Texas Ed Spectator

With the Top 10 % Rule, obviously more people are paying attention to how schools rank the students.

MySA.com: KENS 5: Education

Catherine takes mostly AP courses, and under the district’s system those courses earn more points than regular classes. But for three years of soccer, she earned no points at all.

North East adopted its rank point system in 2003 because district officials said under the GPA-based system, students could make it to the top of their class simply by doing well in basic courses. They wanted the top-ranked students to be those who were most prepared for college, so they devised a system intended to encourage students to challenge themselves.

I’m astounded at this incredibly bizarre system. Apparently, the district thought it was better for students to accumulate points for the various classes rather than do a weighted average for gpa. I can see where they might go down this path. Theoretically, a senior could just take one AP class and no other classes and have a higher weighted gpa than someone who took six AP classes as a senior. But by giving absolutely no points for certain classes, the student who takes PE, Art, and Theater Arts (I’m just guessing at what might be no point classes here) is no better off point wise than the student who didn’t take any classes. Who came up with that system?

Did anyone stop to think which system, a weighted GPA system or an accumulated point system had more “non-deserving” students in the top ten percent? Given the importance of class rank, would it have been that difficult for the district to apply the various systems to past classes to see who it would sort out?

Apparently, it was so obvious to some decision makers that a weighted gpa would be more unfair than a point system that there was no question of which way to go. I just wonder how many other school districts in Texas thought it was obvious to use such system?

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