About a half-dozen more Chicago-area high schools this week eliminated the traditional accounting of students by grade-point average in a move that has swept local high schools in recent years.
School board members in Wheaton Warrenville School District 200 on Wednesday night voted to cancel class ranks in a 6-1 vote.
Also this week, Maine Township High School District 207 officials agreed to end the practice this fall, though students may request to keep the statistic on their transcripts.
Educators whose students are not ranked contend it eases competition between students for the coveted top spots at high-performing schools and allows teens to compete for entry to the best colleges.
“At schools that can justify the quality of their kids, it has been pretty much a trend,” said Associate Principal Richard Borsch at Oak Park’s Fenwick High School, which suspended class rank in 1972. “We write letters to colleges explaining our stance, we explain our curriculum, and we have not been hurt.”
But some college admissions experts say that in an age of grade inflation and ubiquitous A’s, schools that eliminate class rank also eliminate a reality check on how classmates compare.
“Class rank is not the ultimate arbiter of academic performance … but it gives you a more precise understanding of where each applicant falls on the academic spectrum,” said Barmak Nassirian, spokesman for the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.
Many of the Chicago region’s academic powerhouses say instead that students can earn top grades but still not place in the highest tier. The more high-performing and affluent the school, the more likely it is to eliminate rank, experts said.
By 2013, Arlington Heights-based Township High School District 214 and Lake Zurich School District 95 no longer will rank students. Barrington High School phased out the practice in 2008, while high schools in Deerfield, Highland Park, Glenview, Naperville and Northbrook joined the ranks of the unranking in 2006.
Nationwide, 78.4 percent of public high schools report class rank to colleges and universities, according to a 2007 survey by the National Association for College Admission Counseling. Nearly 11 percent of private high schools do.
Among many of the state’s top universities, however, the practice has become more rare.
A majority of the 31,000 students who applied to Northwestern University this year did not provide a class rank on their transcript, said Christopher Watson, dean of undergraduate admissions. Of those who did, about three-quarters ranked in the top 10 percent of their high school class.
“Even if everybody ranked, we’d still need to look at the individual classes and the curriculum and the grades,” Watson said. “We’ve never admitted or not admitted based on high school rank alone.”
At the University of Chicago, about 69 percent of applicants typically report rank, according to university officials.
Admissions officials at the state’s premier public university see fewer transcripts stamped with a class rank every year. An estimated 59 percent of applicants to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign reported a numeric ranking last year.
Kendall Ciesemier, who graduated from Wheaton North High School this month, said she recognized the limitations of a ranking system based strictly on grades — she once opted out of a journalism class because she worried it might weaken her standing — but acknowledged its value for high-achieving students.
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“Class rank was really something that helped me,” said Ciesemier, who plans to attend Georgetown University in Washington. “I do think it helps colleges distinguish you among kids in your class.”
The DuPage County district first debated the issue more than six months ago.
Principals at the district’s two high schools have said students may manipulate their schedules to take classes most likely to boost their academic standing. They also worried it adversely affected seniors vying for entry to top universities.
On Wednesday night, Wheaton Warrenville School District 200 Superintendent Brian Harris said: “I know for sure this is the right recommendation for students, this piece of it. There may be other pieces.”
But Wheaton school board Vice President Barbara Intihar worried about the lasting effect on students. She urged the high schools to include other statistics to detail academic performance and give context for a teen’s transcript.
“This is a very serious responsibility that we have,” Intihar said. “We are dealing with kids’ futures right as they are going to college.”
Maine Township officials took a middle-of-the-road approach. While class rank will no longer be used in the traditional sense, students may opt to list their numeric ranking on a transcript if they feel it may help with college admissions.
Maine South High School parent Kathy O’Grady welcomed the decision.
She said her 18-year-old daughter graduated this month with a B average but did not crack the top half of her class at the Park Ridge school, a factor she believes hurt her daughter in college admissions. She feared her younger daughter, a freshman, could encounter the same problem without the district’s move to eliminate class rank.
“It helps the kids that are super-brainy, straight A’s and in accelerated classes, but the B-average students” can suffer, O’Grady said.
New Trier Township High School canceled class rank more than a decade ago, replacing it with a system that grouped students in percentile ranges. Two years ago, they eliminated that as well, a district spokeswoman said. Today, the North Shore school reports weighted and unweighted GPAs to colleges.
College counselor Jim Conroy said dropping rank spurred many students to shoulder tougher course loads.
“Kids take a strong program because they know colleges will look at their curriculum,” Conroy said. “What we’ve seen is kids are not competing with each other as much.”
Several high schools continue the tradition of ranking students.
St. Charles School District 303 gives a numeric ranking based on grade-point averages, though Assistant Superintendent Jason Pearson said officials have had informal talks about removing it for the past year.
On Chicago’s North Side, Lane Tech College Prep High School still supplies a traditional rank. The school recognizes the top 50 students in each class, Principal Antoinette LoBosco said. The 25 students with the highest GPAs as seniors are named in the graduation booklet.
“We’ve actually never had anyone complain,” LoBosco said. “I think it’s just an expectation students have that they will receive a rank.”
Tribune reporters Amy Alderman, Jeff Danna, John P. Huston, Melissa Jenco, Carolyn Rusin, Mick Swasko and Michelle Stoffel contributed to this report.