Valedictorians are back. (So are the leftist tears …)
The lefties are having a hard time being out of power in the Moore County school system. So many of their sacred cows are being slaughtered. And the new conservative majority is just getting started.
Back in 2018, when things at the Carthage central office were much friendlier to the lefties, a plan was instituted to wipe out the recognition of valedictorians and salutatorians by 2021.
Last year, when conservatives were only three of the board’s seven members, David Hensley and Phillip Holmes tried to reverse the policy on recognizing academic excellence. The leftist majority would not budge.
In this new era, the idea is getting a much more receptive hearing. Hensley put together a very succinct, very effective presentation on the merits of bringing back salutatorians and valedictorians. His reasoning was simple. Hard work and excellence by young people should be recognized. Success and other positive achievements should be held up as an example.
Social justice warriors, who used to run our local schools (and still run most across the country), view competition and excelling above and beyond peers as harmful to self-esteem. *No one should be viewed as better than others. Pull everyone down to the same mediocre or poor level if you have to.*
*Better yet — make EVERYONE a winner.*
Comrade Marx would have been so proud of our modern-day SJW ‘snowflakes.’
The revival of valedictorians and salutatorians was overwhelmingly approved by the school board. (The lone ‘NO’ vote was from the board’s lone leftist holdover pouter Stacey Caldwell.)
THIS plus a parental bill of rights? WHO KNEW the school board could be so much fun?
Below is the direct link to my short presentation on why MCS should re-instate Valedictorians and Salutatorians.
Please note on page two where I point out that they eliminated recognizing our top students, but continued with “Principal of the Year” and “Teacher of the Year”.
You will also not that not one administrator – not one, nor a single School Board member – not one, suggested getting rid of Principal or Teacher of the Year. They only wanted to get rid of student of the year (Valedictorians)
As I said in open session, is MCS priority padding resumes of administrators or recognizing our highest performing students?
The supporters for schemes such as eliminating Valedictorians never have answers to such questions. They have gotten away with it because up until now, they never had anyone in authority asking such questions.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-5uENBbhp2Ym8OFDAA-zAjIIjcAr0vD2/view
Returning this recognition is important. However what is the government high school diploma worth anymore? Those Kids lost two years of learning through the useless school shutdowns. What is far more important is to restore rigorous, nationally-normed exams such as the Iowas (ITBS) and Classical Learning Test (CLT). Former governor Hunt abandoned these due to our state’s perennially poor standing. The home-grown EOGs have been in use since, making it impossible to compare school and teacher performance to the rest of the country. Private and home schools use the nationally-normed tests, one of the reasons their students are years ahead of government schools.
You are correct. The Hunt administration destroyed the ability to compare the performance of our public schools and our students against national norms.
We are looking hard for ways to compare the performance of our students against national norms. We have discussed some of the tools we currently have, such as iReady and SATs and their suitability to use as a benchmark.
We are also considering administration of the Iowa Basic Skills Tests or other tools to a subset of our students.
This is just in the conceptual discussion stage, but it is an important discussion to have. I am glad it is on the mind of others as well.