Our school district has decided to move away from class ranking. My senior S will have the choice of whether to include his ranking on his transcript or not. (Starting with the incoming freshmen it will no longer even be an option) On paper this seems good for S as we are in a “high achieving” school, and a very decent GPA translates into a very mediocre class ranking.
How do colleges handle this when they have class ranking included in criteria for admissions, or Honors admissions, or merit aid? Will he be penalized for not having a rank?
Same boat. Interested in hearing responses. Our school district is considering dropping rank too.
The HS will send a profile which shows some approx grades by percentile and the colleges will infer a class rank
No. More than half of US high schools provide no ordinal class rank. As mentioned above, the school profile will list GPA by bucket (decile/quintlie, etc - it’s up the the HS how they report it). Obviously is several applicants from the same HS apply to the same college, admissions can sort the applications in GPA order.
Our HS, (which is a high achieving school, similar to the OP) has not ranked ever since we’ve been in the district. It has no negative impact on admissions. Many students get into top tier schools and many students get merit aid. In fact, I think not having ranks helps many students who are excellent but may not have a great ranking in such a competitive environment.
My daughters’ high school also doesn’t do rank. Adcoms get school profiles with the applications and it’s truly zero issue. 
Thanks everyone! Not as big of an upside as I had hoped, but sounds like no downside which is most important.