<p>In my school,
Regular Classes: taken to pass the SOL's (state test)
Honors Classes: exceeds SOL standards and more in depth about the subject
AP Classes: (almost) college-level..taken for early college credit and hardest of all classes</p>
<p>keilexandra,</p>
<p>It seems to me the people benefitting from not ranking would be everyone except top decile or top quintile.</p>
<p>If a student is top decile, or even top 5% at a very competitive school, I would think this policy hurts that student. They have essentially scaled a mountain and been told it's all level ground.</p>
<p>In California, schools are required to rank students according to the University of California's "UC GPA" criteria if they want to afford their students access to the "Eligibility in the Local Context" program. In ELC, the Top 4% in a school (even if it is a terribly performing school) are guaranteed admission to one of the UC campuses (usually Santa Cruz, Riverside, or Merced).</p>
<p>To be competitive for the very top schools, you need to be at least top decile and preferably top 5%. I would have been almost guaranteed val or sal at a different HS, also tops in the state, to which I was also accepted (and I'm nearly certain because I went to middle school with essentially the same people), but I chose to attend a competitive charter magnet where last year's val was accepted to Yale and MIT (currently at MIT) with insane stats AND national-finalist ECs. If my school ranked, we would be compared apples-to-apples with every other school in the nation, despite a significant difference in difficulty of attaining high rank.</p>
<p>We do provide a GPA distribution chart in the HS profile; what matters is whether you can scale the mountain, not if you do it the fastest.</p>
<p>CA, of course, is an entirely different situation. Top students actually want to attend the UCs, for one.</p>
<p>I agree that students should aim to do their best but I don't think it's necessary to be the val - at least not for college acceptances. There may be an advantage for scholarships.</p>
<p>My son made a conscious decision after freshman year to "have a life", to enjoy HS rather than joining in the crazy fight to the top (he was #4 I think). Three years later, he was satisfied with being #7 or #8 (really don't remember) which was still top 2%. The Val and Sal didn't get accepted into any of the selective colleges they applied to, whereas the kids who were accepted to Ivys and other top schools were ranked #7-30. These kids had lots going for them (had followed their passions) and the "rank" wasn't as important as some had predicted. I think colleges are looking for kids who have more to offer than four years of studying/maneuvering to be #1.</p>
<p>Many schools decide not to rank specifically because it hurts the kids in the top decile or top 5%. The gamesmanship that occurs when rank is determined by differences in hundredths of a point is absurd. "Do I take this course or that? If I take art, which I really love, it'll cause me to drop in rank, so I have to take another honors or AP class that I don't want to take." And that's just the beginning.</p>
<p>The differences betweeen rank 1 and rank 15, say, might be 0.05 or 0.1, a statistically insignificant difference, but can make a world of difference for these students. Giving grade distributions rather than specific ranks helps to deal with these problems.</p>
<p>Exactly. So, for instance, I can take 4 years of Band (an unweighted class) without worrying about how it will affect my class rank for college.</p>
<p>My daughter's school also does not rank. Their attitude appears to be that ranking within a school is a superficial valuation, and I tend to agree with them. There is a large variation in the quality of schools, the courses available at schools, and how the schools weight the different courses. Their school wants the best schools to consider those differences in detail, and not say that a student at the top 5% level at the school is equivalent to the top 5% level of the country as a whole (let alone the 5% level of our state, which is a poor one with a low rated state public school system).</p>
<p>And don't fool yourself. Whatever the school says, most of the students know that it is not a level ground, in more ways than one. When I was in school I knew very well who was the best and second best students in my class, and had a rough idea of my ranking of the top 5-10% of the class without any details of ranking from the school. After all I knew which ones were taking the most advanced courses, and as I was in most of those classes with them, could see which ones enjoyed getting their test and homework scores, which ones seemed to be liked best by the teachers, which ones participated most often in class discussions, and which ones went for the extra credit makework. I was one of the ones that thought the makework was silly and mostly avoided it.</p>
