Should high schools have only one Valedictorian?

Well it seems like some schools have a lot of in class activities that count for/against class rank. Kids who are tippets top usually know that they want to pursue the goal of V/S early on. While some will certainly pursue the name, others will determine they want more balance and do the EC’s they like.

@tutumom2001 The point of education is to get an education. That looks different for different people. For some, it’s struggling academically for 13 years. For others it’s sailing through. For high schoolers, it means deciding what to emphasize. In many cases, kids have to decide to study or do something social/EC. It’s hard.

Sports are not just about winning. The kid who wins the medal at the Olympics isn’t there just for the gold. Ask them. They are there to beat their own record or someone else’s. They are there because they had a bad injury and want to come back. They are there for 10,000 reasons only one of which is winning. It’s not coming in first place that makes someone a winner. It’s putting in your all and letting it ride. It’s beating your personal best and then trying even harder. The V/S isn’t about winning either. It’s about recognizing that someone put it all out there and was determined to have the highest grades. The first among many. It doesn’t put down the kid who came in last. It just recognizes the one who came in first.

I wouldn’t want my kid to pursue val/sal titles as a goal. I’d instead encourage him to pursue his interests, and more importantly, challenge himself to the maximum extent possible. The two objectives are generally incompatible.

Idealistically, yes.

But lots of people go to college more for credentialing or stepping stone reasons, not because of an inherent desire for learning (beyond what is needed for credentialing or stepping stone reasons). And even those who have a more idealistic view of getting an education may not feel that it is worth the high cost to attend college if it were not for the payoff that comes with having the higher-value the credential at the end.

At the high school level, sometimes the competition for valedictorian (especially if there is scholarship money or something else unusually desirable attached to it) can compromise getting a better education if the ranking system has the wrong incentives (e.g. choosing an empty period instead of an extra non-weighted elective).

My oldest didn’t want to be val or sal because he would have had to give a speech. He was doomed from Freshman year not to make it as both honors physics and AP Physics met at the same time as Latin. He ended up taking regular physics which brought down his weighted GPA. He’s doing fine despite not graduating in the top two of his class.

There are plenty of ways kids can compete - academic teams, science olympiads, sports, chess tournaments. I don’t see why grades needs to be one of them.

Our HS has changed from using only gpa which always ended up with 20 or so vals, to having to have a minimum of a 33 ACT or 1500 SAT , 40 hours of community service and a certain minimum hours of honors classes . I get that it cuts down on having a bunch of vals, but I don’t necessarily agree that a student’s ACT score is anyone else’s business.

Ideally, you design the competition so that the strategies that increase your chances of winning also enhance your education. But maybe that’s impossible.

I was a valedictorian, but even then the system was questionable (although I didn’t attempt to game it). PE didn’t count. I barely passed PE – and even that was only out of pity on the part of the teachers. If the system had been rigged differently, someone else would have been valedictorian – and would probably have deserved it more than I did.

I was also a Val way back when. PE was pass/fail, I took all honors classes, though none were weighted. My best friend took the easy track, but both of us were the Vals. I came out ahead in college, because she was not prepared for the rigor she encountered and had to work much harder than she anticipated, while freshman year in college for me was more an extension of HS.

She later told me she “blamed” her parents for not forcing her to take the honors track (for which she was well qualified), and then having to struggle in college. She was their baby and they let her do what she wanted.

I graduated #3 back in the day. We were all between 97 to 98 out of 100 average. No weighting. The competition made the 3 of us much better students and had us all rise to the competition. We were better prepared for the rigor of college.

My DS19’s school does it a little bit differently–in order to be a valedictorian a student needs:

  • an unweighted 4.0
  • a weighted 4.25 or higher
  • a total of 8 or more AP classes
  • 3 or more AP classes senior year
  • take the following AP classes and tests: AP Lit, AP Calc BC, AP world language (Spanish, French, German, or Chinese), AP science (only Bio, Chem, or Physics C count), and AP social studies (only APUSH, Comp Gov, and Euro count)

This system ends up with 10ish “valedictorians” per year in a class of 700, and prevents gaming the system. It also lets kids take non-weighted classes like art or music or tech without penalizing them.

I like the system as a general recognition, but it makes it weird when trying to explain. My DS didn’t put it on any of his applications because he thought it was inconsistent having his transcript show him ranked 8th out of 698 but being “valedictorian”.

Colorado has a wonderful post about how her youngster’s school determines a Val. The last paragraph demonstrates the point I spoke of pages ago. Finishing 8th but being called a Val(and it wasn’t a tie) seems inconsistent.
That is exactly why I feel the title Val should only be given to the #1, and a nice but different name given to some other top finishers.

Last night at dinner with a friend, I relayed this conversation. Her kids’ school (a medium-sized private) has a system somewhat like #108 but not quite as complex. Essentially, only the weighted GPA comprising the required core classes counts for rankings (not just val): math, English, science, social studies and foreign language.

It’s a system that only made sense when there was actually one person with the gpa for valedictorian. These days they should just do the college thing… cume laude, suma, magna.

My kids high schools chose speeches by audition. Write a good peice (that fits their criteria,) perform it well, anyone has a chance to give the graduation speech/es.

