<p>"Parents and students at Cherokee Countys Etowah High School are upset that the coveted title of class valedictorian will go to a student who has never attended the school.</p>
<p>Class rankings made public this week gave the honor to Kelly McCahill, who attends the University of West Georgia through a dual enrollment program at Etowah.</p>
<p>McCahill took the No. 1 ranking and hence the title of valedictorian from Sydney Perlotto, an Etowah student who has been tops in her class since the ninth grade.</p>
<p>This sparked an outcry over how the grade-point averages are calculated for students who are dually enrolled in the countys high school and college programs."</p>
<p>My school has a dual enrollment program and the classes are given on a 6-point GPA scale. Our DE students are usually the ones who end up at the top of the class… I’d say most of them were very deserving of the honor though.</p>
<p>I can see why this is striking an uproar. McCahill doesn’t really deserve all the hate. Maybe it’s unfair, but as her mother said, "Shes taking advantage of an opportunity everyone has access to. They’re University-level classes.</p>
<p>We have issues with in our school district also. There will be a couple of students in the top 10 who have not stepped foot on a high school campus in two years. It is a bitter pill for the kids who are active members of the high school community. I am not sure what the answer is, but to say that everyone has the opportunity to take advantage of university level classes disregards the fact that for some kids, school is not just a means to an end, but a journey in and of itself, high school as well as college. I tried very hard to convince my daughter to go full time dual enrolled for her senior year, mainly due to an oddball block schedule that changed every day, negatively impacting her ability to take dual enrolled classes as well as pursue her ECs. She flat out refused because she did not want to miss out on the traditional senior year experience.</p>
<p>It is the opposite at our school (in Gwinnett County, GA). DE students are discriminated against compared to AP students. </p>
<p>A DE student can take Calculus at Georgia Tech and make a 100, but the school gives them a ‘95’ on their HS record. The AP Calculus student can make an 86 in the high school class, flunk the AP exam and gets 10 points added to their grade for a ‘96’. </p>
<p>Unweighted GPA’s gives my D a number one ranking, weighted she can make all 100’s and her ranking will go down. She actually took some classes at the high school in the last 2 years and was on the YearBook staff.</p>