D21’s school doesn’t rank and doesn’t publish honor rolls - there’s a not on the electronic report card, but nothing put in the paper like S17’s school did. I like it! I don’t even know if they have val/sal. If they do it’s not given a ton of attention.
D21’s school also requires a lunch period. You can get out of gym if you participate in a physical activity a certain amount of time per week, but then you get a study hall and can’t add an extra class to your schedule.
Exactly. The top kids are off to great colleges and HS is well, just high school.
Our ‘top 10’ (or 11/12 with ties) receive a gold braid-ed thingy to wear for graduation. The gold thingy is given out at cap & gown pickup. That’s about it for recognition. But no biggie, as the kids pretty much know who are the top graders in their class, particularly since they’ve been with some of them since elementary school.
Our class does honor roll and latin honors based on the 3.5/3.75/4.0+ system, using the weighted GPA (honors/AP classes are weighted at 5.0 for an A+, 4.5 for an A, etc. The +/- isn’t used in GPA, even though it’s assigned and I think it goes on the transcript.) Maybe a quarter or a third are on the honor roll, but I don’t have a huge problem with it – if it makes some people feel better, great; if not, it’s not like it’s hurting anyone.
For graduation, you get “honors cords” for latin honors as well as various clubs/honor societies, like NHS. They’re sort of ugly, imo, but kids love to join clubs to get the cords. It’s a nice incentive, I guess, especially because it gives every student an option to get one (there’s one for art, for instance). There’s auditions for the graduation speeches, and I think the winners are chosen by a panel of administrators.
They still maintain a semi-ranking system for colleges, if you need it – I think they have top 10/25/50/75% or something, not quite deciles, but I’m not sure. The rumor of the month is that, in order to have that information, there must be a secret ranking list out there somewhere…I have to admit, I’m insanely curious to know who our valedictorian would have been!
Still, I love the non-ranking system. I would have hated the competition for valedictorian/salutorian, especially since so many of the top students in our class are friends – I can easily see it tearing me and my best friend apart, honestly. So many kids would manipulate their classes for an extra .0001 boost, which everyone resents already.
Anyway, if there’s a ranking system, how do you know your rank throughout high school?? It seems like it’d be impossible to do that without giving out everyone’s GPAs, which would violate FERPA, right?
When do the ‘participation trophies’ stop? 
I guess after hearing all of these I like our system. AP=5, honors 4.5, regular 4. Max of 4 AP’s a year, and most kids only take 1 AP before junior year (3 others are technically possible to take, but very unlikely, I think 2-3 kids a year take 2 as sophomores and I’ve never heard of anyone taking more than 2 before junior year). The honors classes are all in place of a regular class (honors English vs. regular English, honors algebra II vs. regular algebra II, etc.). You can game the system a bit by strategic use of study halls and a couple of other things, which does happen. But it isn’t too bad because there isn’t any incentive to game it for kids already in the top 2% (see below).
Everyone gets a rank except the top 2%. They all get reported as #1. If there are 400 kids in the class, there are 8 #1’s, then they start at #9, 10, etc. As far as I know, the school won’t tell them their actual rank, they just know they are one of the #1’s (although D has a pretty good idea of the exact rank in her class, because they all talk). It takes away the incentive to add a study hall in place of band, because the .001 point won’t really matter. I realize that the kids on the cusp of #1 still have that issue, but really it’s usually only the top 1% or so that is hypercompetitive enough to drop band or journalism or whatever to secure the move from #3 to #2.
I would strongly oppose attendance, EC’s or ACT’s being part of “honors”, even though they would help my kids. That’s a separate issue and shouldn’t be part of how grades are recognized.
Our district has both an honors “cum laude” type system and class rank. To be a cum laude graduate requires a designated GPA (and I don’t remember what that is but it is weighted), a specific number of As, a specific number of AP classes, and core classes every year (math, science, history, English and a foreign language). The “laude” graduate requires the same classes but the GPA is lower and fewer As and more Bs are allowed.
Personal note: I would definitely weight the GPA. I went to a high school where we had co-vals. One took every honors class he could; the other took a second-tier English class (we had four levels of English) as her highest class. It didn’t seem quite fair that a person who took one “pre-honors” English and a bunch of basic courses and who never made it past Algebra II or basic chemistry was sharing the honor with someone who took calculus, physics, A&P, honors English, Latin, etc.