@ucbalumnus Yes, that’s one of the reasons we chose a different path for our kids. The local high school was excellent academically but many fell into the trap this thread discusses in detail. (Gaming the system, taking excessive numbers of APs, forgoing interests in order to do 7 hours of homework, etc.) We heard talk about GPA in a specific course even before the year began. Why?

We have always supported exploring your own path and learning in depth. That really isn’t something that you find in many schools theses days. Even college has become a preparation for work and grad school, rather than a time to explore various subjects. I understand why ( given the high cost of education) but it’s still sad. There isn’t that much time for kids to love learning and be able to explore subjects. I think very few kids are getting a great education these days.

@Happytimes2001 Your philosophy sounds a lot like mine. Out of curiosity, did you find a private school for you kids that emphasized those things? Or home school?

The sports metaphors fail here. How do you have a winner when the race is run on so many different tracks?

Schools aren’t eliminating Val and rankings because of some touchy-feely “participation medal” philosophy. They eliminate them because they encourage bad behavior and make a worse school experience.

Ours is one of the schools mentioned above where many kids quit band to take weighted classes they aren’t really interested in. Is that a good result? No, the electives are overcrowded and the band suffers, and the kid probably has less fun and stops playing the instrument. Should that be encouraged?

Ours now mentions 15 or so kids at graduation, no speech, that they choose (I assume) holistically based on grades and rigor. 15 out of 450. They must do a good job because I heard not one complaint about it last year. There’s also an award ceremony a few weeks before where individual academic accomplishments are mentioned and many more kids get something deserved. It’s a good system and (almost) everyone is happy. The idea that dropping a vestigial practice is somehow lessening our schools is reactionary and naive.

Some of the issues being raised with having a valedictorian are definitely relevant and should not be encouraged. I definitely hear about students who argue over every single possible point in every class (My wife is a high school chemistry teacher). But my kids high school is not seeing the mass dropping of unweighted electives (8 of the top 10 in my daughter’s class were in band/orchestra/chorus all 4 years) including the top 3 in my daughter’s class so I am kind of surprised at the level that it is being talked about in this thread. All classes but AP classes are unweighted in our district so that probably helps (too hard from a volume of work perspective at our school to take 6 APs so people are not running away from classes in the arts and it also gives students a homework break). If kids tried to take only regular classes and not take honors classes (which are both unweighted) they may get off to a small early lead, but they end up struggling when they try to step up to AP classes or will still get passed by the students with AP classes if they don’t take AP classes. We have had no controversy with having 1 val or sal since my kids have been at their high school. What I see most are some kids trying to avoid certain teachers due to being harder than others, or not getting great AP exam results. I don’t see anything wrong with the system in our district (13th biggest school district in the US), but some of the scenarios mentioned in this thread would make me not want a valedictorian too.

Ding, ding. Our district does something similar, only its a ~Top 10; sometimes top 12 with ties. But no announcements. They just hand out a gold braid during graduation gown pickup and the student can choose to wear it or not. (some students don’t.)

One day in high school, I just happened to ask my son who did he have lunch with that day. Once in awhile I’d ask him so as to “gauge” his high school social life. All of his closest friends were top students, about half dozen, whom he had known since elementary school years, and he’s always hung around with them. But, to my surprise, his response to my inquiry was that he actively seeks to avoid his usual friends during lunch and recess times with a disgusted tone in his voice. When I asked him for the reason, he said that all they ever talk about were grades, grades, grades AND grades. He said he just got fed up with the environment and he desperately sought respite from all this madness. He said no one cares about learning anything in high school. It was all about playing the game to get that Val or Sal status and entrances to the top colleges.

Imagine that. Going through 4 years in high school with never the emphasis on learning but playing the scoring game. What a waste. Something to think about. Here’s one parent who specifically encouraged the child NOT to go after the Val or Sal game. My son liked that! Apparently, he took that to heart and graduated 6/350 in his class, lol.

@TiggerDad Wow, when I read that I am glad we didn’t go the huge public school. I could tell kids were more interested in grades than learning based on rumor. But reading this thread has given me insight into the inner workings of the system and I don’t think I like it. Have no experience with such large school systems as most seem to attend but I can see the relative merit of the various awards ( or not). Sounds like you did the right thing re: Tiggerson.

@gallentjill Well it was a hard and difficult decision but we went private. Costs a fortune but utterly worth it. They spend a lot of time building the foundation. It’s pretty old school in that they make the kids work hard and don’t accept mediocre work. They accept about 10-20% of applicants from a pretty competitive pool of candidates and most kids do many things. The peers are balanced compared to our GPA seeking highly ranked public school, though many are still accomplished. The downside is, it’s a bubble. Public in our area was as well. We went with a highly ranked high school but not the highest ranked (though kiddo was accepted there too). My kiddo thought the highest ranked one would be a grind. Was worried this one wouldn’t be hard enough ( it is). I have met some parents who sent their kids to this school due to balance.
I never thought of home schooling due to social interaction. Plus, teaching isn’t my strong suit.

At our school, the graduating class is over 600. There is one valedictorian. It’s a combination of GPA, extra curricular activities, and service. Having multiple valedictorian/salutatorian just adds to the silly entitlement mentality that seems to prevail these days.