ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, August 8, 1996 TAG: 9608080013
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JIM MARCHMAN
YOUR JULY 27 article (``Pulling rank: Some schools abandon listing by GPA'') on class rankings in high schools must have come as a great shock to those few folks who still thought there was any integrity left in our education system. Just what does it mean to have a 4.5 grade-point average when a 4.0 is supposed to be perfect? Does it mean anything at all to be one of 37 ``valedictorians'' at your high school? What message does it send about the quality of education at a school when 150 of the 400 graduates all have ``perfect'' grade-point averages?
It should come as no surprise that the so-called valedictorian with the 4.0 grade-point average who graduates 150th in his or her class of 400 doesn't want class rankings published. It shows all too readily what a farce the system has become as schools have focused more on self-esteem than on self-improvement. Obviously, school systems are as embarrassed about this as the students; hence, the desire to pretend that class ranks either don't exist or are meaningless.
It seems that much of the demand for the removal of class rank from the record comes from parents who are obsessed with getting their kids into Harvard. The parents' self-esteem is apparently as much the issue as that of the students. And, of course, those parents aren't above putting a lot of pressure on the schools to help them maintain the illusion that the ``valedictorian'' title that has been conferred on their kid (and on scores of others at the same school) still means what it did 30 years ago.
I am really not sure what these parents and high-school administrators are worried about. Almost anyone who can breathe can get into a university today. Even institutions that only a few years ago boasted of their high standards now admit to their once-selective programs students who don't have the Scholastic Assessment Test scores to qualify to play football under National Collegiate Athletic Association rules, as the institutions seek to boost tuition income to offset cuts in state funding. This is even more alarming when one notes that SAT scores have now been skewed or ``normalized'' to boost self-esteem, giving ``perfect'' scores to students who have missed several questions. And, as large state universities have opened the admissions floodgates, smaller state and private schools have become even more desperate in their search for students.
Now, if only we can get one of those schools to change its name to Harvard or Yale, everyone's problem could be solved. Parents could brag at the country club of their kid's admission to Harvard, high schools could go back to giving real grades for real accomplishments, and to be a ``valedictorian'' with a 4.0 might once again mean something.
By the way, whatever happened to ``salutatorian,'' the title once conferred on the No. 2 person in the graduating class? Is this designation now given to the 200 kids who are at the bottom of their high-school class with a 3.9 grade-point average?
Jim Marchman of Blacksburg is an engineering professor at Virginia Tech.
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