Falmouth High School To Eliminate Class Rank System
Falmouth High School is proposing to eliminate its class rank system, a choice that is congruent with a movement sweeping high schools across both the state and nation.
Former FHS principal Mary Gans and current interim principal Thomas McManamon briefed the school committee on the proposal at its Tuesday, February 8, meeting. Ms. Gans said that the decision to eliminate class rank came about for a number of reasons: it fosters an unhealthy competitive nature among students, is an additional stressor and has become largely thought of as insignificant by colleges and universities in the application process.
“We know that students are under stress as it is for a variety of reasons and trying to figure out where you are in regard to your classmates is just one more stressor,” she said.
FHS specifically took a look at its class rank system because of its truly unusual nature. Ms. Gans said that she has extensively researched the high school’s class rank system but despite efforts, no one seems to know where it came from or how it was created. Falmouth High School uses a weighted class rank system, but a lack of equity in the way certain electives were weighted over others has created inequities that further muddled the process by which rank is calculated.
“I’ve found no other school that has this kind of class rank that heavily weights elective courses with points,” she said. “Because certain electives are given honors credit, if [students] get honors credit they get extra points. Whereas for example, you could take four years of woodworking classes—you could take advanced woodworking and be able to really build something incredible—and you will always get CP [college preparatory level] points for that elective. You will never be able to gain extra points and jump ahead in your class rank.”
Ms. Gans also pointed out that high school’s class rank is calculated on a cumulative basis, not an average, meaning that students who simply take more classes and presumably do well have an easier chance of ranking higher in their class.
“A class rank presumes that every student has the same opportunities in high school and we know that’s not always the case,” Ms. Gans said. “In eliminating class rank, students really are competing against themselves and they’re going to take courses and electives that they’re actually truly interested in, not a course just so that they can up their class rank.”
A vast majority of the highest-ranked high schools in Massachusetts are doing away with class rank, Mr. McManamon said, and most colleges either do not request it at all or put much merit into it when making their decisions.
“This existed before COVID, but now especially as things have changed with COVID, students are coming out of two years of a different way of life and we’ve seen our students profiles changing,” he said. “Colleges have really broadened their scope in review of applicants with many colleges now not even requiring the submission of standardized test scores, making the tests optional instead, making class rank optional, etc. colleges are really at this point looking more in depth at the whole student, not just one piece of paper.”
The high school will roll out the elimination slowly, as Mr. McManamon said they did not think it was fair to switch things up for students who have already been at the high school with the class rank system in place. The proposed elimination of class rank will not take effect until the Class of 2026 is incoming this coming fall, Ms. Gans said.
“Even if we didn’t have this weird formula of calculating class rank, I think we’d still be having the conversation about eliminating class rank,” Ms. Gans said. “Because, honestly, it creates stress for students, and now the trend truly is, across high schools and colleges and universities, they are just not looking at class rank.”