When I heard that Paul Wei was this year’s Highland Park valedictorian, I asked myself, “Does an Asian kid finish at the top of the class every year?” That would be an interesting trend, given that only 3.5 percent of the school district is Asian, according to a May 2010 demographics study. So I dug into our archives and found out that the answer to my question is no; it’s just a coincidence that an Asian kid has finished at the top of the class in each of the three years that I’ve been working at this newspaper. I had to go back 11 years to find another. Here are the 21st century’s Highland Park valedictorians:
2011: Paul Wei
2010: Tianen Li
2009: Mengxuan Tang
2008: Kaydee Sloan
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2007: Elizabeth Sloan
2006: Spencer Coon
2005: Eliza Crawford
2004: Daniel Stefan
2003: Amanda Luther
2002: Angela Jillson
2001: Cameron Hall
2000: Lisa Zhang
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