High schools are trying to avoid giving class ranking information to colleges, concluding it could harm the admission chances of their students.
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High schools are trying to avoid giving class ranking information to colleges, concluding it could harm the admission chances of their students.
Comments are closed.
Though the college admissions staff want class rankings so they can place a student’s grades in context (as stated in the article), class rankings are lousy statistics on which to base decisions.
Using rankings as a reasonable measure is quite devoid of meaning. Simply put, use of ranking, as well as average, median, and mode statistics, and cuts scores on criterion references tests (WKCE and NAEP) are good ways to “Lie with Statistics” — such statistics usually say very little, except to stake out vacuous arguments from one side or another.
(Remember, the US education system was ranked mediocre in the PISA study; MMSD was touted as 3rd in the nation in the riduculous Expansion Management article last year).
More specifically, rankings. During the Olympics, we witnessed some of the world’s greatest athletes in competition. Some came in first, others, second, third and farther back. Take the Men’s Olympic Speedskating in the 1000m.
The rankings, with times, were
1) Davis, 1:08:89
2) Cheek, 1:09:16
3) Wennemars, 1:09:32
4) Lyou-Hyuk, 1:09:37
5) Bos, 1:09:42
6) Hedrick, 1:09:45
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12) Nijenhuis, 1:09:95
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23) Wetten, 1:10:57
24) Joon, 1:10:66
Now, if this were Education, and we wanted to disparage Nijenhuis’s accomplishments, we would need to use the appropriate political language, and say that he was a “mediocre” speedskater. Of course, he was only 1 second from first place, and likely to be the 12th fastest speedskater in the world!
And, poor Joon — 24th and in last place. Would anyone dare to refer to him as “Pokey”? Someone has to come in last, regardless of how good they are in an objective sense.
Rankings are just that; they given no measure of distance between 1st place and 24th place, or anything in between. And emotionally loaded and politically tainted rhetoric based on rankings serve no legitimate purpose.
Further, the comments made in the NYT report by admissions officers of colleges don’t give me any confidence that they know much themselves.
Yes, grades and GPA’s, ACT/SAT scores, etc don’t say very much and need context, and understanding the applicant. But, rankings give only an illusion of meaning — just like the PISA study, and the EM rankings.