<p>Here’s how my school does val/sal, and I think it works really well. Max GPA is 4.3 (A+). Honors courses get a 1/3 of a letter grade bump, but if the kid has an A+ w/o the bump, he doesn’t get a bump. Kids don’t select courses based on val/sal aspirations and the kids who deserve it the most always end up at the podium come graduation. Usually the val has a 4.18 weighted.</p>
<p>There are hs in VA that now determine val/sal by auditions… Interesting concept… IMO, if you’re in the VA Commonwealth Governor’s School, you can get pushed out of the #1 or #2 spot by a student who’s not taking the same rigorous load that a Governor’s School student is required to take…Many feel that this is not fair, either - so let the kids audition who want to give a graduation address…</p>
<p>I’m a palm beach county high school student who was shocked to see this in the palm beach post!!! Their arguement is horrible!!! The wine tasting class is not permitted so it would be the guidance counselor’s and parents’ fault. Also the magnet students getting a higher rank is logical also. They took the classes and the other students could easily take as many classes on Florida Virtual School if they wanted. Of course the race for val/sal is going to be fierce!! By nature, we’re competitive so I find the cum laude system horrible and if they attempt to put it in effect there will be some conflict going on based on illogical reasoning and frustrated parents. The Palm beach Post even said how crazy these parents are down here :D.</p>
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<p>Awarding by percentage makes it into class rank by another name, as does anything that involves relative ranking of students. Awarding based on grades makes it an “honor roll” GPA cutoff. Neither of these is new information.</p>
<p>There are many ways to excel in high school. They should all be encouraged, not buried. Over-the-top competitive attitudes should be discouraged. I think that a combined cum laude and valedictory system solves several problems. Our high school finally did this. Summa cum laude for the top 3% - 4% takes a lot of pressure off the XX valedictorian problem. The graduated steps, magna and cum laude, give everyone a shot at a piece of the pie without “all or nothing”. A shared valedictorian should have a narrow, predefined mathematical basis e.g. half of a 7th semester’s letter sign (~0.003) in the cumulative grades that could be considered an indistinguishable difference. I would also favor a secondary “power formula”, wt’d GPA x course load for tie breaking more than 2 valedictorians or for even primary ranking use. </p>
<p>Valedictorian should represent an impressive achievement in work and time management with ability, not manipulation. For mine, that meant 6 to 6 for activities, extra music, and full classes (5 AP, 7 classes in a 6 course day) her senior year with some short nights, and a good looking boy friend.</p>
<p>I think that the flaw isn’t with the system, but with the students in it. I am currently valedictorian of my high school, but that hasn’t kept me from taking any classes that I’ve wanted to. I could have easily increased my GPA by taking an advanced science or history elective, but instead I chose art classes, which I absolutely love. Students simply need to realize that rank is not that important. (Most) Colleges don’t say what % of vals, sals, and people of other ranks were admitted, they only show what percent of their incoming class ranked in which percentile. I think it’s just a reflection of the OCD-perfectionism that’s becoming bred into students.</p>
<p>The idea of giving ‘graded’ degrees (eg summa cum laude) is a good one. </p>
<p>In most schools the difference between the top few percentage of students is frequently determined by nothing other than quarks in the way the ‘weighted’ GPAs are calculated. Something as simple as taking an advanced music class (which might not get GPA bonus points) could effectively disqualify someone from even having a mathematical chance of being in the top few spots. </p>
<p>Such a system easily lends itself to manipulation (see the infamous Blair Hornstine case from a few years back) and all for something that, at the end of the day, nobody really cares about after the fact.</p>
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That is fair of your school! Our zoned school has the city’s IB program, and those students take over the top rankings, unfairly lowering the rank of the students who go to that high school because they live in the zone. Since there are approximately 350-400 IB students (including 9th and 10th grades, which isn’t the Diploma Programme yet, as that is only for 11th and 12th grades) in a school of 1800 or so, that is a significant effect. (The IB students also tend to take over the school activities.) There was discussion some years back about the IB students being ranked separately, but they aren’t. When rank in class counts for college admissions or scholarships (top 10%, top 5%, etc.), it really isn’t fair.</p>
