SCHOOL BOARD ENDS CLASS VALEDICTORIAN HONOR

Citing what it calls “unhealthy” competition among students, the Wake County, North Carolina, school board is the latest in the country to make class valedictorians a thing of the past. The school board unanimously gave initial approval last week to a policy that would prohibit high school principals from naming valedictorians – titles reserved for the two graduating seniors with the highest grade-point averages – after 2018. “We have heard from many, many schools that the competition has become very unhealthy,” school board Chairman Tom Benton said. “Students were not collaborating with each other the way that we would like them to. Their choice of courses was being guided by their GPA and not their future education plans,” Benton said. Critics of the change claim it is too “politically correct” and creates an “everyone gets an award” mentality – failing to fairly recognize those who achieve the highest grades.
* Then why bother having grades at all … is what I kept telling my parents, but they kept grounding me.
* Clearly, North Carolina just doesn’t care anymore what we think of it.
* When nobody wins, everybody wins!
* On the upside, it saves parents from having to listen to those boring “We did it” speeches at graduation.
* You have to admit – the seniors with the highest grades are hardly representative of their graduating class.
* Why should all the mediocre kids feel like they’re not as good as the over-achievers?
* What the hell does “initial approval” mean?
* Doesn’t that sound like, “We’re still thinking about it”?
* Why not go all the way and make the dumbest kid the valedictorian?
* Or have each student read one sentence of the graduation address.
* That would be the inclusive thing to do.
* I completely understand: There’s no place for academic excellence in today’s school system.