To be or not to be val or sal

Parent Cafe
1

<p>High school principals, and ad coms, really have seen it all - so wouldn't it be better to get rid of the designation altogether?</p>

<p>
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In Palm Beach County, the race to be No. 1 has become an ugly preoccupation more and more principals think their schools can do without.</p>

<p>Starting as soon as next year, the school district may abandon the long-standing practice of naming valedictorians and salutatorians. Instead, Superintendent Art Johnson plans to take to the school board for approval a system many colleges use: summa cum laude, magna cum laude and cum laude.</p>

<p>"The competition for these spots among our top students has reached a fever pitch," Johnson said.</p>

<p>Details of how the cum laude system would work here haven't been ironed out. But some districts award a certain percentage of students each title.</p>

<p>It's not the just nastiness. The competition is distracting students from taking courses that might help them determine the direction of their careers or make them more appealing to college admission officers.</p>

<p>Advanced placement and dual enrollment courses - college level courses - as well as honors courses are worth more than a general high school course. So, students routinely skip chorus or other electives because they are not weighted and would drag down their average.</p>

<p>But being valedictorian is no guarantee of getting into a top college.</p>

<p>The University of Pennsylvania admitted only 38 percent of its valedictorian applicants to the 2006 fall freshman class. And Yale University doesn't even track the number. Admissions officers there say the No. 1 ranking tells them nothing about whether a student belongs at their schools...</p>

<p>To stop students from shopping for a school where they could be No. 1, the district now requires students to attend a high school for three years to qualify to be first or second in class. Still, ambitious students - and their parents - have their ways.</p>

<p>Students whose families can afford it can attend a three-week summer institute at Cornell University and earn the equivalent points of taking two advanced placement classes. Florida Virtual School offers numerous AP courses online, which students say require less heavy lifting than the same course at a county high school.</p>

<p>Someone challenges the student named valedictorian every year, principals say. When a principal can't satisfy that parent or student, those challenges make it up the chain of command.</p>

<p>Cheryl Alligood, a former assistant superintendent, said she dealt with one or two emotional meetings a year. Parents bring in paperwork with their own calculations or appeal to have a course that was not approved recognized.</p>

<p>Sometimes, they bring a lawyer...

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<p><a href="http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/local_news/epaper/2007/03/18/s1c_val_0318.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/local_news/epaper/2007/03/18/s1c_val_0318.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

2

<p>Academic competition rears it rather disfigured head...</p>

3

<p>They should spend that energy doing something important rather than trying to be the biggest fish in one of tens of thousands of itty-bitty ponds.</p>

4

<p>Personally, I'd be happy to see a few rank as "val" and then have students/faculty vote on which ones could speak at graduation.</p>

<p>In this county, if a student takes college classes, they do not count towards GPA. Some may chose AP statistics rather than a more advanced math class at a local U, if their goal is to be Val. Latin, for ex., is only taught at the local U.</p>

5

<p>My daughter is valedictorian. She's taken the most rigorous courses possible....not to be #1 but she needed the courseload to get into a major college. Yes, it's unfortunate in ways of weighted grades, her final three semsters she had to be careful of the courses she enrolled to maintain that GPA. But she's proud of her accomplishments and so am I. Some schools do have scholarships for val or sal. She was given a full ride at a small LAC in NC, just for valedictorians. Should they do away with it? Who truly knows? One way or another, we as humans want to know who's winning the rat race. One way around would be to limit to only those courses taken in school.</p>

6

<p>I seriously doubt that the ranking of val/sal is a significant cause of the competition. I'm really glad that most colleges today are taking the "holistic" approach in dealing with admissions, rather than basing everything on scores and grades. What needs to happen now is to get the general public (and the general public's parents-- although I'm mostly preaching to the choir, here) to understand that rankings and scores are not everything. </p>

<p>My school may be a special case, because there is not a lot of academic competition, but most of the top students have been very gracious and <em>human</em> in their competition. (With, of course, a couple of exceptions.) I'm ranked fourth, but I'm on good terms with the val/sal and the girl ranked above me, who actually grabbed the spot away from me between first and second semester. :) In fact, most of the people at the top are not those who were aiming for it in the first place. We joke about it playfully, one girl even going so far as to print up fake campaign posters during student body elections that read, "John is a GPA whore-- Vote for Sally!" Even that was laughed off by the guy it addressed.</p>