Our public school still does the ranking - they used to have a separate UW and W ranking (2 Vals/Sals - if UW/W rankings are different - but most years they are same). But our school district also just started a debate about doing away with ranks and instead recognize in top percentiles for college admission purposes. We also have honor roll recognition - cutoffs are same as what OP is considering.
Yes - I like OP’s schools idea of going away from ranking and recognizing GPA based on some widely used thresholds (challenging and encourage kids to do well but at the same do not create a gaming system with sole purpose of ranking rather than learning).
I suggest simple honors based on unweighted GPA with an extra honor for taking several advanced courses (AP, IB, Honors, etc). No ranking. Val and Sal selected late senior year as the best to perform the appropriate duties at graduation.
I’m glad our kids’ 4000+ student public high school doesn’t rank. They do award graduates with honors based on 3.0, 3.5, or 4.0 unweighted GPA. Out of ~1000 graduates about 4% will have “highest honors” for 4.0 GPA’s this year. To further parse these students by weighted GPA wouldn’t really be fair- the kids who take extra unweighted “zero period” classes would suffer lower weighted GPA’s. The graduation gowns and regalia have distinctions based on perfect GPA, number of AP’s, awards, etc.
I don’t think there is any system that would fairly determine the “best” student. It could certainly determine the student best at playing the ranking game, but that isn’t the same. I’d rather my kid take jazz band because he wants to perform vs. AP music theory for the GPA bump (He learns way more theory in jazz than in the AP class, and proves it by his performance rather than in a test.)
Let their transcripts and their stories told in application essays or graduation speaches speak for themselves, not a ranking.
Our school ranks and weights GPAs with APs and dual enrollment. It seems great to say that there should be a #1 and to stop the participation trophy stuff but in reality it is a mess. I personally would love to go to latin honors or some type of band of recognition and get rid of VAL/SAL, top 10, and top 10%. As long as colleges recognize and give a benefit (scholarship or admissions bump) for ranking and these honors the race will continue.
There are kids who are taking summer gym beginning after middle school to free up a space for another AP. They are starting their language in the 7th grade in order to get to AP by 11th and free up a space in 12th for an additional DE or AP course. There are kids who are taking 2 math classes and then 2 science classes in the 9th and 10th grades since they have no required gym courses to take and they dropped all elective classes. They are taking math/science/lit in the summer at community college to move up and ahead. Once they have exhausted all of the school APs they are taking dual enrollment at the state school a few towns away (or flagship branch) or taking online college courses. No one in the top 10 students takes electives that are not weighted as they will negatively impact the GPA. They all take part in regional orchestras/bands outside of school and continue with private lessons outside of school. Many will then do honors band/jazz band/select strings that meet and practice before school (zero hour) to keep their first or second chair in their instrument. The same with vocal arts and theater. The most competitive kids will do regional community choirs and theater, private voice/acting coaches, and only participate in the school programs that meet outside of the class day. No periods for music or art because they will drop out of the top 10% if they do. This pushes down so that the uw4.0 students who did not take summer classes and are in the top 11-30 all feel pressure to drop the arts and elective classes to protect any chance that they have at a good rank for colleges. Participation in marching band, choirs, and other time consuming electives is dropping in our district. Some kids who are average excellent students with straight As are completely shut out of making top 10 % by mid 9th grade if they didn’t take summer school and made the mistake of taking an elective (or not the right language - which is a whole different mess). No matter what they do, they will never be able to close the gap of those scheduling “mistakes”.
The kids are working themselves crazy. When people are incredulous about so many 4.0 GPAs and ties for Val/Sal at some schools, they just don’t understand that so many kids are only getting A+s. They can’t believe that there would be no difference and they think it is the everyone needs a trophy crowd when that is the farthest from the truth. These kids are getting tutors, using the internet to self learn material before it is presented in class, and working into all hours of the morning. The top 10 had to go out to the hundredth GPA place and there were still ties for Val and Sal the last few years. The kids aren’t working jobs. They are not going out with friends (weeknights or weekends) and they are not dating. Of course not everyone but the top 20-30 kids are in fierce competition. Some are self medicating. Some are cutting. Some are anxious wrecks. Some are thriving in their element. None seem too happy and none seem to be enjoying hs. It is something that needs to be won.
