Ending the ‘Best’ of the Brightest

When Cleveland High School’s college counselor gives the cue for the valedictorian during the Reseda school’s graduation Thursday, Galit Sarfaty--a reserved girl with a 4.46 GPA--proudly will rise to her feet.

So will TramAnh Nettie LeDuc, Bree Blumstein, Eva Friedberg, Joshua Dimon, Michelle Looren, Davinder Mann and Bruce Pao, to name a few. In fact, 27 Cleveland High seniors are being honored this year as valedictorians.

Yet an hour away at Cerritos High School, and farther down the freeway at Mission Viejo High, no one will stand to receive the valedictorian accolade.

In a new twist to a tradition as old as commencements themselves, some schools are turning away from singling out one student for academic recognition. Instead, they either are acknowledging a legion of high achievers or doing away with the distinction.

Both extremes are prompted by the same concerns: raising self-esteem and lessening competition among the brightest students, many of whom take Advanced Placement (AP) courses that boost their grade point averages. And both approaches have ignited fiery debates across the nation over the best way to recognize academic excellence.

Revisionists argue that recognizing more students’ accomplishments ultimately will prove more encouraging.

“When you start focusing on that one person who’s done the best--which may only be by one-hundredth of a point--you’re sending kids an implicit message that grades are the most important thing,” said Marilyn Colyar, assistant principal at San Marino High.

Officials at the highly competitive school--which never has had a valedictorian--are even considering eliminating class rankings because they believe it breeds unhealthy competition.

The result of all these variations is a circus of compromises and alterations that often conflict and rarely satisfy everyone.

This year, more than two dozen of the 162 public high schools in Los Angeles County either will have no valedictorians or a surfeit. In Ventura County, about half the 17 high schools this year are sticking with one valedictorian, while Royal High School in Simi Valley is honoring 35. Out of Orange County’s 58 high schools, about half a dozen have several valedictorians, and at least four have none.

In the San Fernando Valley alone, nearly half the 18 Los Angeles Unified School District high schools have multiple valedictorians chosen using a potpourri of standards. At North Hollywood High, administrators decided against crowning all 35 students who earned grade point averages of 4.0 and above because “it kind of dilutes the idea of the valedictorian,” said college counselor Susan Bonoff.

At the same time, she said, the school is recognizing as valedictorians seven straight-A students because “if you think of the valedictorian as an award of excellence, then it doesn’t necessarily have to be one person, because excellence is more pervasive than that.”

North Hollywood High, like several schools, also has changed the criteria for delivering the graduation speech--a privilege traditionally reserved for the valedictorian. Now, all seniors can compete for the chance to address their classmates and parents.

Public schools aren’t the only ones who have tinkered with tradition. Few of the elite independent private schools, such as Cate School in Carpinteria or Polytechnic School in Pasadena, select valedictorians, said Steve Clem, vice president for educational leadership at the National Assn. of Independent Schools.

“A number of our schools don’t use the valedictorian honor or other honors to avoid singling students out as being ‘better’ than other students, because outside of a fraction of a point in a grade it may not be true,” Clem said.

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But traditionalists complain that tampering with the hoary valedictorian program will “dumb down” the academic process and only widen the double standard between academics and athletics, in which the No. 1 player is routinely and lavishly celebrated.

“We’re trying to include more kids in a very exclusive club, and I don’t know if it’ll meet its goals because eventually it won’t mean as much,” said Harvard education professor Janine Bempechat, who specializes in achievement motivation among poor and minority students.

Valley High in Santa Ana so far has resisted change. Since its first graduating class in 1961, the school has honored both the valedictorian and salutatorian--the students with the highest and second-highest grade point averages--and the highest-ranking student delivers the valedictory speech.

“We honor the top-grade students at a separate banquet, but the two highest students deserve some special recognition,” said Mitch Williams, the assistant principal. “They earned that. And there doesn’t seem to be any hard feelings by other students.”

Yet some spiteful exceptions have been enough to prompt some school officials to change their policies.

In 1994, graduates in Riverdale, Ga., turned their backs on a valedictorian who allegedly avoided tough classes to get a good GPA. Last year, more than 80 students on Long Island, N.Y., petitioned to replace a valedictorian they claimed requested a grade change for a gym class. And in a pending legal battle in New York City--similar to cases in Oklahoma and Texas--a teenager is suing the Board of Education to avoid sharing the valedictorian title.

Although most high schools still honor a sole valedictorian based on the highest GPA, Rob Mahaffrey of the National Assn. of Secondary School Principals said the trend toward change is growing, primarily because of negative competition.

