February 10, 2016

This topic should rank high for parents of high school students as the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District moves toward eliminating a longstanding practice of reporting students’ decile rankings to colleges.

The public is invited to attend an informational meeting on Wednesday, Feb. 10, from 7 to 8 p.m. in the high school LGI room. Attendees will hear about the recommendations presented by a committee that studied the issue and will be able to direct questions to members of the committee and administration.

The decile rankings, one way to categorize data, divides students into 10 categories, based on their cumulative grade point average (GPA) at the end of their junior year. That ranking is then provided to colleges during the admission process.

A committee of parents, students, teachers, administrators, alumni, and board members was assigned the task of evaluating the pros and cons of the ranking system – findings that led them to recommend discontinuing the practice, according to a school district email.

The high school’s Counseling Department surveyed 27 colleges and universities and spoke to many college representatives about decile ranking. Also, in preparation for the discussion, the administration researched and surveyed other top-performing high schools from across the nation, according to a letter from Superintendent John Sanville.

The letter outlines numerous factors that led to support to end the practice. It said decile rank is not a requirement of college applications. If provided, it will be used for context; if not, it won’t be considered. Colleges with a more holistic application policy placed even less emphasis on the decile rank than colleges with a more quantitative approach, the letter said.

In addition, the letter said other high-achieving high school stopped sharing decile rankings many years ago.

“Based on these findings, the administration is recommending that we no longer rank our students using deciles. Since Unionville High School (UHS) has a strong reputation and is ranked highly in many publications, the context of our successful students is available beyond the decile rank of an individual student,” the letter said.

The letter listed five reasons to discontinue the practice, stating that providing decile rank disadvantages UHS students when colleges use top percent in their own college ranking statistic; providing decile rank does not accurately reflect all of a student’s abilities, particularly in a high-performing school, such as UHS; and removing decile rank will help students with scholarship eligibility.

In addition, removing decile rank will eliminate unnecessary competition among students and help bring focus back to individual student learning; removing decile rank is significant since the decile cut-off changes each year.  For example, in the Class of 2015, a 4.0478 landed a student in the third decile while a 4.0478 in the Class of 2016 represented the second decile, the letter said.

As the school board considers whether to follow the committee’s recommendation, input from parents and students is being sought. Those who are unable to attend the informational session can send feedback or questions to http://goo.gl/forms/2wzdjFN5vV.