Class Rank Vote in Near Future for D200 Board

In the coming weeks, the elimination of class rank at Wheaton North and Wheaton Warrenville South will go before the school board.

This week, the topic went before the residents as District 200 held a community meeting at Wheaton Warrenville South to present information the administration has collected that supports elimination of the weighted standings. The district’s research was spearheaded by its two high school principals, Jill Bullo of Wheaton North and Dave Claypool of Wheaton Warrenville South.

According to District 200 Assistant Superintendent for Operations Bob Rammer, 28 parents attended the meeting, which included a 20-minute presentation by the district and approximately 40 minutes of question and answer.

Rammer said the elimination of class rank will go before the school board for discussion at its April 13 meeting and will likely be an action item on May 11.

If elimination is passed, class rank would continue to be measured for current high school students. Next year’s freshman class would be the first to go unranked.

Rammer said the district has the research and “a wealth of information” on class rank based on the experiences of thousands of students who have gone through the high schools. He said it supports elimination.

“When people understand and look at the big picture, it’s pretty hard to refute,” Rammer said. “We don’t think there’s a negative; we don’t think (eliminating class rank) will hurt anybody. In fact, it will help everyone.”

In highly competitive schools like those of District 200, Rammer said, students with an A-minus or B-plus average could find themselves in the bottom half of the class.

“When you apply to schools and for scholarships and you’re in the bottom half of the class, it’s hard to get anyone to look at your materials,” Rammer said, emphasizing ACT scores, application essays and letters of recommendation as more credible tools for evaluation.

District 200 parent Samir Desai doesn’t write off those other criteria, but does think class rank should be kept. He said ranking and competition among students is not a bad thing.

“If 20 percent of our kids have A grades, how are you supposed to differentiate between those 20 percent?” Desai asked. “Is it fair that the person who got first ranking doesn’t get the benefit of having achieved 19 percentile points better than the person at the 20th percentile level?”

According to Desai, the father of a 12-year-old and 9-year-old in District 200 who has spoken up at board meetings on the issue, not ranking students could be a “disincentive” for the students to do their best. And the district’s "weak" communication on the topic has been limited to Web site announcements, he said.

“You had to basically dig to figure out that they were proposing this,” Desai said.

The 43-year-old parent said he received no email notification on the subject and did not attend Monday night’s meeting.

Rammer said community meetings like the one held Monday are not unusual in District 200. There have been similar meetings on topics such as budget cuts and full-day kindergarten, he said.

School board member Marie Slater, who attended Monday as an interested resident and will not be on the board for May's class rank vote, said the meetings are important to give the community an opportunity to voice its opinion and for the district to maintain its transparency.

Slater said she could not say what the thoughts of community members were upon entering the meeting Monday but, “When they left,” she said, “there seemed to be an understanding of why this is being recommended.”

According to Rammer, most of the questions asked Monday by parents regarded the process students would go through without class rank.