D’s school had a Val, Sal and a top 10. ( 400 students in the class). D was in the top 5 ( though not Val or sal) and she didn’t game the system and didn’t think anyone else did either. It was nice for these students to be recognized.
FWIW my own HS class did not name a Val or Sal but we all knew who the top ranked kids were. I think they should have gotten some official recognition. And 44 years later I remember exactly who they were. But I’m weird like that 
The entire valedictory process is outdated. Yes, “back in the day” when class sizes were substantially smaller with everyone studying the same curriculum and there truly was one student who stood out above the rest who might be headed off to higher education, it had more relevance. But in this day and time, in classes with 500 or more students taking a wide variety of classes, a vast majority of whom plan to continue their studies, there may not be that one student who stands out, even when taking into account weighted classes. When students are required to game the system to come out on top, the system is broken. Perhaps the colleges in Georgia and Texas need a new way to calculate who gets admitted - a points system that takes into account classes, grades, test scores, extracurriculars, part-time jobs, family income, etc. - to level the playing field.
In summation, should schools have one valedictorian or several? One. Because, regardless of size, someone will end up on top, even if it’s by one-one hundredth of a point (as happened at DD’s school last year).
But should schools do away with the whole insane process? Yes. Because the person who achieved a GPA one one-hundredth over the next person out of 800 students didn’t really achieve anything substantial if they took an extra study hall over an art class to get there.
Really should be:
If you meet the top 9% benchmark GPA for your high school in CA, you get ELC which means that if you get shut out of UCs that you apply to, UC Merced will offer admission if it has space.
Note that GPA in all cases is the UC-recalculated one, and the benchmark GPA is set by a recent previous class, so there should be no incentive to do cutthroat rank-grubbing (unlike in Texas), although there can still be some GPA-grubbing choices that can be counterproductive in other ways (such as taking an extra academic elective instead of an empty period, which may lower the recalculated GPA in some cases even with an A grade).
I’m in the camp that a weighted GPA-based Valedictorian title has outlived its usefulness. It’a unhealthy to have students choose their classes to maximize their weighted GPA, just as it’s unhealthy to have colleges game their rankings. Why not just name the top-10 or top-20 students, depending on the size of a school’s graduating class?
We have no val and no sal, and that’s the way I like it. It’s a big school and kids were getting pushed up or down the ranks based on hundredths, even thousandths of a point. That kind of cutthroat competition came at the expense of the greater and more valuable life-long character values such as helping, sharing, encouraging, and cooperating.
If you want to give a speech at graduation, you either win election for senior class president or you enter and win a voluntary speech contest judged by the faculty.
The question was what we think about the particular HS’s policy of naming all students with 4.0, regardless of weight/rigor, as co-valedictorians. I think this is just wrong. If a school wants to keep the “Val” system, there is an objective way to determine the top kid. Including other kids, even those who took all easy classes, is the giving eveyone a trophy mentality. Whether it’s good to incentivize kids to load up on APs is a different issue entirely.
But school isn’t like that. One kid takes AP Chem with the teacher who gives out A’s like candy and the other one with the great teacher, but who rarely gives As. One kid chooses to take Orchestra (unweighted) on top of a full schedule while the other doesn’t, so their GPA goes down even though all their academic courses have the same GPA. If everyone took exactly the same schedule with exactly the same teachers, it might be fair, but that’s not the way it works.
A million years ago I went to a school that didn’t rank. We elected our graduation speaker. I never had any idea who may or may not have gotten better grades than me and that was fine and healthy. I worked hard because I liked the work and I wanted to get into a good college.
I still have the running medal I got for being first in my age class. I was in my 20s and all the other racers were in high school or their Moms. I was not only first, I was the only one in my age class and I was one of the slowest runners there. It makes me laugh every time I run across it.
THE ELC TOP 9% is really just a bunch of bologna! That means that you are guaranteed to one campus in the UC system. And, it is not the campus you choose! It ends up being UC Merced. I believe - whether a game or not - there should be one Val and one Sal. For college, it does NOT matter as it is after applications submitted and kids committed. The fact is it is all about academics, and that may matter to some and not to all. My child’s high school has a cut off and anyone above that is a Valedictorian. I say - stupid! NOTHING special.
“The real world doesn’t say, “we’ll promote the top x% to the next level”. They actually make choices and A person gets that great promotion.”
Actually that happens a lot, the top X%, depending on the rating system the company uses will get promoted, that’s how you reward the best employees and keep a high performing culture. If only one person got promoted every review cycle, a whole lot of people are leaving the company or you get a cut-throat atmosphere. And there a lot of promotions that happen regardless of performance but that’s a different issue altogether. You can create promotions. I see your point for making partner/director at a law or consulting firm or tenure at a college.
“THE ELC TOP 9% is really just a bunch of bologna! That means that you are guaranteed to one campus in the UC system. And, it is not the campus you choose! It ends up being UC Merced.”
There are a lot of people in California that would be happy with Merced, they’re the ones ELC is trying to address, the ones that don’t think too much about 4-year colleges, that’s one of the ideas behind ELC.
Imho, there shouldn’t be a valedictorian as the way things are set up in most schools, top GPA gamer (with parents who know the system well) ends up being #1 with a hair line margin.
