Henry Sibley High School will begin using weighted grades in its class ranking system for students, and it has changed how it reports class rank, a spokeswoman for the Mendota Heights school said Wednesday.
The changes come more than a year after some students and parents began debating whether the school should give greater weight to grades that students earn in more rigorous classes.
The failure of the system to account for tougher classes effectively penalized students taking them, some parents said. Last spring the West St. Paul - Mendota Heights - Eagan school board decided against weighting grades at Sibley after a report by the high school's principal.
But in the fall, still under pressure, district officials convened a task force to make further recommendations.
The new grade-weighting convention will provide "a recognition system that honors the hard work of all Sibley students and positions them well for post-high school success," said Pat Johnson, Sibley associate principal and facilitator for the task force. The changes also "better reflect the rigor of course work in student recognition," Johnson said.
A district spokeswoman said the new policy is patterned after that of many other school districts, including Stillwater Area Public Schools. High schools across the nation are being pressed to change class ranking policies by students applying to competitive colleges and other institutions of higher education trying to assess students in the wake of grade inflation.
Sibley's new policy calls for student transcripts to carry both a weighted and unweighted grade point average. Additionally, transcripts will discontinue reporting a student's specific class rank. Instead, they will report class rank given only in deciles, or 10 percentage point increments for weighted and unweighted ranks.
For example, a student with the 15th-best grade-point average in a class of 100 students would be designated as being in the top 20 percent, and Sibley will disclose the grade-point average of the students ranked 11th and 20th in the class.
Only grades for Advanced Placement classes will be weighted, Sibley officials said. While the students also may take Post Secondary Educational Option (PSEO) and College in the Schools (CIS) classes, the committee said passing those classes automatically results in college credit.
More than 50 percent of high schools nationally do not currently report class rank, but do provide some general context for evaluating where a given student falls within a class or school, district officials said.
The task force comprised Sibley teachers and staff, middle and high school parents, a recent Sibley graduate and community experts. The system is set to take effect for the graduating class of 2011.
Gregory A. Patterson • 612-673-7287
