The sun is shining, the flowers are blooming, the would-be valedictorians are tossing fits - it must be Spring.
...All is not perfect in the lives of Pawel and Joanna Keblinski and their daughter Julia, 17, a Shenendehowa High School senior. She's ranked second in her graduating class at Shenendehowa; they think she should be first."There are no words that can express our pain over the fact that our daughter was refused her due right to an honor that she has worked for for four years," the family wrote to district officials.
The Keblinskis believe Julia should be named valedictorian at the area's largest suburban school for scoring a 99.33 cumulative grade point average while completing six Advanced Placement classes, plus honors courses.
But the district recognizes Julia, the treasurer of the math team, as salutatorian of her 640-student class. Her average fell just below that of Ben Plog, a running back on the football team and aspiring physician, who she says didn't take as many accelerated courses.
Shades of Blair Hornstine! The New Yorker has a delightful article detailing the fits, the lawsuits, and the overreactions that transpire each year as graduation nears:
Some schools, responding to the critique that competition has got too bruising, have decided that naming a single valedictorian is part of the reason that today’s students have become so anxious. (Many small private schools came to this conclusion long ago, and never adopted the valedictorian tradition.) An organization called Stressed Out Students, which is headed by Denise Clark Pope, a Stanford education professor, has a list of about twenty-five schools, mostly in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley, that have pledged to try to make students and their parents less driven...A number of schools now call everyone who gets a 4.0 or higher a valedictorian. At Cleveland High School, in the San Fernando Valley, there will be thirty-two valedictorians this year. At Mission San Jose, in Northern California, there will be twenty-three...
The single-valedictorian tradition is also being endangered by lawsuits. In 2003, Brian Delekta, who narrowly missed having the highest G.P.A. in his class, sued his school district, near Port Huron, Michigan, asking that he be credited with an A-plus, instead of an A, for a work-study class that he took at his mother’s law firm. (In addition, Delekta asked for a restraining order on the publication of class rankings.)
Restraining orders! Good grief! Little Brian sure picked up some interesting legal ideas around that firm.
Other valedictorians in the news as of late are Miriam Cattanach, whose school wanted to honor her as top-scoring student but didn't trust her to speak properly about religion, and Abraham Stoklasa, who allegedly threatened his principal and insisted on telling bad jokes in his speech.
Joanne Jacobs notes that controversy isn't avoided even when schools don't have valedictorians. Some people, it seems, can't stand to see any reward/prize/opportunity go to only one worthwhile student.
Posted by kswygert at May 31, 2005 03:38 PM