<p>Regardless of the level of competition, the val and sal still had to work hard for their titles, and deserve them. However, I do agree with bookworm's idea of voting on a speaker.</p>

<p>[Yeah, I'm a student hanging around the parents' forum. It's saner in here!]</p>

7

<p>I hear you, momray. Still, what if a student takes many of his/her classes at a local U because the school doesn't offer the courses? Did you factor in a college class as an AP, or eliminate it altogether from GPA. If you do the latter, then the student may only have English & an EC like band on HS schedule. Many kids take unchallenging AP classes rather than stretch in college just to maintain that GPA.</p>

<p>In Palm Beach Co, there was a student that took a "frivolous" class at local U, and then appealed to be val. One way around that was to then approve the course, insuring that it was something the HS did not provide. Taking 5 classes a year at the U is permitted and paid for by the school board.</p>

8

<p>I'm a current high school student, and at my school we do not have val/sal. I believe this is primarily because there are always a number of kids with 4.0 UW, and basing it off of minute differences in W GPA (depending on # of APs, honors, university classes, etc.) got ridiculous. Additionally, my school consists of an academic magnet program (IB) within a larger school, and there is a certain degree of resentment between the two groups, which would likely only be exacerbated by having Val, since IB students simply have more weighted classes available to them.</p>

<p>In fact, while our school does rank, it really isn't a big deal at all, and the only time one ever really knows is when they go to apply to colleges (or, I suppose, if you ask, but people don't tend to.) The only other time I have seen any refernce to rank is at graduation, where people were listed as having "honors, high honors, or highest honors"...but even that was just in a little sybol next to the name, along with symbols for any other honor societies (NHS, french or spanish, Mu Alpha Theta, etc) the person was in. It really wasn't a big deal.</p>

<p>For graduation speaking, students have to try out, and are selected on that basis...which I think almost certainly results in better speakers, and more subjectively, possibly results in more representative students.</p>

<p>However, that's just my opinion of my school's particular situation.</p>

9

<p>My high school also does not have val/sal designations (or even rank), and it was only when I was filling out a certain scholarship form that required me to put my rank (and which I could not electronically submit if I didn't) did I go to my counselor, and she looked up my rank in her unofficial compilation of GPAs. Incidentally, I was #2 at the time (and #1 by graduation), but this never even made it into my college apps since rankings are unofficial. Which is fine with me, especially since I got into some amazing colleges anyway.</p>

<p>We also have a faculty and student panel select graduation speakers.</p>

10

<p>In regards to the school not having a large base of AP courses or such.....then it would depend on the student and what's most important. Duel enrollment may be a good alternative in many school systems, but not in ours. It's based for those students who have no desire beyond community college. No real prep for a rigorous four year university.</p>

<p>It's amazing...the top three persons in daughter's school all attended the same elementary school. 1 and 2 entered in the same kindergarten class. They've had a friendly rivilary since age 5.</p>

11

<p>Universities create much of this obsession by giving significant admissions weight to a rank of 1 or 2 in class. It's rarely used as a credential for any other purpose, after all, unless it happened at a high school where number 1 means a lot (Stuyvesant, Philips academy). One of the big universities, I think it was Brown, had in its online admissions statistics the acceptance rate by SAT tranche and similar data for class rank, and being top 2 or number 1 each (in succession) increased the acceptance rate by quite a few percentage points. Bear in mind that the statistical top of the applicant pool at Brown, Harvard and the rest get in at rates of at most 30-40 percent for any single statistic chosen (class rank, SAT, etc).</p>

12

<p>I don't think schools should get rid of the class rank because it might give a lot of people false hopes if they don't know how they rank among their peers.</p>

