Howard schools to eliminate class rank
Officials also create homework guidelines to help utilize students’ time
Class rank will soon be a thing of the past in Howard County public schools.
Incoming Howard County seniors will be the last graduating class to receive a number indicating where they finished among their peers at the end of their high school career.
Class rank will disappear from Howard’s 12 high schools at the end of the 2019-2020 academic year.
For the past two years, the school system has discussed eliminating class rank, according to Caroline Walker, Howard schools’ executive director of program innovation and student wellbeing.
“We worked with colleges and came to the conclusion that we felt comfortable getting rid of it,” Walker said.
Colleges “do want to see students take rigorous courses, so it’s really important that students take rigorous courses and get decent grades … [but] they are less concerned with how we rank them [students] because they really do it themselves,” she said.
Providing a class rank in a high school setting does not “impede their [students’] college acceptances,” but rather has the consequence of students competing against each other, Walker said.
Kami Wagner, the school system’s acting coordinator of student support programs, said having class rank “was an added layer of stress and anxiety for students.
“We know there was some dissension, but when we talked to students they were in very much of support of [eliminating] it,” she added. “Once we opened up the discussion, people seemed to understand where we were coming from.”
As far as valedictorians or salutatorians, school system employees do not recall if students have ever received those recognitions, according to a county schools spokesman.
Eliminating class rank is one of several changes to the school system’s policy covering grading and reporting at the secondary education level. The first, most notable change to Policy 8020 was including middle school grade levels.
Prior to this change, pre-kindergarten through middle school grade levels were in a separate policy, Policy 8010, which now covers pre-kindergarten through fifth grade.
The school system received feedback from parents that they found themselves referring to both policies for information regarding their middle school students because “there are some classes taught in middle school that are applied for high school credit,” Walker said.
For the past two years, as the secondary level grading and reporting policy was being updated, the school system received feedback from community members, including through forums.
“Our community wants a good grading and reporting policy,” Walker said.
“We talked to young people and adults and the bottom line was the same: ‘We want our kids to be successful.’ ”
See SCHOOLS, page 5
Incoming Howard County seniors will be the last graduating class to receive a number indicating where they finished among their peers at the end of their high school career.
Class rank will disappear from Howard’s 12 high schools at the end of the 2019-2020 academic year.
For the past two years, the school system has discussed eliminating class rank, according to Caroline Walker, Howard schools’ executive director of program innovation and student wellbeing.
“We worked with colleges and came to the conclusion that we felt comfortable getting rid of it,” Walker said.
Colleges “do want to see students take rigorous courses, so it’s really important that students take rigorous courses and get decent grades … [but] they are less concerned with how we rank them [students] because they really do it themselves,” she said.
Providing a class rank in a high school setting does not “impede their [students’] college acceptances,” but rather has the consequence of students competing against each other, Walker said.
Kami Wagner, the school system’s acting coordinator of student support programs, said having class rank “was an added layer of stress and anxiety for students.
“We know there was some dissension, but when we talked to students they were in very much of support of [eliminating] it,” she added. “Once we opened up the discussion, people seemed to understand where we were coming from.”
As far as valedictorians or salutatorians, school system employees do not recall if students have ever received those recognitions, according to a county schools spokesman.
Eliminating class rank is one of several changes to the school system’s policy covering grading and reporting at the secondary education level. The first, most notable change to Policy 8020 was including middle school grade levels.
Prior to this change, pre-kindergarten through middle school grade levels were in a separate policy, Policy 8010, which now covers pre-kindergarten through fifth grade.
The school system received feedback from parents that they found themselves referring to both policies for information regarding their middle school students because “there are some classes taught in middle school that are applied for high school credit,” Walker said.
For the past two years, as the secondary level grading and reporting policy was being updated, the school system received feedback from community members, including through forums.
“Our community wants a good grading and reporting policy,” Walker said.
“We talked to young people and adults and the bottom line was the same: ‘We want our kids to be successful.’ ”
See SCHOOLS, page 5
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