Well, holy shit, you don’t think that might have something to do with the school’s decision? Teenage pregnancy is a *huge *deal to school administrations. This is especially true in Arkansas, which is tenth in teen pregnancies by state. Having a teenaged girl with a baby named valedictorian would, indeed, be “a huge mess,” from the administrations view point, because they’re desperately trying to convince kids that having a baby at 16 is a huge, huge mistake. That message is somewhat undercut if the best student in your school is already a mom. The girl deserves a lot of credit for having a baby, and still getting such a high GPA. But that’s very much an anomaly - most teenagers who have kids aren’t going to even finish high school, let alone graduate at the top of their class. It’s entirely proper that the administration would be extremely leery of undercutting their “Don’t get pregnant” message by giving so much recognition to a teenaged mother.
We can’t have facts undercutting our message!
You’d think that. But then why make her a valedictorian at all? How does the selection of a “co-valedictorian” cancel out the fact that she was pregnant? I don’t get it.
The fact is that teenage pregnancy correlates directly to dropping out of high school. Wimberly is an outlier. Very, very few other teenaged mothers are going to do as well as she did in school, but quite a few teenagers who don’t have kids might look at her and think having a kid won’t majorly disrupt their future. And they will be wrong.
Was that decision made before or after the Wimberlys started threatening a lawsuit?
I have read a couple of articles about it. The co-val had a slightly lower gpa, but a half credit more in coursework. The principal is white, but the black superintendent says he would have made the same decision. The handbook says that a student taking more credits and maintaining an A will not be penalized.
I wonder if the co-val went to the administrators and pointed out the credit difference and the handbook, and the principal said yeah you are right?
And the school has had at least one black val but it has been more than 20 years.
They will probably be wrong, you mean. That correlation is statistical for a population, not causal in all cases. Wimberly’s achievement is also a fact.
Putting a consistent message above inconvenient facts is the opposite of education.
Bin–GO!! Finally, after all this mess, someone has nailed it. As great as her individual story is, it is the exception not the rule. As far as sending a message, what kind of muddled, seemingly contradictory message would making a student (unwed) with a child valedictorian send? I’m not saying they did the right thing if that was indeed the motivation but there ARE possibilities aside from racism.
Right about what? The articles I read said that course load was only to be used as a tiebreaker between identical GPAs. The notion of a tiebreaker itself suggests that there is only expected to be one valedictorian.
That’s a lovely slogan, but it doesn’t do much to prevent kids from getting pregnant before they’re old enough to drive.
Well, I don’t think preventing teen pregnancy, per se, is an appropriate mission for schools anyway. Education about pregnancy and related issues, another matter. But I have considerable doubts about the efficacy of “messaging” from schools in any case, and very especially in cases where the message content is put above truth. “Consistency” in drug education backfired for a lot of kids who found out they’d been lied to about marijuana, for example.
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/07/26/valedictorian-sues-school-was-she-snubbed-because-of-race/
Eta link
The handbook says students will be given the same class rank only if their grades are the same, but in deciding class rank, students with lower GPAs who are taking more or harder classes will not be penalized. Gathen said the Wimberly’s co- valedictorian had half a credit more than Wimberly and the difference in the students’ GPAs was .03 or.05. Gathen said the outcome would have been the same were the situations reversed.
From Cnn.
This sounds like students with a lower gpa will gain rank points if their gpa is lower than someone else’s, if their classes are harder. So someone with a fractionally lower gpa could make an argument that she should be val over kymberly because her classes were harder.
I think it sends a different message if they don’t let her be valedictorian based on her being a teen mother – that it’s okay to manipulate facts in order to send out said message. Instead of directly sending messages, isn’t it better to lay out all the facts and give them the tools to judge?
But a valedictorian is the student with the class rank of #1. The message (if any) is “here is this year’s top student.” The school, frankly, has no choice in the matter—it’s supposed to be an open and honest competition among the students, sustained over four years, and race / sex / childbearing / sexuality / etc. should have nothing to do with it. Likewise if the #1 student is ugly or obnoxious or smells funny.
