More high schools do away with GPA-based class rankings

Stress, lack of wellroundedness spur districts to drop it.

Hilliard schools will no longer give numerical rankings to graduates, starting with those entering high school this fall, the district announced last week.

The number just doesn’t mean what it used to, school officials say, with the escalating arms race over gradepoint average among students.

“We’ve had parents ask us if their kids can skip lunch and take an extra course,” said district spokeswoman Stacie Raterman. “We hear from our top students how stressed they are.”

A committee of school staff members and parents approached the issue this spring from a mental-health standpoint and also with the goal of encouraging students to be well-rounded, she said.

Hilliard joins several other local districts, Dublin, Upper Arlington and New Albany-Plain among them, that have abolished class rank.

The committee at Hilliard found that students forgo taking elective classes in areas of interest or curiosity if they are graded on a 4.0 scale. Advanced Placement and honors classes are given extra weight, 5.0 and 4.5, respectively. Most districts do some form of weighting to reflect the course’s difficulty.

“It was bothersome when I’d hear students say they can’t take that class because of its GPA,” said John Bandow, Hilliard’s director of high school curriculum and college partnerships, in a blog post about the change. “The courses that may see an uptick in student enrollment will be in the arts, music and business departments.”

At Hilliard Darby High School, 104 seniors, or 28 percent of the graduating class, had a 4.0 GPA or higher, according to preliminary numbers that don’t include students who attended Tolles Career and Technical Center. At Davidson High School, earning a 4.0 or higher were 75 seniors, or 18 percent of the class. At Bradley, 93 seniors, or 23 percent, had a 4.0 or higher.

Raterman pointed out that a Hilliard student with a 4.0 GPA would have a relatively low rank. “That just doesn’t look great on a transcript, potentially,” she said.

So for the class of 2022, no more valedictorian or salutatorian honors. High-achieving students will earn Latin honors: summa cum laude (“with highest honor”), magna cum laude (“with great honor”) and cum laude (“with honor”).

Graduation speakers will be chosen for something other than having the highest GPA. The committee talked about having an application process or even an audition for the honor, Raterman said.

“This is going to open up graduation speaking to a whole different group of kids, potentially,” she said.

The GPA distribution will be listed in deciles in the school profile that the district gives to college admission offices.

Dublin’s three high schools don’t use class rank, but they bestow the label of valedictorian on any graduate with a 4.1 GPA or above. That included 269 students out of nearly 1,200 students in the class of 2018. There were 352 students earning a 4.0 or higher.

Worthington’s two high schools essentially do the opposite: They do not name valedictorians, but they list a student’s class rank on his or her transcript, said district spokeswoman Vicki Gnezda.

About half of high schools have done away with class rank, which has left college admissions officers with one fewer way to evaluate applicants, said Caroline Miller, senior vice president for enrollment management at the University of Cincinnati.

“We have to cope with it,” Miller said. But class rank is extremely helpful for those who make admissions decisions. “It’s one of the best predictors of success.

“What it causes (an application) reader to do is put more emphasis on other measures,” she said, including SAT and ACT scores.