<p>I can’t thank you all enough for all the information. Please keep it coming. I was so down on myself after the treatment I received yesterday even though I know it was undeserved. Basically, it was bullying by the principal. You’re giving me strength back to do the right thing. I will call the two board members I know tonight. I will present what I have learned from calling many college admission offices by passing on the information I sent to the principal a month ago. </p>
<p>I will go through this post and make a list of things to do facilitate getting the information out to teachers and parents of upcoming students. Any more ideas may be useful and inspiring for me. Thanks a bundle.</p>
<p>Teachers in our school never see the weighted grades. Our school reports weighted and unweighted GPAs, but the individual classes only appear with unweighted grades on the transcript. Perhaps that might make the teachers less leery?</p>
<p>If I were you, I would not yet call the school board members. I would do all the research of information on this topic, of policies at schools in your state and further away too, and write up a proposed policy, as well as a well articulated rationale for it. I would then see if you can present this (nice to have it in writing) to a faculty meeting or administrative team. I would work your way up to the School Board (not start there) and also have done the legwork and put it all in writing to have something to leave with these folks. I also would try to get a group of parents and students together to form a committee on this so that you are not doing it alone.</p>
<p>“… politics is what makes things difficult.”</p>
<p>One of our relatives took pre-Algebra as an 8th grader, then moved to a new school system for 9th grade. Her HS grades were perfect, but she did not qualify for either class rank or Val/Sal because “those honors are reserved for students who have taken all required courses in THIS high school.” Long-time locals saw no problem with the policy.</p>
<p>In my D’s class in the local public school system, ninety-eight students are on the High Honor Roll (A average), and another sixty-five are on the Honor Roll (A- average). The class has 192 students … which means that ALL of the kids on the A-minus Honor Roll are in the bottom half of the class. I’ve tried to get the local parents to protest this ridiculous level of grade inflation. The typical response is “Hey, my kid is getting A’s. Why should I protest?”</p>
<p>My point is that there’s usually a political reason for bad policies and bad practices … which is why they’re so difficult to change.</p>
<p>I started calling parents of high achieving students this evening and explained the situation. The parents were receptive to organizing a group and gathering information. My most recent call was to one of the board members. I first spoke to his wife as a parent of kids taking all honors classes. She put her husband on the phone and he informed me that the superintendent called him about this matter today. My guess is that, as painful as it was to meet with the principal yesterday, it led him to address the superintendent. The board member encouraged me to call the superintendent tomorrow and present what information I gathered from my calls to the colleges in May. He assured me the superintendent would be receptive. I hope so as I am not really up for another confrontation so soon. The board member does not think I need to “gather the troops” as he is in total agreement and thinks there will be no fight needed. </p>
<p>My BP is starting to come down. I am hoping to sleep better tonight. </p>
<p>I am thankful for all the quick responses and help. I’ll keep my fingers crossed. You guys are great!</p>
<p>The local high school also does not weight grades. They used to rank, but dropped it. This happened shortly after a Presidential Scholar candidate was not accepted by Princeton, because the student’s class rank had been adversely affected by two grades of A- in sophomore English. Princeton admissions evidently told the GC’s that rank was the issue.</p>
<p>I think a number of schools have dropped rank recently, for similar reasons. In our case, no parent action was necessary–the GC’s input was sufficient to change the policy.</p>
<p>We have not heard of any students being adversely affected by the school’s decision not to rank.</p>
<p>Rank may make some sense when grades are weighted (although in that case, a lot of strange gaming seems to go on, in a lot of schools). However, Princeton apparently felt that no additional information was conveyed by a rank, if the school did not weight. </p>
<p>I could imagine that a less selective school might still want to know class rank, so that they would know, for example, whether a 3.09 GPA put a student in the top half of the class or not. Deciles with some wiggle-room for a student who is in the top 11% but not the top 10% could take care of that.</p>
Good. Never forget that the Principle works for the Superintendent and the Board, the Superintendent works for the Board, the School Board works for YOU!!</p>
<p>First, I suggest that you do bring your “troops.” It really helps to have a strong show of community support. If the board member has mis-read the opinions of his/her colleagues, it also keeps you from appearing to represent a small minority.</p>