<p>Competition for the top spot abounds in my school system. At more than one high school this year, students took online AP courses specifically to grab that val spot. At one high school, the top two students supposedly had a pact to be co-valedictorians, then one went behind the other’s back and snuck in that online (or extra online?) class to shove to the front of the pack. And next year one girl is quitting all activities to focus on becoming val. She is going to be taking 10 classes next year. She has let this be known. Apparently the others in the running are going to “let her” be val because it means so much to her. I’m not sure I believe this…maybe someone will be going behind HER back this year!</p>
<p>One of my kids attended a high school that named a valedictorian; the other attended a high school in the same district that didn’t. (At the latter school, there was a contest for the two graduation speaker spots, based on the speeches themselves.)</p>
<p>The one who attended the school that had a valedictorian did not have the grades to compete for the spot; the other one might have been a candidate if there had been a valedictorian. </p>
<p>But neither would have been willing to make the attempt in any case because it would have meant sacrificing unweighted electives. My daughter was a dedicated member of the school’s symphonic band – an unweighted course that she took for every one of her eight semesters – and my son was interested in taking tech ed and computer science electives, regardless of whether or not they were weighted. These things were more important to them than minute differences in rank, and I think that’s as it should be.</p>
<p>Given that the system has degenerated to the point where kids who are candidates for valedictorian cannot maintain that status without giving up the opportunity to take courses in subjects that truly interest them, I think that the school that did not have a valedictorian had the right idea.</p>
<p>I attended a HS which did not name a val,sal or top ten. Everyone was able to find out their class rank and everyone told, so we all knew who they were anyway. And the competition was fierce. I thought then (and now) that it was wrong for these students not to be formally honored by the school. BTW the school changed it’s policy a few years after I graduated because people wanted these students honored.</p>
<p>D’s class names a val/sal and top ten. Graduation is another 10 days away, D’s rank will be somewhere between #3 & # 10. She will be introduced at graduation and allowed to stand and that is it. Not much for 4 years of hard work. As for classes taken, in her school most people take honors classes anyway and the top students tend to take a lot of AP’s (which are weighted). In fact the GPA’s obtained by the top ten are always numbers impossible to achieve without taking (and doing well in) a number of AP classes.</p>
<p>The idea of “voting” for the val/sal reduces an academic honor to a contest of popularity and perception. D’s class has a few students who are not even in the top 10% who already get most of the class awards and so I could see exactly where this would lead.</p>
<p>And then there is the issue of it all being relative…</p>
<p>A val, sal and top 10 in a class of 100 is quite a bit different than being the val, sal, and top 10 in a class of 200 or 500 or 1000, isn’t it? Perhaps it should be the top (some) percentage instead of the top 10, at least.</p>
<p>I think the recognition (if there is to be any) should be spread around a little more.
In many cases, the gpa’s of these students are ony separated by hundreths of points.
What about the #3 kid, the #9 kid or the #11 kid who were also top students deserving of recognition for their accomplishments? At our school’s graduation, the Val and Sal make a speech but the other top students get no mention, not even an asterick by their name in the program or special cord to wear with cap and gown. </p>
<p>I thought it nice at S1’s recent grad. from a big state u. that they had the honor grads stand and gave them a round of applause before the speeches started.</p>
<p>I’m very happy with the system our school has. They name summa cum laude, magna cum laude and cum laude based on weighted grade point averages. I think this is fair. The number of students named summa cum laude + magna cum laude would have constituted the top 10% had enrollment remained at freshman levels. We saw a drop of about 75 students from 7th semester to graduation, so some kids (8? about 1.7%) would have been hurt by this fact had the school used the top 10% rather than grades to determine summa cum laude, magna cum laude and cum laude.
They post photos of the summa cum laude students (about the top 5%) in the foyer, and do not name sal and val.
Student speakers at graduation are chosen after an audition. They ended up being top students anyway (the very top? I don’t know).
Our school does rank, weighted and unweighted, on every semester report card, so you know where you stand. But the info isn’t public. Having followed these rank numbers for 8 semesters now, the numerical difference between weighted and unweighted rank for my kid was about 10 places. To me, this means that about 10 kids benefited from good grades in non-honors classes. But they used weighted grades for the final honors designations.