<p>While I had a reasonable idea of how the school would rank the top students, I had my own ranking based less on how high they got in the school, and more on how they got where they were and how that suggested where they were going. I knew some in the group that had difficult family lives, work, and outside activities that detracted from their schoolwork. Others were bright, but more interested in other things in life than what could be found at school. Some were stuck in cliques with limited social values, while others were open to the world. Others had success driven parents for whom failure was no an option. Some were getting involved in drinking and drugs and setting themselves up for problems when they left home and its support. Finally while I mostly hung out with the academic high achievers, I knew some outside that group that I valued because they were basically good people, and I found it more difficult to live up to their values, than to meet the academic values of the school system.</p>
<p>My high school, pop: 1200, (top in the state) offers more than 20 AP classes and an all-honors (exception: PE) curriculum is the norm. All academic and fine arts classes are at the very least H. We are a "College Preparatory High School".</p>
<p>^ College preparatory /=/ honors. Frankly, it doesn't mean much if ALL the classes are honors. I attend a CP magnet and we still have "phases"--different levels, but the lowest is still college prep.</p>
<p>My school has:</p>
<p>Science - all regular - except AP Bio
English - remedial and regular
Math - remedial, regular, one honors, AP Calc AB
Social Studies - remedial, regular, AP Gov and APUSH.</p>
<p>Not many choices of different levels.</p>
<p>I am answering the OP's question about World History. My son is taking AP World (or Global) History as a sophomore. At his high school the history choices for sophomores are regular World His, Honors World His, AP World His, and AP European His. For English the choices are Remedial, Regular and Honors. For Math the choices are Alg 1, Alg1/2, Alg 2, Honors Adv Alg 2 (with Trig), Geometry, Honors Geometry. For Science most kids are taking either regular Chemistry or honors Chemistry. There is an option to take AP Biology concurrently with the honors Chem. Kids can also double up on AP European and AP World, or with Geometry and Algebra, or with two languages. There are enough free periods so a kid is permitted to take one extra class and that can be the extra science, history, language or math. This option starts sophomore year and continues each year hence. Or the kid can take a music, art, computer, science research or what is called a minor subject among the offerings (such as ecology, public speaking) which vary from year to year. Or he can take that time as study hall, free period, consultation, counseling or for some ECs. My son belong to a community service group that takes up that time slot. I wanted him to take a second language or history or a minor course, but he did not want to do so and I did not push the matter.</p>
<p>D, attending east coast prep school, also fled the regular classes. She would rather tackle the extra work of Honors and AP then put up with the smart (all the kids at her school are smart) but badly behaved, unmotivated kids in the regular classes. Population: 650, with regular, Honors, and AP in almost all areas.</p>
<p>Result:the public school push to integrate really bright/college bound students in the same classes with special needs/dropout bound (as required in Massachusetts, where "smart" is a dirty word) is that 30% of the high school students in our district walked out, going to charter or private schools. </p>
<p>In the public schools, "no child left behind" has resulted in tons of money being invested in the least productive members of society, with no money going to the students who will someday be paying for our retirement. INVEST IN SMART STUDENTS = long term economic growth.</p>
<p>In regard to "standard" Honors, there is no such thing. D's Honors Chem (AP was not availble) prepared her for college much better than other kids' AP. She had 100%+ on all her college General Chem tests and landed a job as Supplemental Instructor. Her HS Freshman Honors Bio used the same textbook as her Freshman College Honors Bio. Seems to me that the name means nothing, except that you have to pay for AP, take AP exam and possibly get credit for it.</p>
<p>our district recently changed the AP/honors/reg entrance requirements that start when entering 7th grade.
Current year teacher makes recommendation if they can get tracked into Ap/Honors/reg.
Assessment tests.
Report card.</p>
<p>If any is below a threshold, NOTHING will change the decision. The assessment exams are the ONLY must have.
Assessment tests must have a 95% or greater state wide exams to be enrolled. It has cut down the AP enrollments big time. Before if you wanted it you could take it.
Math and Science are tracked together, English Social studies the same.
Math 95% or higher can take both AP Math/Science.
English 95% or higher AP English/Social Studies.
English/Soc. Stud.are the only track one can gain entry after 7th if assessments indicate the 95% or better.</p>
<p>Math/Science no, you must have the 95% entering in 7th grade to be eligible for Algebra in 7th, no going into higher math later on.</p>
<p>sigh
our school offers no honors/ap classes to freshmen and sophmores T.T</p>