<p>Our school district uses a %age grading system and weights AP/Honors classes by 10 and 5 percentage points respectively. It uses the weighted gpa to determine class rank.</p>
<p>I think that some of the problem is with grade inflation. When an A is relatively easy to achieve, the result is a very small gpa difference between students in the top decile. Those student aiming to get into the top tier of the ranking cannot afford a mediocre grade in any class.</p>
<p>Our district is reasonably rigorous in its course grading which means that a student can have a few minor slipups without it significantly impacting final class standing. Our DS had an uwgpa of 91.00 in his academic classes, which under many letter grade systems would be a B+ or A-. But this gpa placed him in the top 5% of his class. In fact in his infamous CalcBC class, his final grade of 83 was better than the class average which was somewhere in the high 70’s. And yep he did get a 5 on the AP exam which he chararacterized as a piece of cake.</p>
<p>Personally I do not have a problem with class rank. I know some districts use a decile ranking but what about the student who just misses placement in the top decile? That doesn’t seem quite fair either.</p>