I liked the way my school did it: 1 Val, 1-2 Sal (2 if very close in GPA, like .1-.2 difference max), and depending on the year other students can speak at graduation but don’t get a title. Because my school was a small private school, usually graduation processions included the Val speaking, both Sal speaking if there are 2, and usually faculty giving nice messages and advice. My year was a particularly tough year, so we had 6 student speakers (including Val and 2 Sals), and no faculty speakers. It was sort of a sign of respect that in a bad year (in terms of high quality students), each one up there could be a Val or Sal, so they give them a speaking spot. But, thats only if they earned it, as usually the non-Val/Sal students either fall into the categories (and I quote because this is roughly the real language the school described in their handbook) of “A distinguished student in the school who as contributed to the school in ways above and beyond the average student” or “A student who’s journey is very notable and inspiring and the class would benefit from hearing at graduation”. But, each category is more of a rough approximation/not really that important, as I was the first category despite only speaking at open houses for the school. More of an explanation if another parent was mad their child did not get a speaking spot despite not being a Val or Sal
speaking of trophies/medals and their importance, my kiddos can care less about them; they were mostly easily gained, and there are so many of them for participation etc. Their favorite awards are the superlatives given out at group banquets; like the “Steal Yo Girl” award or the “Most likely to bring a chicken” award – special meanings to them.
(They make fun of me; i have one super small trophy i ever won from growing up; a Sal trophy. There were 2 of us. We did not have a Val that year as no one had a high enough GPA to be named Val at my very small private HS. My DH has one small trophy from golf, and a trophy from dog obedience school which is a joke as our dog bit the mailman and we got sued over him. Enjoying these memories this morning, Carry on!)
@mathmom Well society is definitely going the way you describe. Life is not fair so let’s not compete. ( Tell kids that they didn’t get the award because someone else scammed the system or actually did the more difficult work. LOL) I’d tell my kid it really doesn’t matter if one teacher is more difficult then the others you still have to get in there.
There are certainly some kids ( even in college) who shop classes to get the easy teachers. I wasn’t one of them. Personally, those who cut corner usually get where they are going. It takes a lot of effort to indulge in excellence. I use the word indulge because it’s rare and unusual to see these days. But I have seen that some kids (and often many kids in the same family) believe in excellence and pursue it. It’s rare. But the kids go far. And I am not talking about kids who are seeking out perfection. I’m talking about kids who plan to win and do. Setting ones sights on goals and meeting them is an excellent endeavor in my opinion. These kids are also often very good losers (which is even more important). IF you compete a lot, you learn to lose and to admire those who won. But I am in the minority for sure these days.
DS went to an accelerated charter middle school in a neighboring city and received 9 high school credits which enabled him to take 3 APs freshman year. His GPA is way ahead of everyone else, in a class of 530, as very few freshmen can even take one AP at his HS.
He made a B in AP Comp Sci A as he decided to not turn in his final project as it was not interesting and he thought he could still get an A, but even with the B he still has the highest GPA by a mile. I can certainly see how some other kids/parents would think it is not fair that his rank is so high.
The school has supposedly moved to a Latin Honors system but still show the class rank on the Transcript which is strange.
@Happytimes2001 However, the point of competition IS to win. An Olympic swimmer trains his entire life for the sole purpose of obtaining a gold medal. He may come in second - or tenth - but the purpose of his training is to win. And, his competitors are all playing by the same rules. Yes, personal experiences are unequal, but the rules of the competition are the same. It’s why one competitor is not allowed to “cheat” by using steroids or a LZR suit, for example. If we’re going to make valedictorian a “competition,” then every student must be playing by the same rules. That means changing how GPAs are calculated so that a person taking a study hall over a non-weighted elective art class isn’t given an unfair advantage. So, is the point of education to “win” or is the point of education to actually learn something?
“I’m talking about kids who plan to win and do. Setting ones sights on goals and meeting them is an excellent endeavor in my opinion.”
A lot of these kids do what you rail against, cheat or cut corners to reach their goal of valedictorian or 4.0. They prioritize the ends over the means (learning). Not all do this and given these are high schoolers, we shouldn’t be too judgemental.
As sad as it is, there have been multiple lawsuits over the val and sal positions in schools across the country. Obviously when a school has to spend its scarce resources on attorneys in order to defend itself, that comes at the expense of the rest of the student body. In order to preserve those resources and be good stewards, school districts must either eliminate the titles or offer it to multiple vals and sals, no matter how silly and redundant that seems.
Personally, as I said in my previous post, I’m glad our school district chose to eliminate them a few years before DD matriculated.
My kids’ HS had one val and one sal. Yes, we live in Texas, and that val got some money to attend an in state public school. Classes were weighted, with APs worth more points. The top ten in the class received special recognition at graduation and the top 5% did at another award ceremony. (Six hundred and fifty kids per class) There were some kids who gamed the system to be sure and some kids who cared too much about rank and so did not take part in activities they enjoyed. (Says the mom whose kid was sal because he played a sport and an instrument and so missed out on two potential AP classes every year.) No, the system wasn’t perfect, but the rules were clear and smart kids got some attention.
My old HS, 350 kids per class, had the same system with one difference: more extracurriculars were done outside of class, not during class time. Some athletes and musicians had a class period devoted to their EC, but student government, the school play and musical, and clubs were done before or after school. I recall that some try out sports, like basketball or dance team, were before or after school. Football had no cuts and its own class period. (Priorities!)