Board compromises on decile rankings

Unionville-Chadds Ford School Board directors voted Monday night to change the policy of reporting decile rankings for students applying to college. However, instead of simply not reporting those rankings, the district will report a grade point distribution that proponents say will put a student’s grade point average “in context.”

Decile rankings compare students to others in their class on a scale of 1-10. A ranking of 1 indicates a student is in the top 10 percent of the class. A ranking of 2 indicates a student is in the top 20 percent.

The proposed grade point distribution reporting shows, in bar chart form, how many students fall within a given grade point range. (See chart below.)

School administrators recommended dropping the reporting after learning that many colleges and universities don’t bother with them. Ken Batchelor, assistant to the superintendent, previously said 43 percent of colleges used the rankings in 1993, but that dropped to 19 percent by 2012.

The March 28 vote was 7-2, with Region B representative Michael Rock speaking strongly against the compromise. Rock is in favor of dropping the ranking, but said including a grade distribution is “dishonest.”

He said his criteria for voting on an issue was to do no harm.

“First, we got a report from the administration that said removing the decile ranking would not hurt our top decile students, and would actually help students who were below the top decile…Doing no harm would require us to remove the decile ranks, period, full stop,” Rock said, calling the grade point distribution “a decile ranking in sheep’s clothing. It’s dishonest because all we’re doing is recreating a decile rank in a different form.”

Rock added that it does not correct the principle of doing no harm.

The chart shows how the grade distribution may be presented. mIt shows the number of students  in each grade point range.
The chart shows how the grade distribution may be presented. mIt shows the number of students in each grade point range.

“It reinforces the existing harm principle. It’s dishonest. It’s inconsistent with the facts,” he said.

Also voting no was Director Bob Sage. He said he’s in favor of doing away with the decile reporting entirely, but still wants something in place. He suggested allowing the students to decide whether their ranking should be reported, but that option was not up for a vote.

Gregg Lindner, of Chadds Ford and representing region C, said he agrees with Rock that reporting the decile should be dropped, but that he would vote for the compromise so that there’s a new policy in place for the current 11th-graders.

“I, too, would prefer that we took the initial administration position. They laid it out well. They said what it was they wanted to do. If we had five votes to do that, I would vote yes to do away with it, just as recommended by the administration,” Lindner said. “But we’re left with a situation where, if we vote no on this, we end up not doing away with the decile ranking. I have to look at what I believe would do more harm.”

He said voting for the compromise was the least harmful approach.

“I would rather do away with the decile ranking and be one of the votes to make sure there is no decile ranking with this [11th-grade] class. I’ll be voting yes, but I wish we had five votes to do the other.”

Board President Vic Dupuis said he would echo some of the comments Rock made regarding the rankings, that they hurt students who are not at the top.

He stopped short of calling the grade point distribution dishonest, saying “we don’t have an absolute certainty that full elimination of all grade-relevant data is appropriate.”

Dupuis added that he’d like to see the distribution go away in time, but “this is a great step in the right direction.”

Former Director Kathy Do said after the meeting that getting rid of the decile ranking is the right thing to do, and that while she doesn’t care for the compromise that includes the grade distribution, she would have voted for it simply to eliminate the decile ranking.

“Getting rid of the decile ranking is in the best interest of the community as a whole. I’m very glad that the board took this action. I think it was the right decision,” she said.

Ironically, she spent a recent weekend talking with colleges regarding her son and said colleges are far ahead in their understanding of rankings.

“GPAs don’t have the same meaning that they used to have. There are so many ways of weighting GPAs, that a GPA at Unionville doesn’t look anything like a GPA at Conestoga or Kennett,” Do said.

However, the distribution as a way to put a GPA into context shouldn’t cause a problem, she said. She would have supported the compromise just to remove the decile ranking, but said colleges — including Johns Hopkins, which she recently visited — “no longer look at GPA. They want to look at the classes the student took, they look at the transcript, they look at the rigor.”

Other business

  • The Chromebook Pilot program was expanded to include grades six through eight at Charles F. Patton Middle School. Families will have three options. They may buy the tablets at cost — $266 — or the school will own the tablet, but the student may take it home and pay $20 per year for insurance to cover loss or damage. A third option also has the school owning the tablet and enables the student to take it home without insurance, but the family would be responsible for any loss or damage.’
  • The board voted to spend more than $2.5 million on renovation projects for Patton Middle School. Work will include auditorium renovations, roofing improvements mechanical and electrical work.
  • Board members also approved a field trip to Spain for the International Club in the summer of 2017, and an expenditure of $17,000 for improving cyber security.

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