My high school didn’t rank, the speaker at graduation was the class president. Other schools vote for a speaker.
I’ve learned from CC that there are almost as many ways to rank students as there are high schools and many of them make no sense at all. Some schools will penalize you if you take art courses on top of a regular schedule. Others will give you a bonus if you take gym classes in the summer. What I’ve seen is that by and large, colleges can figure this out and the “right” kids get into the top schools.
FWIW, our school never told anyone their rank until the end of the first quarter senior year and even if you did poorly on courses that year you retained your rank. I remember asking what my younger son’s rank was likely to be junior year as his grades hovered between B+ and A-, and was very surprised that his GC said there was no question that he’d be in the top 10%. (No grade inflation at our high school - or maybe just a big tail of poor performing students!)