"… The ranking of students from No. 1 on down, based on grade-point averages, has been fading steadily for about the past decade. In its place are honors that recognize everyone who scores at a certain threshold — using Latin honors, for example. This year, one school in Tennessee had 48 valedictorians.
About half of schools no longer report class rank, according to the National Association of Secondary School Principals. Administrators worry about the college prospects of students separated by large differences in class rank despite small differences in their GPAs, and view rankings as obsolete in an era of high expectations for every student, association spokesman Bob Farrace said. There are also concerns about intense, potentially unhealthy competition and students letting worries about rank drive their course selections." …
I support schools having class rank. Schools these days think everyone should get a reward. My school doesn’t have class rank but it would be nice if they did. Nothing wrong with competition between students.
Our school ranks the top 30 kids. Top 10 are announced (but not in rank order). 1-30 are noted on transcripts in exact rank order. Neither Val or Sal is announced. There are 4 senior awards that are unofficially given to the top 4 kids in order but again no official statements are made to that effect.
Within the next 5 years, I would not be surprised if the school does away with ranks totally. Seems to be the trend. At two award ceremonies where top 10 seniors were announced, principal prefaced the announcement with a statement that it was very close, there were a lot of kids who could have easily made it, who were fractions of a GPA point out, etc. Seemed to me to be a slight to the kids who were in the top 10.
What was ironic was that at the same award ceremonies, awards were announced for state and national competitions and school competitions (in each case both academic and athletics). In each of those, the results were close, a lot of kids who could have easily made it, were fractions of a second or a point or two out, etc. from a state/national title/school. But nothing was noted about any of that.
Its the nature of competitions. Someone will just miss out.
Picked up our paper today and read about the graduation ceremony at a local public high school. The first line said, “Of the 603 who graduated from (this high school’s) Class of 2017, about 120 were valedictorians, holding a grade-point average of 4.0 or better.” Could this definition of “valedictorian” be any more absurd? But how nice that 20% of the that class can run around claiming that “honor.” There were two top kids (called “Scholar of Scholars”) with a perfect 4.8 GPA.
Our school uses an honors system. I’m actually quite glad our school doesn’t use a class rank system, mainly because it’s very competitive with the top 25% of students and the difference in GPA’s is negligible.
I’m pretty sure it’s a Latin Honors system, but here it is:
Cum Laude
3.80 – 3.99
None (AP Courses)
Magna Cum Laude
4.0 – 4.14
Two or more Advanced Placement courses
Summa Cum Laude
4.15 and higher
Four or more Advanced Placement courses
**All students achieving Summa Cum Laude recognition will be considered to have valedictorian status.
I think class rank, as it’s most commonly implemented, fosters unhealthy levels of competition and a tendency to game the system and/or make choices based on the effect on class rank vs. the long term greater good of the student’s overall education.