Our public high school, where about 60% of kids continue to college, is looking at possibly removing class rank reporting and switching to an honors system. In an info session, we were presented with several ways different schools do their honors systems (and honestly they were all quite complicated).
If you could design “the best” high school honors recognition system, what would you use? (I am on the school board and may have a little influence on the discussion if it comes to a vote.)
Right now, I am thinking of recommending something very simple based on unweighted gpa. Something like:
– 3.5+ is honors
– 3.75+ is high honors
– 4.0 is highest honors
Some of the systems I saw included more qualifiers – requirements for #s of AP classes, requirements for club participation, requirements for attendance, etc. etc., minimum ACT scores in each subject category.
I am thinking at this time that all of those extra qualifiers for high school honors are unnecessary. The colleges will look at all of that, but the high school does not need to act like its honors designation will mean anything on college applications (IMO, t won’t).
To me, the purpose of a high school honors recognition is simply to recognize students for keeping good grades in HS and committing to academic excellence.
Your thoughts? And would you keep class rank? Would you name a val/sal? Would you make class rank reporting optional or eliminate it altogether?
Let me know your ideal program. I do not have strong feelings on this and am interested in feedback. Thank you!!
Our school did away with single class rankings and went to a decile system in 2007. My daughter’s class was the first class. The top ten students were still ranked by number. Everyone else was ranked by decile…top 10%, then the 11-20%, etc.
They used to print the honor rolls each marking period in the paper and used the honors system you posted. I haven’t seen one in a long time. I never thought it mattered much…bragging rights and nothing else.
I think the ranking of top ten students (not done until the middle of junior year) and the decile system is just fine. I am not sure I think anything else is needed.
The school will send a class profile with the transcript to help colleges put the GPA in context. Really…that’s all that is needed.
Students should know their cumulative GPA after each semester. I’m not sure why this isn’t routinely done. Maybe it is at some schools.
The only qualifier I’ve seen that I like is “No grades below a …”
My child’s school has relatively tough grading, so their scale is:
High Honor Roll: Average of 3.50 and above with no grade below B
Honor Roll: Average of 3.00 and above with no grade below B-
I don’t think extracurriculars should play a part in academic awards, Let kids who really want to participate have a place without kids joining just because they have to to make the honor roll. Standardized testing certainly shouldn’t be a factor. That would just hurt kids who over perform in their classes relative to their ability to perform on the SAT or ACT. Let each of those niches be separate.
The only debate I would have is whether to make the designation based on weighted or unweighted GPA. I could see both sides. On one hand kids shouldn’t be punished for taking harder classes. On the other everyone, whether they’re an academic superstar or not, should be able to strive for the honor roll. I don’t like the idea of it being just for the perennial top performers, those whose past performance has allowed them to register for honors and AP classes.
From a personal perspective, I have a kid who for personal reasons floundered one year. Her grades were terrible. When she turned things around the next year she was able to get herself to the cusp of the honor roll first semester, which motivated her to work harder to make it onto the honor roll, and the next year she was very proud when she made the high honor roll. That would not have happened if the weighted GPA were used to compute the honor roll.
I’ve never been a fan of class rank because I’ve seen too many kids choose their academic paths based on trying to make it to the top. Kids who take certain courses in the summer so they’ll have a tiny advantage. Kids who cut out non-weighted courses like arts or music. Kids who whine and grade grub instead of stretching themselves academically because they know they have a chance at that #1 spot.
D’s HS did away with individual rankings except for the top 5, everyone else was deciles.
Honors, high honors, and highest honors was the scale you stated. There was also a caveat for no grade lower than a B-. (At D’s school that was an 85).
An “issue” at D’s school was that honors and AP courses were weighted the same so there was a lot of strategic scheduling by some students to take easier honors classes but get the same weight as the students taking AP courses. Of course it didn’t help them with college admission as they were lacking rigor, but in my ideal world, there would be a higher weight for AP courses vs honors vs regular.
The HS also recognized an “academic hall of excellence” - students with UW 3.8 and 98th percentile on ACT/SAT. I believe that designation was on their transcripts.
The HS still named one single Val/Sal. I think the concept of multiple vals/sals is ridiculous unless there is truly a tie. These two kids were separated by a 1/1000 of a point but the val was the top of the class from day one.
Courses taken outside of school, including in the summer, did not count towards GPA, unless it was a DE course sanctioned and taught at the school during the school year).
In an effort to minimize grade-grubbing and student/parent anxiety, our kids’ public hs reports only deciles, and there is no Val/Sal. With >80% graduates moving on to college and a fair number of high achievers, this seems a fair and successful approach in our community.
Thanks for the feedback. The concern with a % system is that some HS graduating classes are very high GPA, and others are not, so a kid’s percentile is dependent on his peer group, something that fluctuates.
Another concern is weighted grades. At many schools, an A in an honors course counts as higher (perhaps 4.5 or 5 instead of 4) than an A in a regular course.
So how do you calculate class rank?
If you use the unweighted grades, you incentivize for taking easier classes. Is this what we want?
If you use weighted grades, you incentivize for avoiding non-honors classes, even though they may have much to contribute to the student’s overall education. You end up with kids dropping out of orchestra or chorus or journalism or drama (all of which tend to be non-weighted) so they can take one more weighted course instead. Is this what we want?
D’s school ‘fixed’ the problem of kids dropping fine arts by making an honors option for all fine arts courses after freshman year. Weighted the same as an AP course which was a bit crazy but does solve the problem.
