Is this high school hurting its students?

speihei
Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:12:11 +0000

Always tough to rock the boat in some towns, and mine is no exception. Many parents are unwilling to rock the boat out of concern for the well-being of their children. Retaliation is alive and well where we live and let’s be honest, grading is a subjective business.

The prevailing attitude among administrators is (other than the obvious, “shut up, we know better”) that they want to reduce competition among students, hence no clearly definable class ranking. But the way they’ve gone about it is, in my opinion, harmful to the student body as a whole. I know first hand that we have some remarkable students in the third grouping - students who took difficult classes, performed well, and are probably in that 6-8% rank area. When they apply to schools that boast 95+% of the incoming class is in the top 10% of their high school class, I surmise these students are likely to have a problem.

My sense is that what happens here is that the students in the 6-8% range are rejected at “top tier” schools (and there is sufficient historical data to support that) and they fill spots at schools in the “next” tier. This likely has a ripple effect with those students taking spots at schools where the next group might have gained admission, and so on down the line.

As far as what I think, I think there ought to be a class rank and the school should live with the fallout. But I’m old-fashioned.

Full disclosure, this has no impact on my child, so it’s not a sour grapes post. I’m genuinely interested in what people have to say on the subject.