Being English I find the whole valedictorian thing a little bizarre and overly competitive, but then I guess that means it fits well with the American way of life. In England you are encouraged to think that you are really only competing against yourself, and should be judged according to how well you perform within your own boundaries. You might say "but life's not like that", but I think it produces better adjusted school-leavers and therefore does prepare you better for the world.
As for this kid. It just seems that she is so smart that she has come top (or joint top) of her year
and realised that the litiguous nature of American society means that the law courts are fair game for makeing as much money as you can in any ridiculous way that you can. The stupidity seems to lie with the system for (a) having valedictorians and (b) not having the rules in place that would make expensive court cases unnecessary.
Three more questions:
1) She has a disability. She was given help to compensate for that disability. It was compensated for. She was back on a level playing field. She got better grades. What's the problem?
2) Why did she only get 4 A+s when she took 5 courses? Is she thick or something?
3) Why does something seem wrong with SATs? She isn't the smartest of kids (she dropped a grade) but she got 1570 out of 1600 on the SAT. 30 points out of 1600 (or 2%) seems a small gap to leave for brighter kids (those who got 5 or more A+s) and some must presumably get 1600, and any test where people get 100% is probably failing to show the true range of test-takers intelligence.
Nice avatar though. I could look at that all day.