How is Class Rank determined at your child's school?

austinareadad
Fri, 19 Oct 2012 10:57:55 +0000

In my S’s Texas public high school, only academic classes count, and they count beginning in 9th grade. There are four kinds of academics classes – regular, pre-AP, Community College, and AP. On the transcripts, all one sees are the number grades for each class, e.g. a 95. But to calculate class rank, the number grades are weighted, as the pre-AP and Community College class grades are multiplied by 1.15 (e.g., 95 * 1.15) and the AP class grades are multiplied by 1.17 (e.g., 95 * 1.17).

I don’t have a problem with the idea of weighting the different kinds of classes, but I think the specific weightings used are flawed. The difficulty of the Pre-AP classes is probably only halfway between that of regular classes and that of AP classes. Also, the Community College classes appear to be between the pre-AP and AP classes. If I were to weight them, I would use a factor of 1.1 for pre-AP, 1.15 for Community College, and 1.2 for AP (not a perfect system of course, but I believe better). As it is, because the classes are weighted improperly, the kids who try to game the system to maximize class rank (class rank is critical in Texas) take as many pre-AP’s as possible, take some Community College classes in place of AP’s, and take few if any AP’s. If the administrators would see this, maybe they would adjust the weighting.