Number 2 is the thing, right?

Why bother asking? Is a recruiter going to fly out to my high school and see if they can get records? Interview a teacher that still works there?

You also are likely selecting not for high school calculus geniuses, but for people willing to lie. Presumably they ask because there is a more desired answer, so if you want to get a job you should provide the more desirable answer.

Those are other great points! Yeah, as if my high school has any record of my transcript. After maybe a decade at most, that's about as relevant to an HS grad's life as their shoe size at the time.

I wouldn't personally lie about it, because 1) I'm not going to lie, and 2) I do not want any job where my coworkers are rewarded for lying. But for anyone who just wants to get in and extract some salary while it's there for the taking, morals be damned, that would be the obvious course of action.