Our kid’s HS didn’t rank either. I think that ranking is especially rare in private high schools, because ranking actually reduces a kid’s chance to be accepted to an “elite” college. I mean, how can you get 60% of your graduating class into colleges that boast that 90% of their students were in the top 2% of their HS?
One of the main reasons that there is so much grade inflation in private high schools is because of parental pressure. The main reason that parents want their kids to have high grades in HS is to increase the kid’s chance of being accepted to an “elite” college. However, it won’t help a kid to have a 4.0 UW GPA, if that is the GPA shared by 30% of the school, since then all of the 4.0 students will only be in the top 30%, which is not what “elite” colleges look for in applicants.
Solution - get rid of ranking. Colleges don’t know and don’t care much if the 4.0 that a student has is the same as another 30% of the class.
However, getting rid of ranking is, in fact, a good thing. Ranking does not do very well in either demonstrating the actual quality of students, nor does it necessarily get students to do their best.
A, a student doesn’t need to do their best, they need to do better than some other students,
B, a student can rise in ranking without improving, because other students mess up, and
C, it’s very difficult to rank students with different courses of study. AP stats is definitely not as challenging as AP Calc BC, and there are honors courses which are more challenging than some AP courses. Moreover, ranking systems notoriously benefit kids who stay within their comfort zone. For example, a brilliant STEM kid who decides to take an art class and doesn’t do well is penalized twice - once for taking a “less rigorous” course, and again for getting a B. yet this kid challenged themselves much more than the other STEM kids whose course of study focused mainly on STEM topics.