<p>I hate it with an utter disgust! Am beginning to see that all of you who said ranking does more damage than good are collectively right!
The other day we have received an e-mail from our GC , sent to all the parents that are registered for receiving e-mails. Her letter basically states that she was incorrect in advising students about the ways to obtain PE credit and that now the entire requirement of 1.5 credits can be done online for free.
I have brought this up before (taking some classes online) and was surprised that someone mentioned PE, but I guess it has come here as well! :(
I am not happy, obviously, that the entire process of fighting for rank begins so early and that people are so acutely aware of this! This e-mail was basically directed towards freshman since at our school freshman are adviced to take PE in 9th grade so they will not have to take it later with younger kids.
I have showed this e-mail to my kid and he basically stated that he stil has time to make decision re-the spring quarters, but I really do not want to go through this! So like I stated earlier - it is ugly!</p>
<p>Not quite sure how online PE works, sounds like an oxymoron to me.</p>
<p>When my daughter was in 8th grade, a classmate’s mother went into the high school guidance office and together they planned out his entire high school schedule to ensure he would maximize his GPA and graduate as Valedictorian. He did.</p>
<p>D’s small private HS did not rank, no valedictorians or any other title, nobody is aware who is at the top unitl graduation day when top GPA overall and top GPA senior year get parents awards. Complete secrecy! However, colleges still calculate ranking based on kid’s GPA and senior class profile. So, it does not matter, HS ranks or not, rank is still extremely important especially while applying to very selective programs. Being top or #1 or however it is called also will result in a lot of Merit $$ in college.</p>
<p>Online PE? I agree, it sounds like an oxymoron. And it’s a moot point in NJ, where students need four years of PE to graduate.</p>
<p>DDs HS gives only deciles on the ranking forms; they will drop a top 5 or top 3 mention in a GC letter, but nothing to the detriment of #7 or #15.</p>
<p>They also rank by the exact percentage in each class 93-94-95 etc. And they do not include anything but academic classes, no sports, no fine arts. And they give the grade 12 ranking based on grade 11 marks only, so a person could have a tough time adjusting in early years and still be ranked on the merit of the stringent core grade 11 curriculum.</p>
<p>Having followed the ranking wars for years on CC, I realised it was a wonderful plan in execution. There was never any issue about who was ranked, it always felt emminently fair.</p>
<p>We need four years of real PE here in NY too. It doesn’t get figured into the GPA. Our ranking is determined early senior year I guess so it can go on senior’s transcripts. Theoretically you could get all D’s last quarter and still be val, but I don’t think anyone has put it to the test. :)</p>
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<p>Now why didn’t I think of that? 
Seriously, that is the craziest thing…</p>
<p>Yep. She was/is very psycho. She did get him into Penn though.</p>
<p>The gamesmanship is intensified if you have weighted classes, because for the most competitive students, an A in a non-weighted course will bring the GPA down. (I assume that’s what the PE issue is about.)</p>
<p>^^yes, our school weights…thus the gaming…</p>
<p>Let me see if I understand this. The problem with online PE (besides the oxymoron) is that it frees up a class period for a weighted class. And the kids with more weighted classes (usually) have higher GPAs, get val, sal, and top 10%. Is that right?</p>
<p>Kelowna sounds angry because his/her child must now do online PE in order to remain competitive in the ranking game. Is that right?</p>
<p>Since Texas has the “top 10% rule” (now what, top 8% to get into UT?), class rank is very very important to some. Our district has different weighting for regular, pre-AP and AP classes. The student just has to decide if rank is incredibly important or not. I know that my D would end up with a higher rank if she took pre-AP instead of AP classes, but she wants to be in the AP classes, not try to game the system. There is a family I know who is so good at maximizing GPA/class rank that they really should hire themselves out as consultants when their kids graduate.</p>
<p>This is nothing new, though. I confess that I did it myself 30 years ago. I had a free period my senior year, and thought I’d take something different just for fun. I signed up for mechanical drawing–and then immediately dropped it when the teacher made it clear that he didn’t give many As. Since it was unweighted, a B in that course would have made a hit on my GPA. It’s too bad I couldn’t audit the course.</p>
