Lots of schools don’t name a valedictorian. My daughter’s school doesn’t release class rank so I assume they won’t be announcing a valedictorian.
I live in North Carolina and my district stopped naming a valedictorian at each school last year.
It’s fine if schools don’t…the issue here is the reasoning at this particular district for eliminating it. Really?
I actually think this is a fair reason. High school is stressful enough, having class ranks and val/sal just adds unnecessary pressure. We don’t have class ranks at my school, but I’ve heard plenty on here about kids gaming the system to get the highest GPA and screwing kids over who take just as hard classes, but want to have an elective or two that they want to take. Not to mention that the article mentions implementing a Latin honors system, so kids who work hard still get awards. I don’t see any problems.
I live in North Carolina and I had no idea about this. It doesn’t bother me though.
The Latin recognitions have already been implemented in my district.
Unnecessary pressure to whom exactly?
What’s the point, honestly, of a Sal and Val? What purpose does it serve? Why ramp up competition amongst students and encourage grade grubbing. Learning for learning’s sake and the other benefits of being a good student (better colleges, etc.) should be enough motivation IMO. There are more negative consequences than positive ones in naming a Val.
This really isn’t uncommon enough to be newsworthy.
It’s newsworthy because an entire school system is acknowledging that Val/Sal has becomes a meaningless exercise for students to pad their schedules w AP courses for no other reason than class rank:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19350185/#Comment_19350185
Some of my friends are already heavily devoted to the idea of valedictorian. However, I’ve decided that I don’t give a rat’s *ss about val, and I’ll do my best to try to keep them sane.
my school doesn’t have a valedictorian or a class rank
You can read stories here on CC about students trying to decide if they should drop their beloved orchestra class just so they can take another weighted AP class that they don’t want just to get Val…or take online APs so they can get more weighted credits.
Some school districts go the other way; they have multiple valedictorians. One Ohio school district (with 3 high schools) had 222 valedictorians in the class of 2015. Anyone with over a 4.1 GPA is a valedictorian.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/06/03/best-of-class-in-dublin-222-grads-tie.html
My son graduated 1st in a class of 360+ in a school that ranked but did not officially announce valedictorian or salutatorian. There are two specific senior awards that are given to the #1 and #2 kids but nothing official is ever stated as such. Just two in many different awards going to members of senior class. Many of the kids and parents likely have no idea about those awards. Top 10 kids are named in each class but no ranking within those ten is provided publicly (transcripts do show actual rank). My mom thought it was a huge travesty. It was the rule so we were fine with it.
The college application process is incredibly competitive. Many kids (and their parents) will take steps to “game the system” even without formal val/sal designations. Others won’t. For an ever increasing number of families, dollars are huge in terms of scholarships. Take away val/sal designations and some kids will still take weighted classes (forgoing those unweighted art or music classes) in an effort to make their college apps more competitive. Learning for learning’s sake sounds better in theory than it works in reality in many cases. And if your kid wants to take the learning for learning’s sake, who is stopping them?
It promotes a lot of unhealthy behavior in terms of course choices, that is for sure. And no one even knows for sure if they are val or sal until after college admission results are in. One of my brothers was a joint “val” with a few others in his large high school class, and I still remember all the kvetching that went on among the students and parents about who took which classes, etc. It was unpleasant and didn’t do anyone any good, IMHO.
If class rank is based on unweighted GPA, it doesn’t reward people for taking challenging classes. If class rank is based on weighted GPA, it tends to penalize people who took a lot of art and music classes (or other classes that aren’t designated “honors” for whatever reason). I think there should be some kind of class ranking system so people can say they were in the top 10% or whatever, but ranking people in a list can make them unnecessarily risk-averse when they’re choosing classes.
I think it all depends on the weight your school puts on it. We have class rank, and you can ask about what yours is, but none of us worry about it. I am friends with all the top 10, im in the top 10. We take AP and college courses because we honestly like them. Thats because our school never highly publicizes the ranks. We have what I guess is the Latin system too, with the cum laudes and all. The school doesn’t put it on thr transcript, they dont publicly mention it other than graduation. Its really not a big deal, just an extra bonus and something to make you competitve for college. I didnt even know what a class rank was until sophmore second semester TBH 