D19’s school is high performing and does not rank, at all. The school profile just mentions the number of students to get an unweighted 4.0, and what the highest weighted GPA is. There is not a val/sal award as such afaik but there are a couple of “highest academic honors” awards for seniors. I don’t know what the qualification for that is.
They use CSF’s rather complicated system for honors, whereby you get some (but limited) bump from honors/AP, type of class (core vs non core) matters, and you do not qualify for honor roll if you get a D or F in any subject that semester. As best I can figure, you basically need to maintain a high B+ (if you have AP or hons) or A (if you don’t) average to make honor roll. You will usually need at least 2 or 3 As a semester to make it, I think.
My children’s school doesn’t have class rank or an honors system. I think that is perfect.
One local high school has an honors system for 3.5 and above and 75% of the students are on the honor roll. You get an A, you get an A…
Another school recognizes the top 2% at graduation. Because of weighting for honors and APs you cannot get into the top 2% if you take a fine arts class.
Our district did away with ranks and with selecting a Val when they were calculating GPA out to like 3 decimal places to figure out who was first. They were trying to reduce competition and to allow kids to take a non-honors course of interest rather than avoiding it for the “hit” on the academic GPA, which includes the extra 0.5 point for honors/APs. They now recognize all kids with straight A averages upon graduation.
I favor the KISS approach stated by the OP in the first post:
“Right now, I am thinking of recommending something very simple based on unweighted gpa. Something like:
– 3.5+ is honors
– 3.75+ is high honors
– 4.0 is highest honors”
Yes grade inflation is a problem. Yes some schools have GPA’s above 4.0 (taking honors and AP classes into account). But to my mind these labels, “honors,” “high honors,” etc. are good enough.
There are always additional special awards to recognize achievement, including valedictorian, salutatorian, etc., as well as other awards such as “scholar-athlete award.”
My own “scholar-athlete award” (aka “most outstanding senior”) was given at a special ceremony and did not appear on my transcript. I would have been “high honors” for my cumulative weighted GPA but the “most outstanding senior” recognized a combination of achievements in academics and athletics and it made me (and my parents) happy. My daughter’s GPA wasn’t exceptionally high but she was recognized at graduation with special recognition of her achievements in art.
GPA: Report unweighted GPA and weighted-for-class-rank GPA. If in a state with a standardized university weighted GPA calculation (e.g. California or South Carolina), report that weighted GPA as well. If any colleges or scholarships targeted by students take weighted GPA from the high school (e.g. Alabama, Indiana), report a very exaggerated weighted GPA to help students with those colleges or scholarships. For weighted-for-class-rank GPA, use unweighted GPA and then add 0.2 * (average number of (up to 4) weighted courses per semester) to the unweighted GPA. The idea of this is so that extra unweighted courses do not penalize weighted-for-class-rank GPA, and to reduce the incentive to try to collect every weighted elective possible instead of possibly-unweighted electives that the student is more interested in.
Rank: Use GPA thresholds set by the previous class to assign rank to this year’s class to avoid giving incentive to cutthroat one’s classmates. The GPA thresholds set by last year’s junior class should be published at the beginning of the year or before for this year’s junior class to know where they stand.
I’d make it based on gpa weighted. If you’re on it then good for you as a student. Might as well give credit for harder courses. Hopefully everybody is on it because they work hard and the teachers have taught well.
If the school has a math genius or any other exceptional type student then recognize them for that. Including art, exceptional leadership or being the one person who’s done something above and beyond. Make up awards if necessary.
None of this really matters in the long haul.
Not big on Val or Sal.
Not big on rankings unless recognized for tippy top percent—which I guess covers Val and sal. But maybe a few extra.
Our school district (5 schools) has an UW 3.90 Weighted 4.70. Honors and AP are weighted. JMO but Val and Sal is worthless and too easily manipulated. I always laugh at the student-athlete awards. Are you going have the student musician or the student-theater awards? I don’t take anything away from any of those kids who do these things but they do them out of choice.
Our high school doesn’t rank. Deciles are only used in college apps, but really any AO could make a good guess comparing a students GPA to the school profile report. Honor rolls are straightforward with UW GPA cut-offs and decent attendance (exceptions are made for doctor-excused medical reasons). Honors rolls are different from NHS, which requires service hours and ECs in order to join, in addition to making GPA cut-offs.
@ultimom I think they are considering discontinuing reporting rank to colleges. Personally, I am thinking that we could give kids the OPTION of including rank or not including rank on their paperwork. As it stands now, kids see their class rank on every semester report card.
I was always at the top but don’t think I needed to see a ranking every semester. That’s anxiety on fire for the perfectionist gene. That would’ve driven me nuts. Why would you do that to kids?
Neighbor is having trouble with her kid now because they changed the way they do honor rolls at his high school.
It used to be a semester honor roll (A honor role or A/B honor roll) which is the only way I’ve ever heard of. So based on current grades.
Now it’s a CUMULATIVE honor roll and if you have a “B” during anytime your HS career the best you can do is the A/B honor roll even if you have straight A average for the semester or year. So now since student got a B in 9th grade (he’s a riding senior) the best he can get is A/B honor roll. Even though he made straight “A” this year. And even though it doesn’t mean a hill of beans in the long run it does to him. And he’s sloughing off when he should be charging forward. So frustrating.