21 Valedictorians

[Racket_Man]

in ONE high school class.

HUH???????

http://vitals.nbcnews.com/_news/2013...-many#comments

and this is NOT the only school where this has occured.

College admissions boards are VERY worried at this point

Now I understand that schools today have different diploma tracks from when I was in HS 35 years ago (HOLY shit has it been that long??). There are advance placement, different combos of classes, etc. combined with commuinity service, sports, extracuricualr activities but WTF????

In my day the #1 and #2 spots were the persons who 1) had the highest GPA (out of 5 since we had honors/advance classes with a grade above A) 2) a range of community service,extra-ciricular activities, etc. and 3) a non binding vote of the persons teachers.

My GF at the time was #2 by only .01 point of GPA.

Is this grade inflation, helicopter parents complaining that little Suzzie should get a A instead of a C, etc. or are there circumstances where there is 21 or 38 or 17 #1s in a HS class.

[Kheldarson]

You missed the real reason: noncompetitive culture.

My graduating class in high school had a top ten. They never announced the valedictorian. Never mind we all knew the class order.

Why?

Because it fostered a sense of competition that the powers that be declared to be unhealthy. Never mind grades do that on their own. So we had 10 valedictorians. Kinda.

It's kinda stupid.

[HYHYBT]

We only had one, and who it was wasn't in doubt even though the last day of final exams was also graduation day. I'd never thought about that up to now, really, but either it wasn't close or grades weren't the deciding factor. I'm leaning towards the former.

[fireheart17]

Is this grade inflation, helicopter parents complaining that little Suzzie should get a A instead of a C, etc. or are there circumstances where there is 21 or 38 or 17 #1s in a HS class.

It wouldn't surprise me if the first two were the case. We can blame formal testing being used in a league table sense for this. (By this I mean that we seem to be using formal tests (such as the NAPLAN over here), to score and rank each other, instead of using it simply to assess an individual's growth or as a screening tool for intervention programs)

You missed the real reason: noncompetitive culture.

Mmm...so many people have used this in their argument for why we should keep formal testing such as the NAPLAN and other standardised tests. Their other argument is "we all get tested throughout our lives."

My response to that is usually "Apart from a driving test or medical testing, when exactly do we do formal standardised tests in our day-to-day life?"

[Cats]

My senior year the top 30 or so people in the class were constantly checking their class rank (I was not one of them, finishing about the top 30%, mostly due to laziness. I stopped caring). It was mostly healthy competition though, even if they appeared to become obsessed from time to time.

There was minor injustice with Valedictorian in my class. It was weighted on both GPA and class difficulty, with one problem: Honors classes were weighted the same as Advanced Placement. The girl who ended up being Valedictorian has SLIGHTY better grades than the #2, but only 1 Ap class, while #2 had like 4.

[Jetfire]

My class, I was technically the Valedictorian, but I declined it and let the second place take it (our grades were virtually identical as were our activities). I just had no interest in doing a speech (still don't to be honest) and I've got no real patience for pomp and circumstance.

My university choices were locked in by then in any case, so being Valedictorian or not made no difference (and I don't think it makes a difference here, or if it does, I never paid it any attention)

[Greenday]

I graduated 68th in my class out of 180. I had a 3.79 GPA. There definitely weren't 67 kids smarter than me. Grade inflation is a huge problem these days. And there were teachers at my high school who admitted they'd give kids good grades so they wouldn't have to deal with parents or wouldn't have to deal with the kid retaking their class.

[Rapscallion]

Funny how GCSE and A level (UK exams) results get better every year over here. Several academics have come out and said the exams are easier every year, and the finger of blame is pointed at politicians who don't want to preside over falling exam results.

I don't know the truth of that, but I do know that many employers aren't taking good exam results at face value and it's one of the reasons they're now expecting degrees where such were no longer required in the past.

Rapscallion

[SongsOfDragons]

Raps - they're starting to turn to Masters in the places I'm looking. Seems a degree is only good for a part-time minimum wage data-entry post, but only if you have two years' experience to back it up.