The school is trying to address it but the parents who are supporting this rat race are vocal and feel that it is important to have this level of competition. They don’t see it as any different then top athletes. They see those kids going to specialty coaches, elite travel teams, and camps as the same thing. They say that the athletes compete to be starters at their position and others are cut from the team. There is no chance at playing varsity sports on many of our teams if you have not been on elite teams and privately coached. The average excellent athlete who has not had additional coaching and experiences will be cut or will be jv (if they are lucky) all 4 years. These athletes are then lauded and rewarded for their excellence. They feel that those scholars who have the ability and desire to work all summer and every evening have earned the top spots. They feel they should be lauded and rewarded for giving the same commitment to studies. The school is struggling to put in some balance. It is not healthy for anyone. To those who say that this generation is lazy, spoiled, and lacks resilience have not been in this type of environment. This is not the VAL/SAL race of our day. This is insane.
Right there with you. Anyone who thinks this generation suffers because everyone gets a trophy is just plain wrong.
@bamamom2021 Your post made me sad. Not sure if I feel worse for the students at the top or for the ones who can’t be through no fault of their own. I suppose time will tell what happens to those poor kids in a few years; it doesn’t seem like a very sustainable lifestyle to be living. I have hives just reading it, honestly (very eloquently written, by the way).
Just curious, how is it possible for schools to break the ties when everyone gets the same grades in the same classes? Do they go to percents? My district, for instance, is still fairly good but much less competitive, so most top students take the same number of APs and electives – I don’t see how we could have a salutorian, even if we wanted to, because there’d be too many ties (there’d probably be someone with an extra AP for valedictorian, though).
And I agree, it’s not a participation trophy thing at all, although it does seem like it on the surface. If anything, I think that giving an award for being marginally better than someone else (.001 GPA points, in some cases) would be the true example of needless ego-stoking for parents/students that simply can’t function without the existence of a winner and a loser. With a Latin honors system, more people feel special, but there’s so many honored that it’s less special and therefore not as stressful. It goes from being the end-all-and-be-all of some peoples’ lives to what it was meant to be: a nice, but ultimately meaningless, recognition of academic achievement for students that everyone already knew were smart anyway.
I don’t think I’ve ever thought much about the effect of curving on grades until my D21 ended up in two classes where no one ever scored higher than an 82 (which is a B- on their grading scale) but the same courses taught by a different teachers at the same school the students got 5-10pts curves added to each tests. The school’s response is their policy on curving is left up to teacher discretion, which is fine until you consider the greater impact on gpa, class rank, college acceptance, and merit scholarships. Now that I see how all that is playing out, I’d like a standard policy that either requires consistency throughout the same school, and its use or not highlighted in the school profile the colleges see, or some type of asterick on the transcript for classes where a curve was used or not used. Either that or possibly a class average in parentheses to give perspective on how the student actually performed compared to others learning the same material from the same teacher. But again, that would be ideal…I know that would never happen, that is just my “salty” perspective as the kids would say after seeing how these two classes played out for my D21!
@bamamom2021 I wonder if our kids are in school together. That sounds EXACTLY like D20’s school. And, every year, there is at least one student who has a breakdown. This past year, two kids almost OD’d at school because of the pressures (both were saved, one thanks to narcan).
For the class of 2019, the GPA between the val and the sal wasn’t hundredths of a point - it was one one-thousandth (and possibly less, but our GPAs are only carried out to the thousandth). Kids taking “not enough” APs and doing well can’t even break the top 100. But the thing is, I was talking with the chancellor of our state flagship, and he said the school’s reputation is so strong, that the kids don’t have to kill themselves with competition - they know that the kid who is 100th is also a strong candidate.
If only we could convince the kids - and their parents.
@bamamom2021 A really a sad state of affairs but I will tell you that most families don’t have to put their kids in that pressure cooker environment if they don’t want to.
We have our kids attending a well respected public school system and while competitive, it is in no way like the process you describe with many kids attending top colleges upon graduation . For example, my D20 has been afforded the opportunity to take a varsity sport and student government while at the same time taking a mix of AP and honors courses. She also has time for a part-time job, community service, active in our congregation, and as a senior will be spending a lot of time on the academic decathlon team. She has a regular study group with peers who are just as smart (if not smarter than she is) and has maintained a 4.0 (uw) throughout high school. They really try to help each other out to be their best. My D rarely compares herself to her peers and really has an internal drive to do the best she can no matter what anyone else is doing. I’m sure she will have some good results once she applies to colleges in the fall.
Lastly - I think this whole “participation trophy” outrage is a bunch of bull. IME, the average kid nowadays is working harder than ever and to claim they are “soft”, “weak”, or are “too coddled” doesn’t represent the reality of these kids experience.