<p>Second, I realized that the decile solution would not work in the instance of your school. I think that there should be some check-box on the Common App for cases where a student is kept out of the top x% by the grade from a single teacher. There are too many ways for this to be unfair. </p>
<p>Administrators who want to reward hard work by the “average” student are sometimes overlooking the difference between their own school years and the present. In my high school, it would have been possible for a student who understood ideas quickly and had a retentive memory to do quite well without as much effort as the B+ student who really worked at things. Now, with acceleration in subjects + AP’s, I think that the students who comprehend quickly work just as hard as everyone else, and often harder. (Also the B+ student of a former era probably has a 3.85 now, in many high schools).</p>
<p>As a parent, you have a great deal of power in the policies at your child’s school. The more parents speaking up, the more power you have. </p>
<p>I don’t think you will need to work very hard on this issue as it is clear that your voice is being heard. One practical suggestion. If you do need to survey parents or faculty, try [SurveyMonkey:</a> Free online survey software & questionnaire tool](<a href=“http://www.surveymonkey.com%5DSurveyMonkey:”>http://www.surveymonkey.com). You can set up a survey with the click of a mouse and send it via email to the targeted population.</p>
<p>Good luck and congratulations for taking a stand for the students. You are setting a good example for your children that, yes, sometimes life is unfair and we have to accept it but, sometimes, you have to fight for what is right.</p>
<p>^^Thanks for the tip and encouragement. I’ll add it to my list of tips on this subject. I met with the superintendent today and he was very receptive to dropping class rank. He mentioned that he has wanted to do it for years, but it was always shot down. We do have some new board members that should be more open to the change. The principal is still against it as he fears a backlash from the one group who doesn’t benefit from the change-the kids taking general courses, but get good grades-this can often be a lot of the athletes, more specifically FB. They are a powerful group in town. The superintendent suggest a committee etc, etc and a possible 5 year plan. Gosh I would hope he wasn’t talking about 5 years just to not report class rank, but … I offered to help gather information this summer. We’ll see how it goes, but at least it is moving in the right direction. Thanks to all!</p>
<p>Until 2 years ago, our HS did not weight for class rank either (although weighted averages were used for transcripts). This did result in many years of having vals/sals who had not taken a single honors class and received a full scholarship offer to several local schools. Parents of the honors kids were, understandably, somewhat put off by this and took the issue up with the school board. The policy was changed, with a year’s notice given to students, and afaik everyone is satisfied that it’s fair and equitable. Many of our school board members have kids in school still, and many of them would be on the honors track, so that may have helped. I would certainly start by attending some school board meetings, or at least discuss the issue with some members you know personally, and find like-minded students and parents.</p>
<p>The administrators didn’t want to “change the rules” on any of the students who had already been playing the system.(No one wanted to say that, but that was the operative issue.)</p>
<p>Here’s the thing. For many of us, that means that pursuing the right outcome may mean persisting beyond the time in which our own kids will benefit. But if others before us had done just that, our kids would not be in positions we wish were different.</p>
<p>I hope it won’t take 5 years as well, but I am willing to begin the work. </p>
<p>The superintendent informed me that there was a recent memo from the state making it illegal to weight classes now in the state of OH beginning this September. They are instituting some new flex system where a student is free to take classes in multiple places including online etc. Does anyone know anything about this in OH or your own state?</p>
<p>I had heard about their “credit flexibility” plan and think it has potential…in theory, at least! It sounds like kids will be able to have more choices and pursue educational opportunities that fit their needs rather than simply having to sit through every high school class. I’ll be interested to see how successful it is though, especially as it doesn’t seem like the state is actually funding many of those “choices”.</p>
<p>I just think ranking adds to the academic focus of your school. We recognize the “top 10”
in each grade level beginning in 6th grade. My D has a competetive nature and this really motivated her to work harder. Kids in athletics (all star teams), music (solos), and theatre (leads) are publicly recognized…why not what the students are really there for in the first place…academics.</p>
<p>Sorry to jump in here now, but I am worried about the “memo” from Ohio Dept of Ed that was mentioned. Can that possibly be true? Nothing moves that quickly in education, especially a major change like that. I have heard nothing like that and wouldn’t districts be announcing this in a widespread way?</p>