[bara]

I was seeing this when I was going to school back in the mid 90s. Teachers would grade on a 'curve'. For instance the highest paper would have been 87%, so the teacher would then turn that 87% into a 100% and raise everyone's grade accordingly. I threw them a curve ball myself though, as I would not only get all the problems correct but would then also do the extra credit problem correct. So if she made my paper the new 100% then it would lower the grades of everyone else. To correct this she would go off the 2nd highest paper in the class. Result, I would score 150% on tests.

As this was a math class, scoring 150% out of a possible 100% seemed really odd to me. It also made me dislike school. That was my sophomore year.

In my freshman year I was in an advanced placement class. A very nice young lady supposedly had the highest grades at the end of the class. We were both confused by this since I always scored higher than her (well, except the ones we both maxed out which were most) on all the assignments and she often came to me for help when she had trouble because I was better at explaining things than the teacher. Actually, I think I ended up doing more teaching than the teacher. Should have gotten credit for that I think.

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[Tanasi]

With me there was never a danger of me getting any kind of academic honor. A cousin and mutual friend were slated to be valedictorians of our class but at the last minute another student came out of nowhere and took that honor. She had transfered from another county school and had taken required classes, lots of PE, band, home-ec and office admin help. Even then she only got it by a few hundredths. My cousin and friend had taken all the hard academic classes but was beat out in the end. She got the full ride and my cousin and friend got the hand-shake. She got her MRS degree in her second year and let the rest go to waste.
My academic attitude changed in December of that year because that's when I had been drafted into the US Army but I was deferred until I graduated. With Viet Nam going on I expected to be send there and be killed. I was sent there and was nearly killed but I got better.

Now my youngest daughter was 1 of 5 valedictorians in her class. We all had to sit through their speeches. The headmaster introduced them as his 5 geniuses, my daughter cleared her throat and handed him a business card an stepped back, he then said "OK 4 geniuses and 1 super-genius (When she was skipped from 6th grade to 9th I had some "Wiley Coyote-esque" cards made that said super-genius.) Everyone laughed and then we had a butt-numbing experience. Basically the Headmaster decided everyone with a GPA over 4.5 was a val. I for one was more than ready to get the heck out of there, I had locks to change.

[Gravekeeper]

"Competitive Culture", ugh.

There's nothing wrong with a competitive culture ( within reason of course ). The WORLD is a competitive culture. These kids are in for a hell of a wake up call when they leave this insulated bubble being built around them. You don't learn how to deal with a situation unless you're exposed to it in order to figure it out.

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

As someone else pointed out, this should not affect college admissions in the slightest. Most people have their college locked in before they have their class rank locked in. At best, the Ivy-League can make guesses on the top 10 and test scores, but it's still a guess.

The school I went to was competitive and did have a valedictorian. Junior year which was considered the "hell" year for everyone looked a bit like this for students trying to look appealing to a college admissions officer: Do anything it took to get on the field for some extracurricular starting at 7-8. Class 8-4. Another extracurricular 4-6. Homework 7-2 a.m. Repeat.

It was known the people at the very top had help either through tutors or through the largess of teachers. Just about every person from that school not only graduated but at the bare minimum went to college. The middle of the pack still went to upper tier universities.

That's a long way of saying, if your school's standards are known to be exacting, the rank itself is often an unnecessary trophy. If your school is known to be lax, a #1 class ranking won't save you. Like the SAT/ACT, like letters of reference, and even like grades themselves they tend to tell partial stories. That said, I have a cousin who actually was ranked #1 in her class and got denied the honor because her school did the opposite which is no valedictorian, so I understand why that's infuriating.

[fireheart17]

"Competitive Culture", ugh.

There's nothing wrong with a competitive culture ( within reason of course ). The WORLD is a competitive culture. These kids are in for a hell of a wake up call when they leave this insulated bubble being built around them. You don't learn how to deal with a situation unless you're exposed to it in order to figure it out.

There are plenty of opportunities to be exposed to "Competitions" in a primary school class. Behaviour charts, maths/English/Science competitions (usually done OUTSIDE of the school), PE classes, recess/lunchtime sports, after-school sports (if the kids participate), rewards for the best grade in a class project etc.
A lot of primary school teachers here will play short games and reward the kids at the end, ditto for games in after-school care.

Just because they aren't formal doesn't mean that the kids aren't being exposed to competition. (job interviews tend to be more subjective than objective, although some objective testing can be used)