Change in Senior Honor Recognition

The East Richland High School Class of 2015 was the first class to not recognize a valedictorian and salutatorian. While there is no doubt in the mind of the committee that researched this change that this was the right thing to do, there are some that have a different opinion. Below, I will provide a summary of why we made this change.

Three years ago, our school began researching a move away from the tradition of recognizing a valedictorian and salutatorian. Groups of teachers, parents, community members, and students were brought in and the most current research on the topic was discussed. Ultimately, the decision was made to move away from this traditional way of recognizing a top student in the senior class to a criteria-based system that challenges any student to strive for this top level of recognition. There are a number of key points listed below that led to this move.

• Student success is a broad concept and one pathway does not lead to it.
• The system of recognizing a valedictorian/salutatorian funnels all of the highest achieving students into one prescribed course sequence. The result was actually limiting student learning opportunities by preventing students from taking courses in career and technical education and fine arts.
• Students were making decisions about what courses to take based on their grade point average, rather than what courses were most relevant to their future plans.
• The high school experience should be about student learning opportunities, not about sorting and ranking students.
• If one factor such as grade point average was the sole determiner of how worthwhile a student's high school experience was, then we were missing the mark. There are many talented, motivated, and exceptionally bright students that are left out because the difference in the top students' GPA was often to the 100th or 1000th decimal point. (By the way, we would never consider it educationally sound to use one score on a test, project, etc. to determine a student's grade in a class. Why then would we use one criteria to determine how valuable a student's high school experience was?)

The move to this new system has not been without criticism. The main criticism is that we have watered things down and that it is like junior league soccer where everyone gets a trophy. I would challenge anyone to look at the criteria to be recognized as Summa Cum Laude and then still think things have been watered down. The fact is that people that are critical of the new system base their views only on opinion, not on any current research in education. Those individuals that have been critical and have actually taken the time to understand the new system come away thinking this is something that should have been done a long time ago. I encourage anyone interested in this topic to do his/her own research, and then see if your opinion about recognizing one valedictorian holds up.