13

<p>I don't think schools should completely get rid of class rank, because its helpful to know where you stand, but I think getting rid of val/sal might be a good thing because it makes rankings get out of hand. I know at least 3 girls who are in the top of our class who take/don't take specific courses even though they'd know they'd love them just because they aren't honors/AP. One is my friend who thinks she'd be really interested in Accounting, but refused to take the semester course to see if she really liked it, just because it wouldn't be wieghted as an honors and would endanger her current position as sal.
I have a friend who is currently 3rd in our class who is a great person, really nice, loyal friend, varsity tennis eventually for 4 yrs, a lot of math/science organizations, secretary of Mu Alpha Theta as a sophmore, works at Kumon, volunteer tutoring, wins tons of local competitions, top AMC scores, etc....only twice got an A- in English, and the only reason she isnt val is because she skipped 3 years of math and they count those skipped years as Regular rather than Honors. Now the current val. is stuck up, rude, numerous clubs but no influence in them, plays soccer SOLELY because she wants a sport for college, got As in everything, has no life, the only attribute is that she is involved in the Music department though not excessively, and believes that because she is at the top, she will get into any college she wants. If a college deliberately picks the latter over the former, I feel very bad for that school. </p>

<p>I, actually, decided to go to the South high school in my district, rather than the North, because everyone goes to the same middle school and I only moved in 8th grade, and all the friends I made were going to South and South had a great art department. I chose South over North despite the fact that I would have been val. at North, extremely easily (there is only one other person who could possibly have the grades to be ranked higher than me, because of wieghts, but this person took Japanese, which does not offer an honors option). But, I would have either had no friends at North or become part of a not-so-good-group of girls that lived in my nieghborhood, so I picked South, because that was where I'd enjoy myself and have a good social life. I think that by choosing where I'd grow more as a person rather than where I'd easily be val., I did the right thing, and that it is good that colleges would look past val/sal in their decisions. </p>

<p>wow that was long.</p>

14

<p>In my D's school, there is no ranking, but somehow they elect both a val and a sal, and they provide quartiles or deciles to colleges for scholarship purposes. The really stupid thing is that parents and kids are not allowed to know their decile or quartile, so they are operating blind in the applications process in some respects. When I asked about this, and how to got through the process without that info, I was told to have her apply and just wait and see where she was accepted. Then, wait and see if she was offered any merit aid, which here is based strictly on rank and SAT.</p>

15

<p>I just don't like the idea of electing val or sal...brings it back to a popularity contest and not one on achieving academic excellance.</p>

16

<p>My son's HS doesn't weight, so someone could be val/sal having taken no APs or honors. In fact that may happen this year. Next year, they're switching to the cum laude system.</p>

17

<p>I hope this "cum laude" system catches on - it seems to address many of the fairness issues that crop up each year when vals/sals are announced. I also like the idea of grad speakers being selected based on the quality of their speeches - perhaps by a committee of faculty and students, or by an open election in which the voters have heard all the potential speakers. That could easily become a popularity contest, of course, but at least the voters would have to spend an afternoon listening to would-be graduation speakers. </p>

<p>This issue of rigorous curriculum always comes up when vals are discussed, the concern being that kids can either rig their schedules so that the competition can't possibly beat them (as in Ms. Hornstine's case), or that kids who sailed through 4 years of gut classes can best kids with very demanding academic courses. Our hs doesn't rank or weight, though it does announce the student with the highest unweighted GPA, who gives a speech at graduation. For as long as I can remember, these kids have gone on to the kinds of schools (Harvard, Princeton, Williams, Boston College, Vanderbilt, Cornell) that require success in tough courses of study for admission. In other words, none of our vals has achieved that designation by taking an easy courseload. I'm sure it happens elsewhere, but a #1 ranking without a rigorous curriculum won't fool the Yale adcoms.</p>

18

<p>Our school is going to a 'cum laude' system too. At my D's graduation last year, the val/sal were acknowledged only briefly, and their names weren't even in the program.</p>

<p>Val/sal made a lot more sense back when everybody took more or less the same cirriculum. Now there are so many different equally rigorous choices for the brightest students, each with their own minute affects on GPA, that it just doesn't make any sense.</p>

<p>Its such a shame that some colleges are still playing that 'val scholarship' game; to them, it's a marketing ploy, but to the parents of the 'losers' it has a direct impact on the pocketbook. How ridiculous.</p>

19

<p>I know of a public school that had 17 vals a few years ago. They all had to do a short speech at graduation. The local newspaper only would put in 10 pictures though.</p>

20

<p>My school graded everyone on an numerical scale from 0-100, weighting "honors" and "AP" courses, so there wasn't a problem with choosing one val and one sal.</p>