Now, if a teen mother finishes at the #4 spot, or #54, there’s no shame—#1 might not have been possible for her as she had extra work to take on. Likewise a black student battling institutionalized racism. All it takes is one unearned C to kiss that #1 slot goodbye. But if a student has hit #1, then she is valedictorian, period.
Regarding the student with the extra half-credit: schools usually have a formula for figuring these things out. For my school, advanced classes were graded on the five-point scale rather than the four-point scale. (A = 5.0, B = 4.0, while regular classes were A = 4.0, B = 3.0). Regardless of what formula they choose, it shouldn’t be ambiguous enough to resort to a judgement call.
If Wimberly is such an outlier, then doesn’t that make her achievement all the more remarkable?
And regardless of that, we are, or should be, talking about an honor that is supposed to be determined by one very simple metric. IMHO external factors of lifestyle, even irresponsible choices, shouldn’t be a factor. A kid can be smart and hard working, but still need some time to grow some wisdom.
Just to clarify, you do know that the phrase “Mississippi Delta” does not refer to the delta of the Mississippi River, right? It is a common mistake.
Anyways, treating someone differently because they have a kid in high school is no less prejudiced than treating them differently because they are black.
And any school that doesn’t realize that diluting an honor of a black person is going to create a suit alleging racism is too stupid to remain in position, anyways. If you do something out of the ordinary to a black person, racism is assumed. Especially here in Arkansas where we had to have the national guard desegregate the schools at our state capital.
I’m not clear on the distinction you’re making here.
What lie are you talking about? It’s a fact that teenagers who get pregnant are much less likely to finish school than teenagers who don’t. I’m not advocating that the schools should claim that teenagers who get pregnant can never finish high school, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong about not giving a teenager who has made a extremely poor life decision the highest honor possible in the high school system. If you have a kid when your sixteen, you’re going to miss out on some opportunities in life. There’s nothing wrong with making valedictorian one of those things you miss out on.
That said, it should have been a policy in place before the issue came up. I looked up the McGehee Secondary School student handbook on line, and there’s no mention of pregnancy as a disqualifier for valedictorian. I do have a problem with the school inventing qualifications after the fact, so on that score, I think the school is in the wrong.
I will not be responding to you anymore in this thread, Rand. Not until you conduct yourself like an adult.
Miller, surely the school would STILL be setting itself up for a law suit if the girl was denied the full honor only because she was a mother (and remember, it’s not like she was preggers at the time of graduation.) Why punish her (and yes, it’s a punishment) for something that’s 1) not against the law, 2)apparently not against school policy, since she remained enrolled, and 3) didn’t cause any hardship to anyone except to the girl in question and probably her mother.
And again, the “big mess” that would follow with having a mother-as-a-valedictorian? Why pander to people who would have a problem with this? They’re stupidheads, just like racists. The message of having a teenager mother as valedictorian wouldn’t be a negative one. It would an inspirational one. “I might have made a major mistake in my life, but I haven’t let it hold me back. No excuses, people. That’s what my story is all about.” If that’s not the makings of a made-for-TV movie, I don’t know what is. Bristol Palin would be so proud.
It seems to me like the school doesn’t do co-valedictorians on a regular basis. If I were the girl’s mother and the school said that they there was going to be a co-valedictorian, I for one would want to know what the hell was behind this reasoning. But they were never given a chance to hear it. Don’t ya’ll think that’s just a wee bit fishy? If the school was on the up-and-up, it should have had a response ready. That they saw a “big mess” in one situation and not a “big mess” in this situation indicates that they are dumb as well as potentially racist.
Oh yes, as for the girl having been told she’d be valedictorian (at least as commonly understood…as earning the highest GPA in class), I got that from the link in the OP:
Bolding mine.
Maybe she’s a lying about that too?