By Ted Slowik
A year ago, much ado was made of Naperville School District 203's decision to abolish class ranks. Now we learn that high school principals are still calculating "unofficial" class rankings.
District 203 did away with class ranks because, officials said, students' chances of getting into college were being hurt. That's because there are so many honor roll students in Naperville that even kids with perfect GPAs on a 4.0-scale might not make the top 10 percent of their class, because so many others are taking weighted classes to get higher GPAs.
I agree that school officials are well-intentioned to try to defuse the highly charged competitive atmosphere among top students. And plans to honor larger groups of top students are all well and good. It still seems odd, though, to receive a transcript of grades that no longer includes a class rank. What's this world coming to?
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