entomological … origin of the word is nidicolous … and naive. … Or… do … you … actually believe that it is appropriate … to call someone a valedictorian … if …they …were …the “one who said farewell”.
Do you refer to you boyfriend as a valedictorian when he says farewell to you?
I now say farewell to you.
So as a person “who said farewell”, according to you, I am the valedictorian in this thread.
@mdcmom When I say “not many AP classes,” I am comparing that small district to the district we had come from - a nationally ranked district where all five high schools had more than 1300 students, and offered AP everything in English, math, science, arts, social studies, even AP Spanish to level 5 and AP French to level 5. Which I didn’t even know existed until we started in that district. There were students who, once they hit their sophomore year, took only AP classes.
Then when we moved to the smaller district, with a 600 student high school, they only offered about 10 AP classes - two years of AP English, two years of AP math, three AP science courses, two AP government/history, and AP psychology.
The school my daughter just graduated from is somewhere in-between. But my daughter chose to do “Running Start” instead. She attended the local community college for all of her academic classes, taking only university-level courses. It paid off, and she got into all five universities she applied to. We discovered taking the actual college classes requires about a quarter as much homework as taking AP, and she got equal weight in the university considerations.
I never liked honor roll since middle school. Literally 2/3 of the students are in honor roll that not being in honor roll makes you doubt about your brain’s capabilities.
What’s the point of being in “honor roll”(more like normal roll) if a kid with the easiest As- who would otherwise miserably fail in harder classes-can get same “reward” while other smart kids in harder classes actually worked hard to get “same” GPA?? I don’t care about middle school but high schools must raise the bar of “honor roll” so that it becomes something that is actually meaningful.