By Steve Levy
I thought I was reading something from the satirical magazine called the Onion when I saw a headline that blared “Jericho High has recorded 21 valedictorians.”
How can any school have multiple top scorers, especially almost two dozen of them?
We’re sure that all of these students are outstanding and deserve accolades, but to say that they all received the same grade over four years suggest that grade inflation is now at epidemic proportions.
It said that each student received an A+ in all their subjects over the course of their school careers. Maybe so, but what does an A+ relate to?
Usually, students are graded on a scale of 0 to 100.
A 98.5 is awesome, but it’s not enough to become valedictorian if another student has a 99.2.
Are we forever stuck in the “everyone gets a trophy” era?
We hope all of these outstanding students achieved their lifetime dreams of going to a great college and excelling in their occupational goals.
Unfortunately, the grading system that we now have diminishes what the term “valedictorian” actually means.