Window dressing.

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They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

I've haven't looked at them recently but the ones my kids take gave their percentage ranks broken down by subject area. Don't remember what the standard was, if it was state, national, etc.

My child's doesn't include that- but I have the volunteer job of filing the results and I'm creepy good at math- which apparently has been passed on- but I can't explain how I know that.

Our kids' teachers would even go over the results at the parent-teacher conferences.

I teach in a public high school.

I don't have a problem with eliminating class rankings. Our school graduates ~500 students each year, and 20-30 of them will have had a 4.0 GPA going back to 9th grade. Some of them took 3 years of a foreign language, 4 years of math, 4 years of science, and a few AP classes. Some of them played in the band and were in sports year-round. It's tough to differentiate between them.

Standardized testing results are frustrating for everyone. Teachers are evaluated based on "their" students' results. I've had students drop a class after the first week but when they take a test in April they are considered as one of my students. The "meets standards" sort of reporting bothers students and parents who would like to know some details on the questions answered correctly or the questions missed. Throw in the amount of time devoted to preparing for the tests, administering the tests, and pulling students of of class to makeup a test that they missed and it makes it tough to cover the subjects the teachers are supposed to be teaching.

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"Human existence is based upon two pillars: Compassion and knowledge. Compassion without knowledge is ineffective; Knowledge without compassion is inhuman." Victor Weisskopf.

Would grading on a curve help distinguish between the top students? Work that is honestly average gets a C. The average grade in our kid's classes, average mind you, is a B+. The grading culture has gotten so out of whack that their teachers will happily tell you that they grade easier on poor performing students in an attempt to motivate them. If I sucked at math, but I got B's, my parents and I might never realize that I sucked at math.

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Books @ Amazon
"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart

I don't believe this is necessarily an example of the "everyone a winner" mentality.

I also don't believe that the lack of class rankings make it more difficult for colleges to measure merit when considering applicants, especially since here, the trend is not to completely eliminate any form of honors. Seems like the trend is to move away from rankings to a summa/magna/cum laude system, or something similar. And there is still GPA, honors or AP classes, and SAT/ACT to distinguish students.

I always thought the idea of a valedictorian was misleading. Sure, it measure the ability of someone to obtain the highest GPA, still a significant achievement. But given the diversity in classes, difficult vs. easy teachers, honors/AP, extra curricular activities, etc., it certainly doesn't identify the best student or the one who achieved the most.

Also, it's safe to assume that if a student graduates with a 4.0 (or whatever the inflated equivalent is today), something which will nearly always happen in a large enough class, then any college and anyone else can assume that person would have been valedictorian or co-valedictorian.

Grading on a curve helps, but it also assumes everyone takes similarly rigorous classes. It has the advantage of a de-facto ranking, but it also has disadvantages.

The issue of teachers going easier on poor students as a motivational tool, assuming that that's even a significant enough phenomenon to care about, sounds like a different issue -- a teacher performance issue.

Ok, but when 40% of an average class is getting A's, that's a problem. It prevents anyone, parents included, from really understanding how the kid did in that class. Success, in anything, needs to be measurable. When folks are acting to make it harder to measure success or acheivement, one can be assured that it's not genuine success or acheivement that those folks are trying to encourage.

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Books @ Amazon
"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart

But given the diversity in classes, difficult vs. easy teachers, honors/AP, extra curricular activities, etc., it certainly doesn't identify the best student or the one who achieved the most.

Our high school does a weighted GPA with honors and AP classes getting 5 and 10% more weight respectively.

I understand that schools do that now.

They didn't when I was in high school, so that we had two valedictorians. One who lettered in two sports for four years and took all the honors and AP classes offered. The other who played one sport his freshman year, was involved in student government, but who never took an honors or AP class, precisely because he wanted a 4.0.

But even additional credit for honors/AP doesn't cover everything. For example, a fourth year of math or foreign language, as opposed photography, even though there is no honors or AP offering. Or how extracurricular activities can impact grades.

