Henrico Schools eyes change from class rank system

The toughest part of high school for Steven Bazianos was feeling like he wasn’t able to take the courses he was interested in because he needed so many Advanced Placement classes to place at the top of his class rank.

The Freeman High School graduate thought he could’ve had a better grasp on his career path had he been able to take classes that sparked his interest. But that didn't seem like an option for him.

“There's a lot of pressure to be at the top,” said Kathy Bazianos, Steven’s mother. “For so many students, they feel that they can't even take certain electives, even though they may be really interested in it, because they’re so worried about the class rank. This goes against building a positive school community.”

As the stress to rank in the top percentage of students’ graduating class mounts, the Henrico School Board is eyeing a revamp of the class rank system.

During last week's Henrico School Board meeting, Vice Chair Marcie Shea requested that district staffers look into the implications of changing the class rank system. It’s a change that some parents have been advocating for behind the scenes for years.

“As we move into a deep dive on student mental health next year and in the coming years, I think it's so important that we break this escalating cycle of students needing six or seven AP classes in order to get the GPA bump,” Shea said. “It’s diluting the rigor of individual AP classes, and it’s fortifying the silos that our students group in.”

Shea’s request got the ball rolling on what likely will be a lengthy process.

In 2018, Virginia Beach City Public Schools ended its reporting of class rank, and its school board voted to implement a new Latin Honors system to report graduates' academic achievement, beginning with the class of 2022.

The Loudoun County School Board voted in October to eliminate the numerical ranking of high school students, following the lead of Fairfax County, Prince William County and Alexandria, which also have shifted to similar percentile rankings.

“It can empower our students to take electives that align with their passion and not just the GPA boost,” Shea said. “It could ameliorate the actual or perceived discrepancy between specialty center students and non-specialty center students.”

Typically, the Latin Honors system recognizes graduates earning a 3.5 GPA as cum laude designation, a 3.76 GPA as a magna cum laude designation and a 4.0 GPA as the summa cum laude designation.

In the current system used by HCPS, a student with a GPA above 4.0 potentially could not even touch the top 50% of his or her class ranking, depending upon the school.

As pressure burgeons to outrank classmates, Henrico high-schoolers are skipping out on electives to load up on AP courses. Freeman High School’s chorus teacher is down to a part-time position for the 2021-2022 school year because of a lack of registration for the class.

“It’s a great thing to have a strong liberal arts education; it’s great to have things like chorus,” Kathy Bazianos said. “Not being able to explore [electives] in high school because of worrying about class rank is devaluing the school. That’s when the schools aren’t helping families and educators.”

Enrollment in high school electives is down compared to all-time highs, though Henrico Schools officials aren't ready to say it’s due precisely to one reason or another.

“Is it because of more students taking six to seven AP courses instead? Possibly,” said HCPS spokesman Andy Jenks. “And in some cases, yes.”

But it’s hard to pinpoint a sweeping reason why some students are bypassing electives, Jenks said.

Students are given a 0.5 quality point for all Honors and IB Middle Years Program classes, and a 1.0 quality point for all AP, Dual Enrollment and IB Diploma Program classes taken. Any class not fitting into those categories potentially would bring a student’s GPA down if his or her GPA is above 4.0.

University admissions

Local supporters of transitioning to a Latin Honors system contend that class rank being reported to colleges is detrimental to students not falling in top rank of their graduating class.

But top universities in Virginia told the Citizen that class rank doesn’t hold much weight these days. Most universities say that their admissions offices use a “holistic approach” — a buzzword essentially meaning that they look beyond the GPA and factor in extracurriculars, recommendations and character.

The University of Richmond ended its policy of only accepting a top percentage of each graduating class. One reason for the change is that the admissions office simply doesn't have that information anymore.

“Many schools, especially independent schools, are no longer offering that, and that's been the case for 20 years now,” said Gil Villanueva, associate vice president and dean of admission at UR. “Public schools, again, less and less are offering it. . . We don't draw a line necessarily that we only want the top five or 10%.”

Nationally, class rank has become much less important over the past decade, according to the National Association for College Admissions Counseling. For each admission cycle from fall 2016 to fall 2018, only 9% of colleges rated class rank as considerably important, compared to 23% in 2007, according to NACAC’s trend survey, “State of College Admission.”

A Virginia Tech official said that the university's admissions office conducts a holistic application review that incorporates various variables from the student’s application.

“Class rank is one of those variables, but it does not carry much weight because not all schools provide it,” said Juan Espinoza, associate vice provost for enrollment management and director of undergraduate admissions at VT. “If the school board decides to change their ranking system to a Latin Honors system, we would adjust our review but would not expect any major shifts in the final decisions.”

GPA is also becoming a less reliable indicator of a student’s academic achievement because of the various weight systems in place for advanced level courses, Espinoza said. Instead, VT focuses more on the actual letter grades and the rigor of courses.

Academic equity

Whether or not a HCPS student is enrolled in a specialty center can set the stage for where he or she ends up in the class’s rank.

The demand for spots at specialty centers resulted hundreds of rejected applications last school year.

School Board member Kristi Kinsella (Brookland District) said she’s concerned about students losing out on opportunities because of the huge demand for specialty centers that’s sometimes based on the GPA points.

“A lot of times [specialty center applications are] based on interest,” Kinsella said at the school board work session. “[But] a lot of times it’s based on the rigor and the points associated with that rigor that are only available in our specialty centers.”

She said her concern is that the high demand can lead to students who truly are interested in the subject matter losing out on opportunities.

Kristin Vithoulkas, a Henrico parent, said she’s been advocating for a revamp of the class rank system for years.

“In Henrico, once we added the specialty centers to each of the high schools, what ended up happening is we made class rank incredibly unfair for many of the students in the school, because the specialty centers and IB programs in particular give the students an earlier chance to take weighted classes or dual enrollment classes,” Vithoulkas said. “It's very hard for those other students who aren't in those programs to break through.”

First step of a lengthy process

Superintendent Amy Cashwell said last week that the issue has come up with stakeholders and that her administration has already done some preliminary research.

“We've seen school divisions look at a number of ways to continue to offer the rigor, continue to allow students to thrive with access to these kinds of courses, and shift to the collegiate way of doing things,” Cashwell said at the school board meeting June 24. “There are some other ways to continue to offer these opportunities to students, but to make sure we're taking into account that it isn't always an apples-to-apples comparison by the school when we’re looking at rank specifically.”

Shea’s request is just the beginning of what likely would be an extensive process to determine the best path forward for Henrico students in the long run. As is typical of the school district, the board asked for substantial stakeholder input, including the thoughts of students, families, employees, colleges and universities.

If the policy were to change, the district would want to honor its commitment to students who are already in various programs by phasing in the possible change to allow plenty of time for adjustments, Jenks said.

After HCPS administrators look into the process, they will present a plan to the board for further consideration.

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Anna Bryson is the Henrico Citizen's education reporter and a Report for America corps member. Make a tax-deductible donation to support her work, and RFA will match it dollar for dollar.