Valedictorians in Fort Bend ISD switched amid policy backlash
Fort Bend ISD has changed valedictorians at two high schools, upending a hotly debated class ranking policy that students have lived under for four years as they are now set to graduate.
In recent days, school officials said in a statement that they changed the valedictorians at Marshall and Willowridge high schools “after a thorough assessment.”
“It’s very sad, unfair and disappointing,” said 17year-old Naomi Groghue, the top-ranked senior at Marshall who will now graduate ranked No. 48 at Elkins High School, the school she was zoned for but never attended.
The graduation shakeup is the latest controversy surrounding the 2019 policy that sprang from what was seen as unfair advantages to some students who enrolled in schools to which they were not zoned.
This was usually done to meet academic needs or wishes, like technical courses or early college programs. But district lead
started to notice that some high school seniors from schools with competitive rankings would transfer to another school where they could be ranked higher — even in the top 10, said Stephanie Brown, community advocate and Marshall parent teacher organization president.
In Texas, students graduating in the top 10% of their high school class are guaranteed admission to any public university in the state.
Under a new policy that began when the class of 2024 were freshmen, gaming the system in such a way was not possible. All high school students must be ranked at the high school where they are geographically zoned, even if they attend another school.
The Fort Bend ISD board of trustees has already done away with the policy, starting with the class of 2028.
However, students will continue to be ranked at their zoned campuses for the next three years, outgoing board President Judy Dae said last week.
Groghue said she thought she would cap her four years at Marshall with a valedictorian’s speech, only to learn that a student who never attended Marshall would be given the honor.
“The student who received first place at Marshall had never walked the halls of Marshall at all — they were at a different high school the entire time,” Brown said.
Brown said the rankings going forward were updated at her insistence. Instead of being replaced as valedictorian by a student who attended another high school, Groghue will be replaced by someone who also has attended Marshall for four years.
Fort Bend ISD spokesperson Sherry Williams said last week that Superintendent Marc Smith was not available for an interview.
Neither Smith nor Williams answered questions about why the Willowridge and Marshall valedictorians were changed or why Groghue’s ranking remains at Elkins High School rather than Marshall.
“The current policy states class rank for high school students is established based on the campus where a student is zoned,” Smith said in the statement. “Beginning with high school students in the class of 2028 and beyond, the campus of accountability and class rank will be the campus where the student received instruction.”
Charles Dupre, former FBISD superintendent, said in a December 2019 YouTube video that “students attending programs of choice or students on an intradistrict transfer will be ranked with their peers at the high school in which they reside instead of the campus they attend.”
“The current system created some inequities, leading to students from some parts of the district taking a disproportionate number of spots for automatic admissions to colleges,” he said in the video.
Brown said last week that she thinks the new policy hurts students more — “finding out that a student that has never walked the halls of your school, that the kids never seen before, can come over and take the top spots in your class. On top of that, they don’t even have to graduate with you at graduation, they just take your ranking.”
At a Dec.16, 2019, school board meeting led by Dupre, other community members joined Dae in voicing opposition to the policy’s adoption specifically to prevent situations like Naomi’s.
Trustee Angie Hanan, who spoke against the policy in 2019, declined to comment last week and referred to her statements accessible in the recordings of previous meetings.
“This idea of ranking students with a cohort of students from another campus is disrespectful to the children and teachers,” Hanan said at the December 2019 school board meeting. “Answer the questions parents have put in front of you — about valedictorians, salutatorians, providing rankings to out of state colleges? You cannot say ‘we’ll iron out the kinks later’ because there is not an iron big enough or hot enough.”
Because the policy started in 2019, Naomi’s graduating class is the first to be ranked at their zoned schools, Dae said.
“It took four years for the first cohort to graduate under this policy,” she said. “The policy from 2019 had an indefinite effective date, and the current board changed the policy last year but it will impact the students till 2028.”
Students in the class of 2028 are in eighth grade now and will enter high school under the updated policy in fall of this year and will be ranked at the campuses they attend.
Groghue plans to study business at the University of Texas at Austin and said being valedictorian could have boosted her scholarship prospects.
She said the Fort Bend ISD community has a history of rallying for various causes and urged residents to keep opposing the policy in hopes it can be changed for other students in high school now.
“People have to continuously advocate so no upcoming classes have to deal with this,” she said.
Brown, who raised the issue at the March 24 and April 22 Fort Bend ISD board meetings, said she hopes the current administration will change the ranking system for the classes of 2025, 2026 and 2027.
“This policy will push a lot of our students out of their top 10 positions for the next three years,” Brown said at the April 22 Fort Bend ISD school board meeting. “It is going to be mentally detrimental to our students, and it is very disheartening.”
Trustees Shirley Rose-Gilliam, David Hamilton and Sonya Jones could not be reached for comment. Trustee Rick Garcia said last week that he concurred with Dae’s statements.