You've all done an admirable job piling on. I'm not going to say she doesn't deserve it. The number one reason to not file a lawsuit in a situation like this is precisely to avoid negative reaction. I'm not going to reiterate all the reasons to consider her a whiny ingrate; everybody else has done a great job at that and I actually agree with most of what has been said (without endorsing the more blunt epithets).
But let's look at a few more things that incline me to think that the school has behaved badly--in addition to, not instead of, Hornstine.
First of all, many comments have said something to the effect that "she doesn't deserve to be valedictorian." Well NOBODY
deserves to be valedictorian. There is generally a RULE which dictates how the valedictorian is chosen. And in the case of the
Moorestown School District, this rule is very simple: "The senior student with the highest seventh semester WGPA will be named the valedictorian." It doesn't say ANYTHING about exceptions, or co-valedictorians, or anything. The WGPA is the *weighted* grade point average and is supposed to take course difficulty into account. (You get 4.0 for an A or 4.3 for A+ in a "standard" course; 4.5 or 4.8 for an "honors" course; and 5.0 or 5.3 in an "AP" course.) Is it too much to ask for the school district to follow its own rules?
Of course we all know this effort to codify and standardize course difficulty is ridiculous. Maybe AP European History is harder than AP Calculus. Tough, you just get a 5.0 for an A in either case. Is that fair? Let's go to Superintendent Kadri:
"The superintendent said two other seniors with near-perfect grades could not have earned high enough weighted grades to surpass Hornstine because they are 'subject to the rigorous in-school grading standards employed by certain advanced placement teachers.'" Wait--you're telling me some teachers grade harder than others?? Stop the presses! If I lived in Moorestown I'd immediately be on the phone to Kadri to ask him for the names of those "certain advanced placement teachers" so I could put my kids in the AP courses without the rigorous instructors.
The only way this matters is if somebody decided that the courses Hornstine did at home were worth AP credit. If not, if they're just standard courses, then Hornstine can get the same points for getting an A in this course that another student can get for a B in an AP course. Clearly Hornstine got AP credit for the courses or her WGPA wouldn't be higher than everybody else's. So, who decided it was OK for her courses to get AP credit? I'm guessing the principal, if not the superintendent himself, signed off on it. Now, you might argue whether this was a good decision or not. I personally think it probably wasn't, but I don't really care because I think the whole grading and handicapping of children's academic performance is ridiculous either way. But at any rate, somebody decided they should count those courses as APs for Hornstine when they did her WGPA.
Oh yeah, Kadri... poor guy, my heart goes out to him. I know he's having a bad month. Who put him up to this? I dare say at any school there are probably no more than a dozen students at the outside in each class who are in any danger of being valedictorian, and it's probably usually MUCH smaller. In this case, there seem to be two others besides Hornstine. I'm pretty sure that a student sitting there with a 3.7 average probably doesn't care a whole lot whether the student with the 5.19 or the student with the 5.13 gets it, unless he happens to be friends with the student. Until Hornstine screwed up by filing a lawsuit, nobody really cared... except Hornstine, the other two students, and their families and friends. I guarantee you, somebody connected with one of those other two students complained to Kadri and lit a fire under him. (And they had the brains to do it without involving any lawyers--tho I wouldn't be surprised if there were veiled threats of lawyers.) I bet there are some teachers involved too. Why wouldn't there be? It's probably a safe bet that there is some desire on the part of at least some teachers to punish Hornstine for not being in class enough.
So, here's what I think should happen.
- The idea of a "co-valedictorian" is ludicrous except in the situation where there is an actual tie. The valedictorian is the one with the highest WGPA, period. If that's Hornstine, fine. If not, fine. (If they decided that some of the courses Hornstine did shouldn't qualify as AP courses, pulling her WGPA down and making her non-valedictorian, well, those are the breaks. I personally think it smacks of changing the rules in the middle of the game, after finding out that the winner was somebody unacceptable--unless, indeed, there was some clerical error, in which case we wouldn't be having this discussion. But I find that more palatable than appointing two valedictorians with different WGPAs.)
- The school board needs to clarify exactly what the policy is for determining which courses qualify for Honors or AP credit. If they want to, they can put in a rule that specifies that nobody whose course of study includes independent studies or Independent Educational Plans can be considered for valedictorian. Or they can make a rule that such courses are never eligible for extra points for WGPA purposes. But make a rule and stick to it.
- The school district and its lawyers need to be very VERY careful about what they're saying. They're awfully close to, on the one hand, saying that Hornstine was just given her grades for no performance or at least performance not commensurate with the grades, which speaks extremely poorly for academic standards in the district. And on the other hand, saying that you can get a more rigorous course of study (i.e. more AP courses) through home study than you can by going to school. I'm not saying they've said either one of these things, but they've come awfully close. I'm sure the Suprintendent, the School Board, and the Teacher's Union certainly don't believe they're true.
Finally, you can't have it both ways: If you think "Hornstine shouldn't mind sharing the honors," then the honors weren't worth much to start with, and it shouldn't be a big deal if somebody else doesn't get them. If you think being the valedictorian is valuable and a great achievement, then you have to acknowledge that its value is due to its singularity. Hell, why not have 5 or 6 co-valedictorians? I'm sure there are plenty of smart kids in Moorestown. We can dump on Hornstine all we want for the way she's handling this, but if you think it's a signal honor to be valedictorian, then you can't say she ought to be happy to share it.
Having said that, I don't think it makes a damn bit of practical difference to anybody. You think Harvard has trouble getting applications from valedictorians around the country? Contrariwise do they populate their entire student body with valedictorians? Please. The fact that she has all her college acceptances in her pocket and will keep them whether she's valedictorian or not (as several people have rightly pointed out) just shows how worthless the title is. This whole thing reminds me of when my kids fight over who gets to eat dinner with the "special" fork. Except in that case the kids have decided between themselves that one fork is, for no reason apparent to the grownups, "special," and they are fighting over it while the grownups tell them to stop being ridiculous. In the case of the valedictorian story, the fork has been fabricated and supplied by the adults and the children have been encouraged to fight for it. My favorite response thus far was from warch: "Scrap the whole valedictorian thing, scrap the drinking age. The school board should buy every kid who is still alive at the age of 18 a beer."
So what should Hornstine have done? Very simple. She should have issued this statement, which I would have been happy to write for her before it became too late:
"I understand that some people on the school board are concerned about comparing apples to oranges with my IEP and the standard curriculum in the determination of valedictorian and that there is talk of having a co-valedictorian. I strenuously object to such a solution because I feel that there should be only one valedictorian. If the school board feels that the fabulous educational experiences I have had at Moorestown High do not suit me for competition for valedictorian, then I think their proper course of action is to appoint another student rather than have an embarassing charade of "co-valedictorians." I prefer rather to affirm the words of the school district's grading policy: 'The academic environment in Moorestown High School is very challenging. The majority of our students meet that challenge by earning exemplary grades. The comparisons among students inherent in rank-in-class calculation unnecessarily increases competition within the school. Further, we believe that our students’ levels of achievement are not equitably or fully communicated by this single figure transcript statistic. Therefore, Moorestown High School no longer reports class rank.' I thank all the teachers here for their help over the last four years, and I wish my fellow graduates of the class of 2003 every success."
She might have lost the valedictorianship with this gambit, but she would have made it impossible for any other student to get it without a mental asterisk by their name, and most importantly, she would have made the school board look less mature than she is instead of having everybody complaining that she's a crybaby.