<p>I still don’t get how you can take PE online. It is offered here in the summer (as is the required health class) so you can free up the time to take a weighted class instead.</p>
<p>D’s school does not rank, but it does weight. D is very interested in theater and there is a good comprehensive theater program at her school, but none of the classes are weighted. Her straight As in those classes are a drag on her average.</p>
<p>She also takes many AP classes which are weighted exactly the same as honors classes even though they are much harder.</p>
<p>So to maximize GPA, a child would take health and PE during the summers; take honors classes almost exclusively; and (this is vital for curriculum rigor) take only those APs rumored to be easy (Human Geo, Psych…).</p>
<p>I find the whole thing ridiculous.</p>
<p>I do think it’s sad that when many of the top of the class kids find themselves with an open period, they sign up to be an office aide or teacher’s aide (almost guaranteed 100) instead of taking a more challenging “regular” course like Journalism where they might get a low A or even a B. It can take a lot of knowledge and planning (or luck?) to maximize the GPA. </p>
<p>There aren’t a lot of electives offered (officially) to freshmen. Son took Art I as a nice, no pressure class…which it was, but his 88 in that “regular” class probably ended up hurting his GPA more than I’d like to think about.</p>
<p>A couple of years back our district had a little “issue” when a graduating junior with the highest GPA in the history of the school wasn’t allowed to be Val. When they showed her transcript on TV (which was supposed to wow us with all the high grades), what I noticed is that as a freshman she had been allowed to take AP classes that are closed to freshmen.</p>
<p>My son knew kids in his HS who took PE classes online. The favorite was bowling. You simply went bowling about once a week (on average) and self-reported your scores. You needed to improve and you needed to learn the rules of bowling, how to score, etc. The advantage from a GPA perspective was that the class was Pass/Fail and a Pass did not affect your GPA.</p>
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<p>Yes to the first part. Sad, that kids have to even engage in something like this.</p>
<p>No to your conclusion. I am angry that the whole ranking thing hits so early in the hs years. My kid does not have to do anything online, it is ultimately going to be his choice but I am sad and angry that he already realizes that his hs experince will have to involve gaming the system.</p>
<p>What’s the old saying? If you want it badly enough …</p>
<p>In our local non-competitive public school system one way to boost your child’s GPA is to join the School Board or PTA … or go to work in the school system.</p>
<p>The trouble with ranking is that it’s used as a marker for ‘academically superior accomplishment’, but through manipulation of ill-advised rules governing calculation of rank, it is very possible for a student who is clearly less academically accomplished to be ranked higher than her more academically accomplished peer. Hypervigilance about those rules of calculation and the willingness to sacrifice true academic challenge in favor of stuff which will raise your rank, end up being rewarded.</p>
<p>Ranking in general sucks. Interesting that many good private schools don’t do it anymore. (I believe I recall seeing that something like half of all private schools don’t rank.) For the publics, a decision to not rank would mean that they would have to find a way to include much more qualitative information about available courses, grading policies and results, etc. on their school info sheet. And then parents would work their knickers into twists trying to game and control the qualitative information…</p>
<p>One of the high schools my kids attended (we’re up to 5 and counting…), a private school with about 70 kids per grade, had what I consider to be the best system I’ve seen so far: On the back of the school profile, EVERY class that any member of that grade took as a junior was listed, along with the actual distribution of grades. Like so:</p>
<p>English III - 12 A’s, 12 A-'s, 7 B+'s, 5 B’s, 5 B-'s, 3 C-
AP English Lang - 7 A’s, 13 A-'s, 6 B+'s</p>
<p>That puts the onus of working out what the student’s high school academic record means on the college admissions office, which I believe is where it belongs.</p>
<p>Kelowna, how many levels would your son fall by taking PE in person? IMO it’s probably not worth worrying about.</p>