Currently, all students at Mundelein High School are assigned a ranking based on their grade point average in comparison to others in their grade level. On Tuesday, the school board voted unanimously to eliminate that class rank system.
Most notable are the valedictorian and salutatorian designations, which will be removed when the class ranks are phased out. The topic was discussed earlier this year and again briefly prior to Tuesday’s vote.
“What I’ve asked our board to do is look at our priorities; are we here to rank kids or are we here to develop talent?” said Kevin Myers, superintendent of Mundelein High School District 120.
Myers said class ranks distinguish and separate students, whereas developing talent focuses on providing worthwhile experiences that students can use to discover and explore their potential.
A large number of high-achievers can also negatively affect students in a class rank system, Myers said.
“We have students with a 3.4 GPA who are, roughly, in the bottom 50 percent of their class,” Myers said. “We have students with over a 4.0 who are not in the top 20 percent. We’re talking about some very highly educated students and this (class rank) isn’t very reflective of their skill sets.”
The idea to remove the ranking system came during an October 2014 planning workshop with members of the community, Myers said. Switching off the block schedule, which the board approved on Sept. 28 was the other main topic that arose from that 2014 workshop, Myers said.
“We haven’t been researching the class rank topic for two years, but it did come up while we were looking at the bell schedule and doing comparisons with other schools,” Myers said.
Of the eight schools in the North Suburban Conference, Myers said only Mundelein, Zion-Benton and Waukegan high schools still have class ranks. Additionally, he said only a few others in all of Lake County still rank students.
“We realized we’re behind the times,” Myers said. “We started seeing that colleges and universities no longer hold it against students if they don’t have class ranks. Instead, the colleges are willing to look at students deeper and analyze the courses that were taken.”
Myers said studies conducted by other high schools show students who don’t have a class rank are better able to get into their first and second choice colleges.
All current Mundelein High School students will continue with class ranks, as Myers said current eighth graders will be the first class to not have ranks when they join the school in 2017-18.
However, Myers said the cum laude percentile honors will continue.
Twitter @Rick_Kambic