I agree that that would be a problem. But is that something that really happens on a regular or even close to average basis?

And when it does happen, is it necessarily wrong? I think there's a difference between giving out a good grade to someone who doesn't deserve it and giving out lots of good grades to a class of students who all deserve it. I suspect we've all had teachers in high school and in college who have said, to the effect, everyone can get an A provided you earn it. Just as we've likely had teachers who do the opposite and rarely give out an A. We've had teachers that grade on a strict percentage basis -- 90-100 = A, 80-89 + B, etc., regardless of whether anyone even scored above a 90. And we've had teachers who have graded on a strict curve. Part of high school is learning how to adapt to and handle these different grading schemes, so that you can deal with it in college.

It's relatively easy to rank the "AP students" above the "straight jocks".

But should AP Calculus count more or less than AP Physics? What about a student who took five AP classes and scored "4's" on every exam vs the student who took three AP classes and scored "5's" on all of their exams? (Realizing you'd only know the AP exam scores for classes a student took before their senior year when it is time for them to graduate.)

You could establish a scoring system to weight certain classes, but then students (and parents) would game the system. "Don't take AP English. Take Spanish III because it's easier to get an "A" and it counts the same for class rank."

Bottom line. Colleges and scholarship committees don't look at class rank anymore. It's not a good way to determine who might succeed later.

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"Human existence is based upon two pillars: Compassion and knowledge. Compassion without knowledge is ineffective; Knowledge without compassion is inhuman." Victor Weisskopf.

but who never took an honors or AP class, precisely because he wanted a 4.0. For example, a fourth year of math or foreign language, as opposed photography

That is a problem but usually gets straightened out when they apply for college. ;-)

Ok, but when 40% of an average class is getting A's, that's a problem.

That's a problem with the district. Our high school usually has 10-15 students in each class who make high honors (all A's) each quarter. School has about 2200 kids.

 
Bottom line. Colleges and scholarship committees don't look at class rank anymore. It's not a good way to determine who might succeed later.[/quote]


As a high school guidance counselor I'm aware of several colleges that give additional money for ranking top 1 or 2 in the class. Even came across a college this year that had a 5-10k per year award if you ranked in the top 15% of the class. The college called me to double check class size because his rank was 14.95 or something. From my observations most high schools still rank.

Agree. Your district needs to straighten this out.

FWIW, schools do a much better job differentiating between their students' performance than we did with people when I was in the USAF. Almost everyone was "firewalled" on their OPR/APR. You were supposed to be able to tell who was doing a better job based on the words used by the writer. (In the end, the "dad's a general" guys always did well.)

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"Human existence is based upon two pillars: Compassion and knowledge. Compassion without knowledge is ineffective; Knowledge without compassion is inhuman." Victor Weisskopf.

Unless it's Evergreen College, apparently.

I believe my kids' high school required either (1) four years of math and three years of a foreign language, or (2) three years of math and for years of a foreign language. Or something along those lines. We didn't let our kids have a choice. They had to have four of each. They also had to enroll in at least one honors or AP class per semester. In our view, it simply about getting accepted to college, it was about being ready for college.

What I described isn't some rare occurrence, it's the status quo.

The boys are in a public school in a town where a large fraction of the professional parents have put their kids in private schools. So the public schools don't have an average group of kids, they have a distinctly below average group because so many of the kids that give a shit, a reflection of their parents, aren't in the public school. The public school kids are any dumber mind you, it's just that so many of them come from homes (meaning, parents) that don't give a shit, or are screwed up, or both.

Since the average grade in the kid's classes is a B+, it follows that ~40% of the kids are getting A's.

If we had it to do over again, we'd have put our kids in one of the charter schools that have been very successful because they only accept motivated kids. We were overly optimistic, 9yrs ago, re. the school the kids have spent these past years in. As a result of that error, since kindergarten, we've been doing a lot of math, reading, and writing at home with the kids to make up for the school's failings. I'm in charge of math and I'm relentless. Every night we work on math.

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Books @ Amazon
"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart