At the CHCCS school board meeting Jan. 19, four members of the Superintendent’s Student Equity and Empathy Ambassadors Program delivered a presentation advocating for a change in the district’s class rank system.
Carrboro junior Joyah Horton, East senior Max Winzelberg (also an ECHO staff writer) and Chapel Hill seniors Juan Diaz Rhi and Ryan Kilgallen outlined key issues resulting from class rank in CHCCS schools, specifically regarding academics, mental health and equity. Chapel Hill senior Aarov Malhotra was also involved in the efforts, but could not attend the meeting.
The Ambassadors noted that class rank discourages students from taking arts and CTE classes and instead incentivizes them to take higher weighted AP classes that may not ultimately benefit their education or align with their interests.
“I have, throughout my high school career, seen that I was just studying purely for a grade rather than actually understanding the substance and the purpose of my class,” Diaz Rhi said. “I had to drop my class of Jazz Music because I have to partake in the competition and cutthroat practice of AP enrollments to increase my class rank, to be able to compete to get into a good college and hopefully have a good life.”
They also highlighted the effects of class rank on school culture and student mentality, as comparing students against one another can push them to view peers as competitors and obstacles to success, potentially damaging the sense of community.
In addition, the students drew a connection between class rank and academic equity for minorities. Low confidence hurts the confidence of those with low rank, and academic effort is often lowered as a result, Horton and Winzelberg said, citing a study by the Economic Journal.
However, since state statutes mandate a weighted GPA and class rank system, and previous efforts to repeal such laws have failed, CHCCS can’t simply do away with class rank.
With this in mind, the students proposed several solutions, including further legislative petitioning, adjusting course weighting and converting to the Latin honors system, which the Ambassadors say they later determined was also against current laws.
Nonetheless, the Board unanimously responded enthusiastically, and added the issue to its legislative agenda.
“You’re preaching to the choir a little bit,” said Board member Deon Temne. “I’m truly proud to hear that you’re doing this, and you may not benefit from it, but those coming after you will. And that is the true meaning of service.”
Fellow Board member Jillian La Serna went even further, suggesting, “What if we just broke the statute?”
A solution that drastic is unlikely, but the Ambassadors say they’re happy with the response to their presentation.
“Regardless of the outcome, I think that our presentation was perhaps most powerful to me in the sense that it generated dialogue,” Kilgallen said.
Among the student body at large, class rank is largely unpopular. Among 106 responders to the ECHO’s January Student Survey, only 17 said they thought class rank was a valuable measurement of students’ academic performance.
“Class rank is an arbitrary way of putting students in a hierarchy to make human beings more palatable to a statistical system of college selection, and I think it’s a really oversimplified way of introducing us as fully rounded students,” said senior Selema DeBellis.
She also drew a connection between class rank and a general sense of excessive competition at East.
“I think East is such a hypocritical school that tries to promote mental health and at the same time has this really, really loud subculture of competition and taking more AP classes,” DeBellis said.
The issues of academic competition don’t end with class rank. After all, colleges still examine the courses that students take and the grades they receive when determining admissions.
“There’s always going to be competition no matter what,” said sophomore Adrian Hito. “I don’t think that that can be solved by eliminating class rank; there’s more of a personal decision to take those classes.”
Kilgallen, however, suggested that changing the class rank system will remove a layer of incentive for students to overload on difficult courses. He said that some admissions departments, such as UNC’s, do not value additional AP courses beyond the sixth or seventh, recognizing that they provide little actual indication of academic abilities. This means that without class rank, there would be less need to use AP courses to impress colleges.
Diaz Rhi added that reweighting the GPA points given by courses would further promote certain CTE and arts classes, mitigating the trend of students prioritizing course weighting over interest and desire to actually learn.
“Let’s say, for example, if there was an AP Jazz [course], without hesitation, I would take [it],” Diaz Rhi said. “And that would make me actually want to invest more time in that class, instead of forcing myself to [study] the subject.”
Currently, the weighting of different courses makes certain disciplines more accessible and appealing than others.
“Certain classes get additional weights, and others don’t,” said Civics teacher Brian Link, who also spoke in support of the Ambassadors at the Board meeting. “So if you’re passionate, say, about the arts, it can often be multiple years before you can get to an ‘honors level class.’ Or you could literally start up in some disciplines as a 14-year-old, at the college level with a higher weight… [That] pushes people towards certain paths and not towards others.”
Kilgallen remarked that, despite disagreements about whether class rank is the cause, ultimately it is nearly universally held that the competitive academic environment across CHCCS is problematic.
“I think that everybody can agree that there is perhaps a warped sense of what it means to learn and what it means to be academically successful,” Kilgallen said.
Link is hopeful that persistent student efforts can change the class rank system.
“So, will there be change? Yes. Will it come immediately? Who knows,” Link said. “But change typically starts from the bottom up. If there were lots of students who were all saying this, and they did this around the state, my guess is that change would actually happen quite rapidly. But if most folks are like, ‘Eh, I’m gonna wait for someone else to do it,” or ‘I just am gonna go along with it,’ then it’s probably going to take a longer time.”
Photo by Andrew Xu/The ECHO
