Give them all A's AAAAA. Education Admin puts Nix on Valedictorian - from Latin origins to"say farewell"

Posted by Dobrien 6 years, 9 months ago to Education
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Half of high schools do away with class rankings 'so as not to destroy teens' confidence' - with one school having as many as 48 valedictorians
During the past decade, schools around the country have stopped numbering students from valedictorian on down
Instead, they've adopted honors that recognize everyone who scores at a certain threshold - by having multiple valedictorians
Administrators worry about the college prospects of students separated by large differences in class rank despite small differences in their GPAs
There are also concerns about intense, potentially unhealthy competition and students letting worries about rank drive their course selection.

This philosophy of "everyone's a winner and nobody's efforts, talents or abilities have greater value then anybody else's " has followed these students from K through 12


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  • Posted by freedomforall 6 years, 9 months ago
    When will they start doing that on the college basketball teams so its fair to the short white guys?
    Bench all those rapping athletes with the multiple pierced brain stems and amazing playing skills.
    Don't you love the elitist's complete hypocrisy?
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  • Posted by $ Snezzy 6 years, 9 months ago
    Some number of years ago a lady who is now about 40 was in the children's section of a science-fiction costume contest, as a 4-year-old. The judges decided to give all the children a prize. She said, "If everybody wins, that's the same as nobody wins."

    Perhaps we should learn about life from the little children, who are actively involved in trying to make sense of it all, rather than from our old contemporaries, who often have simply given up.
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  • Posted by $ WilliamShipley 6 years, 9 months ago
    There is a problem with the ranking by GPA. My son's School gave 5's for As in advanced classes and 4's for A's in normal classes.

    So if student a took 4 advanced classes and got an 'A' in all of them they would have a 5.0 average, if another student took the same 4 classes and also got an A in them, BUT also took a theater class or music, they would get a 4.8.

    So, which student deserves the higher ranking?
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    • Posted by freedomforall 6 years, 9 months ago
      Depends on who is reading the results and their bias, and I mean this without political bias. That sounds better than not rewarding the one who took the more advanced course from the view of a college admission analyst, but the analyst also has the rest of the details on the courses. Do some schools still only give 4.0 as a top score?
      One "number" is rarely a completely fair way to judge.
      The student has to make a decision assuming he knows the rules: do I want the number to be the highest or do I want to take a class that is better for me?
      In our class the top 5 students by score were guys, and the one of them ranked 3rd had won local honors with the highest SAT scores. The administration decided that he shouldn't be one of the 4 valedictorians because it wasn't fair to the 6th ranked girl... and he had already had enough honors in the view of the mediocre average-IQ administrators. So she replaced the student with the top SAT score, and at the time of graduation he also had the highest grade point average (Including all the advanced level courses available), while she had fallen to 7th behind 6 boys. So the top student by both methods of grading was excluded from the honor due to jealousy and bias by the school administration.
      Last I heard she was working in a liberal college outside LA, California (how appropriate) and he had his own consulting business.
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    • Posted by Maritimus 6 years, 9 months ago
      Don't you think that reducing the value of an individual human being, be it adult or a child, is utter nonsense? As a manager, would you hire a college graduate with a grade average of 4.85 over the one with 4.65 without interviewing them both?
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      • Posted by SteveFoerster 6 years, 6 months ago
        Thank you. The real lesson isn't who has a higher score by the school's standards, it's which student has the (earned, justifiable) self-esteem to confidently set goals and reach them.
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    • Posted by 6 years, 9 months ago
      Good question. Maybe anyone who is highly ranked in all the courses they elected to take would qualify for an all encompassing final final exam. Like a playoff in sports.
      A healthy competition.
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  • Posted by Herb7734 6 years, 9 months ago
    The "No Loser " party is around the corner. They are applauded for; not trying to win, not participating in extra curricular activities, never getting more than 2.1 mark, and going into their life's career of advanced patty flipping. Imagine a door labeled "The Real World." A non-loser knocks on it. It opens. The person who knocks says 'let me in.' Can you do algebra? No. Are you a doctor? No. What can you do? I don't know.....but I have a diploma in Liberal Arts. NEXT! Knock, knock. I see a number of you wanting in. What can you do? I'm a plumber, I'm a mechanic, I'm a doctor, I'm a teacher, I'm a handyman. Come right in!
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  • Posted by LibertyBelle 6 years, 9 months ago
    I didn't really care who the valedictorian was. I just
    hated school, and wanted it to be over with. I did
    reasonably well myself, but thought a lot of the grading was unfair, being, in many cases, subjective. I was just glad to get out.--But this kind of thing, of not wanting to have any distinctions of ability or performance, is just the way things have been going for a long time in this country, in school performance and job performance, too.
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    • Posted by 6 years, 9 months ago
      Yes LibertyBelle ,I also don't know who our classes Valedictorian was. School lessons were only interesting when an involved teacher participated. Otherwise it was quite boring. If I had been at the top of the class and received a participation trophy with others it would have pissed me off.
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