High School thinking of making a change - need opinions

[orjr]

Since starting this thread, I've met with admin again to discuss the problem of rank. As we are preparing for grad. and compiling college and scholarship info. it's a good time to talk about it. I was told to gather data from my volunteer work helping students with college - how many students lost out on scholarships or college choice because of the ranking issue? So I"m working on this. At least they are willing to discuss it.
I'm finding though that the only students I can PROVE this for are those applying to "matrix" schools - the ones with a little chart: GPA = X, rank = X, SAT = X therefore your scholarship = Y.

[cangel]

Cptofthe has a good point as well - put the onus back on the college. Would that backfire?? Don't know. But it could be very tough to establish "most rigorous" at a school where the kids have lots of options, or there are a lot of students, or even the opposite, where because of scheduling an individual's options may be limited against their will.

At my kid's school, the GC is very upfront about filling out the paperwork with honesty and integrity, but in such a way that paints the individual in the best light, without compromising his or her classmates. It is a little easier for her, though, because this only matters for a small group of students, maybe 30 at most. A core group of those kids, about 15 each year, are going to get "most rigorous" because the class choices are limited at the school, and they all took the same courses. Now out of that 15, there maybe are one or two that "went over and above", maybe doubling up on science or taking a college class (that is almost unheard of at this school, though). ALso, there would be a few who missed one class because of scheduling conflicts - they might get most rigotous, too.

What do you do with this situation - in our area, it is still uncommon for a student to graduate with 4 years of foreign language, so which is more rigorous - a kid with 5 academic credits each year, including 4 years of foreign language, or 5 academic credits each year, including 3 years of foreign language and an extra math or history credit as the 5th academic credit. Which is more rigorous - given a 7 period day, the student who takes 5 academic classes each year (20 credits), 4 extracurric (a mixture of PE and fine arts, one per year), 3 study halls and doubles up on one academic class one year OR the student who takes 5 academic classes each year, band and chorus each year, and never takes a study hall? Gets complicated real fast!
That's why I think it so important that the attitude of the admin and the GC be that their job is fairness to the students and advocacy for the students.

[orjr]

cangel - I like the way you think - could you come be on our committee??

[cptofthehouse]

The top private schools refuse to give ranks or even percentiles. They let the colleges do it themselves as well. When you do that they use a method where you can have more than 10% of your kids in the top 10% because you are not restricted to your school pool. Ranking is rather meaningless when all of your kids are high calibre. I think it is even meaningless when you have slivers of percentiles separating #1 from #5, and the problem becomes that college actually take those numbers and use them if you provide them. If you don't they may not be able to figure out who is #1.

[mathmom]

I don't think not taking a fourth year of a foreign language if you take something equally rigorous is a problem. So if that fourth year would have been the AP year, any other AP (even the easy ones) is equally rigorous. What I don't like to see is kids who get penalized for taking orchestra or band (if it's not weighted) instead of some class that is weighted. I've come to the conclusion there is no truly fair way to weight grades, but that on the whole weighting is better than not weighting and that GC's should use their discretion when checking off the "Most rigorous" box. Mathson didn't take AP or Honors English because they were scheduled at the same time as AP Latin and AP Physics, not his fault. The GC mentioned the scheduling problem in her recommendation.

[orjr]

Captain - I think the "level" of our school may be part of the issue. We are a large public (for around here - about 2000 students) Title 1 school with a low graduation rate, and a lower 4 year college attendance rate. The reason we are the only school in area with an IB program was to gain more academic diversity for the building. There is quite a bit of political pressure to not further dichotomize the IB students from the rest of the student population, hence the hesitancy to weight grades for rank. But I don't think our school profile is helping anyone get into college except our URM and first generation kids. We DID however have one student go off to Dartmouth last year, and another headed there this year. In the past 10 years we've also had one student accepted at Stanford & Duke (same kid), and this year we have one going off to Amherst. Graduating class of about 360. Vast majority of our college attendees stay at local CC or local state U. Just to give you an idea from the overall school perspective.

[Treetopleaf]

Our school district has weighted grades. They add weight for honors, and even more for AP, and provide both weighted and unweighted grade points and weighted and unweighted rankings. All of this shows up on the transcript. Honor rolls are determined using highest grade point. I think this is a fair system, as it makes plain who has taken and succeeded at the rigorous courses.

[JaneyPT]

I think there should be ranking