I’m happy with this system because top kids aren’t hurt by dropouts, and the incentive to do well in classes exists. If the top 20% of kids earned grades > the summa cutoff, they’ll be named.</p>
<p>My son’s school does not weight GPA’s, so every student who maintains a 4.0 is a val and speaks at graduation. He was one of 18 vals in a class of about 350 or 400. I find this a bit odd, but am not complaining, because if there had been only one val, it wouldn’t have been him. Another thing that’s odd is that all 18 are ranked #1, and I don’t think there’s any way for colleges to know that there were 17 other #1 students at his school. They probably assume he’s the only one, and I have yet to see an application that has any provision for him to explain otherwise. I think the summa cum laude system, combined with auditions for speaker, would be a good way to go. With that said, I wouldn’t have wanted the system different this year, for his sake! :)</p>
<p>I’m not sure how I feel about this. I just graduated and was salutatorian (and was not val because my 2 AP latin classes weren’t weighted [teacher wasn’t accredited, or some such nonsense] and I took orchestra for 3 years - you can “only” get a 100 in orchestra.)… I do feel that this sort of ranking system DEFINITELY was incentive for me to try to excel in my classes, and though it tempted me to drop orchestra in favor of another AP class, I feel like my own interests take precedent over a silly title.</p>
<p>D’s class of about 380 included: 119 GPA 4.0 or better, 61 full IB Diplomas, 12 National Merit finalists and 1 National Merit winner. There were also multiple NHS’s, Calif Scholastic Federation Members, IB Associates, IS Diplomas/Associates, national contest winners, and national scholarships. The program looked like someone had sprinkled pepper on it, with all the asterisks, diamonds and circles. How are you supposed to choose just one outstanding student from that pool and elevate him/her above the rest?<br>
The school (wisely IMO) does not do val/sal. Everyone got their moment in the sun: The 4.0’s stood in place for recognition. The IBs and ISs had regalia. The NMF’s/NMW received medals on stage. The 3 student addresses (and that’s how they were designated in the program) were humorous and short. Best commencement I ever attended.</p>
<p>My daughter is the salutatorian out of a class of 120, who cares? Colleges don’t care, businesses don’t care. The only two things she had to do as salutatorian was attend a dinner with the principal, superintendent, school board president, and valedictorian which she would have preferred not to attend and she gets to make a speech at graduation which everyone is very happy about since she’s a great public speaker.</p>
<p>She did not make being the top 2 of her graduating class a goal of hers, she did not choose her classes based on what grades she could get in them or what colleges would think. She spent four years in high school taking classes that interested or amused her. </p>
<p>We live in a very non-competitive town, not that our kids don’t do well, they do, we just do it quietly. Most families have known each other since their kids were born or 2 years old so everyone is happy for everyone. If you keep things in perspective these designations are fairly insignificant in life. If you enjoy the successes of others life will be much better. Have fun!</p>
<p>I like the “cum laude” approach. My D’s private school didn’t weight for honors or AP and didn’t rank. Out of class of 200, the valedictorian was a girl who didn’t take any honors or AP classes, nor was she national merit eligible. My D and many others took every honors and AP class offered in order to prepare for college (and because the better teachers were in those programs) not because of any designation at graduation. My D is very humble and not normally at all competitive in that way but it really bothered her (and me) that the valedictorian had not gone through classes of the same rigor that the honors kids did. There were 6 national merit finalists in that group of honors kids who weren’t valedictorian. To watch those honors kids work so hard and see someone not of the same academic caliber standing as valedictorian was unfair in my mind.</p>
<p>IMO her school, and others I’m sure, bow to the political parental pressures to spread the wealth so to speak of the honors and awards, I’m sure at least in part because private school parents pay good money for their kids to attend. Part of the let’s give everybody on the team a trophy mentality.</p>
<p>I like the “cum laude” approach. My D’s private school didn’t weight for honors or AP and didn’t rank. Out of class of 200, the valedictorian was a girl who didn’t take any honors or AP classes, nor was she national merit eligible. My D and many others took every honors and AP class offered in order to prepare for college (and because the better teachers were in those programs) not because of any designation at graduation. My D is very humble and not normally at all competitive in that way but it really bothered her (and me) that the valedictorian had not gone through classes of the same rigor that the honors kids did. There were 6 national merit finalists in that group of honors kids who weren’t valedictorian. To watch those honors kids work so hard and see someone not of the same academic caliber standing as valedictorian was unfair in my mind.</p>
<p>IMO her school, and others I’m sure, bow to the political parental pressures to spread the wealth so to speak of the honors and awards, I’m sure at least in part because private school parents pay good money for their kids to attend. Part of the let’s give everybody on the team a trophy mentality.</p>