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The shift away from honoring a single valedictorian began, in part, with the grade inflation caused by AP courses. For more than a decade, most high schools have weighted the college preparatory courses so that an A equals 5.0 points versus the usual 4.0. This means students can exceed a 4.0 average--traditionally considered “perfect”--and, in many cases, students end up separated by fractions of a point.

Those minute differences can turn friends into bitter rivals, guidance counselors say, and inject cynicism into students’ choices. Some students will take AP classes for the sole purpose of boosting their GPA--while others avoid tough courses to prevent pulling down their averages. Others enroll in elective courses at community colleges for the credit, knowing that the grades will not be factored into their GPA.

“This is not the kind of competition we want, with students manipulating the system just to be No. 1. That makes being No. 1 so meaningless,” said college counselor Eileen Block of Saugus High School, which scrapped its valedictorian title in 1994 after competition between two girls prompted one to threaten suicide.

Even when the emotional consequences are far less severe, the slim difference between a school’s No. 1 and No. 2 students can be striking. Two students at Taft High School in Woodland Hills this spring are separated by 0.03 of a point. The valedictorian, Maria Campos, admits that it was an AP class that helped nudge her past her friend, Melissa Sturm, who had straight As.

Charles Sykes, author of “Dumbing Down America: Why American Kids Feel Good, But Can’t Read, Write or Add,” equated the practice of honoring all students equally to “egalitarianism run amok” and said it is a misguided attempt to boost students self-esteem.

“In some way it’s ironic because schools say they’re preparing students for the world, but they’re really insulating them from the real world, where there are winners and losers,” Sykes said in an interview. “Eventually in this world of no losers you’re going to end up with no winners.”

The preoccupation with self-esteem has been percolating throughout school districts for more than a decade and has been woven into teaching programs from kindergarten to high school. In California, the topic gained attention after Assemblyman John Vasconcellos (D-Santa Clara) proposed the creation of a state self-esteem task force in 1987.

To acknowledge a broad range of students--and thus boost self-esteem--a number of schools hold senior awards nights to recognize achievements from solid B averages to participation in extracurricular activities. At Buena High School in Ventura, nearly 70 graduates with a GPA of 3.5 or greater wore gold tassels and stoles to signify academic achievement.

All of this juggling to downplay valedictorians or eliminate the title highlights the double standard between academics and athletics, some experts say.

“We’ll parade around the football star on Main Street, but the valedictorian gets pushed to the side hush-hush, because if she’s acknowledged it will make others feel bad,” said Harvard’s Bempechat. “That person should be recognized with the same pomp and circumstance as the football star.”

However, UCLA education professor Deborah Stipek countered that, “Honoring more than one student says we value all students achieving.

“Even in sports,” she said, “the top player may receive a little more attention than the others, but the team is also rewarded as a whole, and that includes those players who were not the very best on the team.”

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Many students seemed more relaxed about the valedictorian title than their parents and guidance counselors. For them, the recognition is nice, and the prestige-laden title looks good on college and scholarship applications--but it isn’t the Holy Grail of their parents’ generation.

“When people look back in 10 years, I don’t even think they remember the valedictorian of their class,” said Sarfaty, who has the top GPA among Cleveland’s 27 valedictorians and is Harvard-bound. “So why boast about something in front of parents and other students that isn’t really important in the larger scheme of things?”

Kevin Shapiro, the top-ranked student of North Hollywood’s graduating class, also said he doesn’t mind sharing the title.

“To me, it’s just a word and doesn’t carry a lot of weight, so it doesn’t really bother me if there are seven of us who are being called valedictorian,” he said.

But resentment has not disappeared entirely. Vanessa Torres, a senior at Van Nuys High School who has dramatically improved her grades from Ds and Fs to As and Bs, said that if you’re not No.1 or an honors student, you’re virtually ignored.

“My counselor, she’s supportive of me, but it would be nice if they even gave us a certificate or something to let us know that they realize we’re trying,” Torres said.

For those students who are selected as No.1, the term “valedictorian” still carries a certain cachet, but that distinction alone has never guaranteed admission to top universities. “It’s not a driving force, especially on the more competitive campuses,” said Carla Ferri, University of California’s director of admissions.

Regardless of the honor’s diminishing returns, pride still will mingle with ambivalence at Cleveland High on Thursday as the valedictorians accept their applause.

“If it was just the top person, I’d be [No. 4 or 5] and wouldn’t get that honor,” said LeDuc, one of the throng of valedictorians.

“But I do feel that that one certain person should get some kind of credit for being the best in the school. Everyone knows how smart Galit is, and there should be something at graduation for her.”