So who gives the speech at the HS graduation? 178 Valedictorians at one school.

[Anonymous]

So-- Washington-Lee has 178 Valedictorians. WTH? Apparently, any student with a 4.0 and higher is a 'Valedictorian'.

I may be old, but for over a century there was one Valedictorian and one Salutatorian. They have the HS graduation speeches.

Is this endemic of everyone gets a trophy? Everyone is a snowflake?

I know there is major grade inflation in HS and colleges. This is weird.

Why not just do away completely with the title?

The Official definition of the term this it came into origin:

"a student, typically having the highest academic achievements of the class, who delivers the valedictory at a graduation ceremony."

[Anonymous]

^^ I wore a special color sash at Graduation to denote 'honors'. But--we had only ONE valedictorian.

[Anonymous]

We had 5 at my HS graduation. They all sat on stage and the top 2 gave remarks.

I'd think with 178, you'd just choose the top 1. But no idea...

[Anonymous]

I think they have auditions or applications for valdictorian or other speeches at commencement now.

[Anonymous]

We had two, but only because the boys' school and the girls' school had merged our Junior year and the course offerings were different. They switched to one after that year, and in perpetuity.

Wasn't there some big brouhaha last year about a girl who got passed over for a boy, but the GPAs were impossible to compare because they included college courses and such? Maybe it's just too hard to figure out.

[Anonymous]

Not from the DC area, but we still have s valedictorian and salutatorian - one of each. They are introduced with a list of their accomplishments and presented with scholarship checks. They do not give speeches, though. The school has everyone write a graduation speech. The two with the best speeches get to present them. I like it because the speeches are way more interesting than the usual ones you hear that have such boring platitudes.

I am on the FB page Grown and Flown Parents, and it was quite an eye opener to see how other schools calculate weighted GPA, rank students, and choose valedictorian(s). It's asinine because colleges only look at unweighted GPAs and disregard it when multiple valedictorians render the honor meaningless.

[Anonymous]

At McLean they do not have a Valedictorian, but students that have a weighted 4.0 or higher received a medal to wear at graduation (and that is generally ~20% of the class). There are two awards given out at graduation: Faculty Male/Female Student of the Year. In the two graduations I have attended, the President of the class received one of them. There is a contest that is curated by a Faculty committee to determine which student gives a speech (any student may enter).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not from the DC area, but we still have s valedictorian and salutatorian - one of each. They are introduced with a list of their accomplishments and presented with scholarship checks. They do not give speeches, though. The school has everyone write a graduation speech. The two with the best speeches get to present them. I like it because the speeches are way more interesting than the usual ones you hear that have such boring platitudes.

I am on the FB page Grown and Flown Parents, and it was quite an eye opener to see how other schools calculate weighted GPA, rank students, and choose valedictorian(s). It's asinine because colleges only look at unweighted GPAs and disregard it when multiple valedictorians render the honor meaningless.

Colleges do not care about Valedictorians because they admit students before they are determined.

[Anonymous]

At W-L, the students vote on who gives a speech.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think they have auditions or applications for valdictorian or other speeches at commencement now.

This is what we did at my HS in the late '90s. Public school in the midwest. No valedictorian acknowledged or mentioned at all, and the speech was given by someone who applied and was selected by the school or maybe student council. I think there were sashes for honors or NHS maybe. I'm glad they didn't acknowledge a valedictorian as there were various tracks and a GPA in and of itself didn't say a whole lot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:At W-L, the students vote on who gives a speech.

The other valedictorians or the entires class?

[Anonymous]

The worst student should give the speech.

[Anonymous]

I graduated from a MoCo high school in the 90s. There was no Valedictorian or class rank. The Sr. class voted on who would give the graduation speech. The person we chose was generally a good student but probably would not have been in the top 10.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I may be old, but for over a century there was one Valedictorian and one Salutatorian. They have the HS graduation speeches.

Is this endemic of everyone gets a trophy?

At my Bethesda public HS, the speech-giver has been chosen by audition for as long as I am aware.

Wouldn't you rather have the best speech-giver give the speech? Who cares which student inched out the other several students by .0001 GPA - even if there wasn't a tie? Especially at a school where the number of kids on their way to Ivys, military academies, top publics at full scholarship, etc is pretty high? Valedictorian culture always struck me as small town or more rural culture.

[Anonymous]

I attended Yorktown and graduated in the 90s. Same rule applied back then, for what it's worth. I think we had 40-some number ones. Annoying thing back then was that the next highest gpa after perfect wasn't given number 2, they were number 41 or whatever, meaning they weren't even in the top 10 percent of their class (nor was I even though I had a straight A average). We all still got into good schools though.