D200 to Vote Wednesday on Future of Class Ranking

The District 200 Board of Education will vote whether to eliminate class rank at Wheaton North and Wheaton Warrenville South high schools.

Wheaton North Principal Jill Bullo and Wheaton Warrenville South Principal Dave Claypool presented their proposal to the School Board in December. Since then, District 200 has researched the status of class rank at comparable high schools and its importance with colleges and universities and national associations. The administration presented their findings last month with their recommendation to eliminate the longtime practice.

If the School Board agrees, the two high schools will no longer rank students according to academic achievement starting with the freshman class for the 2011-2012 school year. These freshmen will be the class of 2015.

Administrators from neighboring school districts that have already eliminated rank say it was a worthy decision.

In Naperville Community Unit School District 203, the Class of 2007 was the first to graduate without class rank. Naperville Central Principal Bill Wiesbrook said in an interview in February that District 203 officials saw class rank as “unhealthy competition” for some of its students.

“I’ve seen no downside to this decision,” Wiesbrook said. He added that taking away class rank only affected a small percentage of students. In a class of roughly 700 students, he said that maybe 15 were driven to be at the top of the class.

Naperville North Principal Kevin Probst, who was the Hinsdale Central principal when Naperville schools made the change, said that Hinsdale schools eliminated class rank a few years ago for similar reasons to those considered in District 200.

“Class rank was not helping our students in college admissions,” Probst said. Rather, it hurt them because in schools where students earn very high GPAs and ACT scores, class rank doesn’t correlate well with their achievements, he explained. “We’d have a student who’s 120th in their class and has an ‘A’ average … better that they have no class rank whatsoever.”

District 203, which is larger than District 200 by about 25 percent, compares similarly to District 200 on the Illinois State Report Card, which indicates that Naperville students graduating in 2010 scored an average composite score of 25 on the ACT. District 200 students scored an average of 24.4 that same year.

New Trier High School eliminated class rank in 2000 and moved to a decile ranking system, said Linda Yonke, superintendent of the New Trier High School District 203 in February. About four years ago, Yonke said New Trier dropped the decile ranking system.

She explained that because New Trier students do so well and are "very well prepared" for college, colleges urged the New Trier High School District to drop the ranking system entirely.

Students who fell in the bottom and middle of the class were still very well prepared for college, she explained, but when they indicated their position on an application, colleges are in a position where they don’t want to take someone who’s not in the top 10 or 25 percent of their class.

“We’ve found that our admissions have improved and kids are getting into more schools—better schools—without class rank than they did before,” Yonke said.

New Trier conducted a “pilot project” after the district eliminated class rank, with students who submitted applications to colleges that agreed to participate, and accept the decile ranking system. Participating schools included Bradley University, Colby, Denison, Illinois Wesleyan, Indiana University, Ohio State, Skidmore, Michigan State, Syracuse, Tulane, the University of Denver, University of Illinois, University of Iowa, Rochester, University of Southern California, University of Washington and Washington University in St. Louis, Yonke said.

In one year, she explained, “We had some students applying to the same schools with class rank, and some without, and we saw that admission was better in the group that did not use class rank. Overall, the rate of admission was higher.”

Adlai Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire also conducted a pilot study during the 2004-05 school year. The study showed that the elimination of class rank had little to no impact on the admission process, said John Carter, principal of Adlai Stevenson High School.

The eight schools that participated in the Stevenson pilot study included DePaul University, George Washington University, Illinois State University, University of Illinois, Urbana, Indiana University, University of Iowa, Northwestern University and University of Wisconsin, Madison.

He added that since Stevenson eliminated class rank, “more and more students (are) taking advanced classes every year.” 

Yonke said that one major benefit of eliminating class rank is that admissions officials rely less on a formula to determine an applicant’s eligibility for their school. “It forces them to look more deeply,” she said.

Shawn Leftwich, director of admissions at Wheaton College, said Yonke’s comment is probably accurate. She said that Wheaton College conducts an “individualized evaluation” on each applicant.

The District 200 board meeting will be held at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the School Services Center, 130 Park Ave., Wheaton.