Lawmakers at the Capitol reacted with disbelief today at a report in the Rocky Mountain News that Boulder's public schools will eliminate the time-honored distinction of recognizing their top high school graduates.

Two Republican lawmakers said the development--ending the practice of designating the student with the best grades as the valedictorian--reaffirms the need for a bill they will introduce as part of the GOP's 2008 education agenda. That measure would establish Colorado's first-ever statewide curriculum standard to graduate high school.

"The action in Boulder not only is a swipe at competition, which makes our economy go 'round, but also at academic excellence," said Sen. Josh Penry, R- Fruita, who is sponsoring the graduation-standards proposal with the GOP's Rep. Rob Witwer, of Genessee.

"It sends out a message to students across Colorado that academic performance doesn't matter all that much," Penry said. "That is precisely the opposite of what we should be telling our kids so they can compete in the 21st century economy."

Witwer said the move, by a committee of the Boulder Valley School District Board of Education, raises a defining issue.

“Basically, there are two camps on this issue in education today," Witwer said. "One wants to raise standards and the other wants to lower them. We are firmly in the camp of raising  standards.”

Added Penry, "China and India are raising their standards while Boulder is dumbing down."

Boulder officials reportedly are replacing the traditional approach to honoring the top high school graduates as individuals with one that recognizes better-performing students in groups, as in college. From now on, the top 3 percent of students at each high school will earn summa cum laude honors, 7 percent magna cum laude and 10 percent cum laude. So, 20 percent of each year's graduating class will be honored.

According to the report in the News, Boulder school officials said recognizing and ranking the top finishers individually in a graduating class is unfair because only small grade-point margins separate them. The officials also complained that the selection process is slanted in favor of students who took academically more rigorous courses, which count for more points toward a student's grade-point average.

"We have a responsibility and a goal of educating the whole child and not just coming up with this race for tenths of a percentage," Boulder school board President Helayne Jones said in the report. "High school is supposed to be a time to try things out."

Penry called that mind-set "almost unbelievable."

"How are we going to define excellence when our kids are falling further and further behind the rest of the country and even the world?" Penry said.

"The gold medal winner in the hundred meters race at the Olympics is usually only a few hundreths of a second faster than the silver medal winner, and the silver medal winner is probably only a few hundreths of a second faster than the runner who wins the bronze," Penry said. "By the reasoning I'm hearing out of Boulder, we should melt down all three medals and make one award to all the top finishers. That gets our kids nowhere."

Penry's and Witwer's bill would set a omprehensive, statewide curriculum standard for graduating from a Colorado high school, including four years of math and three years of science. Right now, Colorado is one of only a handful of states with no standard.