Superintendent Endorses Ending Class Rank

Montville Township School District Superintendent Dr. Paul Fried has recommended ending the practice of ranking high school students by GPA and said a new policy would be drafted for the school board to vote on before the start of next school year.

He made his recommendation at Tuesday's Board of Education meeting, which came after town meetings, the creation of a task force to explore the issue and additional town meetings. Fried said it was a "long and thorough path."

"The evidence has been both overwhelming and compelling for positive reasons to eliminate that practice and the benefits will benefit all children no matter where they may fall with their class rank," he said at the meeting.

He called it an "unofficial recommendation" because a new policy still needs to be drafted, which he said would be brought to the board for vote as soon as possible.

The guidance office would still keep track of class rank  and Montville Township still would still identify its valedictorian and salutatorian each year.

"We believe that's an important tradition to uphold here in Montville Township," he said.

And the guidance office would be able to let schools know what a student's class rank was for scholarship purposes, "but that information would not be available to students, families or colleges."

Fried said that would begin immediately starting with next year's senior class.

In an interview Wednesday, Fried listed some of the reasons given by the task force to not have class rank and that informed his recommendation:

• If a student applies to a university and class rank is outside the percentile the university is looking for, they're rejected. If no class rank is given, they'll continue to look further at their application.
• In a competitive high school, a student can have a very high GPA, but many students can have a GPA in the same range, so the rank doesn't reflect how well they are doing. Students can be separated by hundredths of a point.
• Morris Catholic still has class rank, but eight other schools they looked at do not: Mountain Lakes, Kinnelon, Ridge, Ridgewood, Summit, Princeton, Millburn, Newark Academy. Millburn believes the number of students admitted to competitive colleges rose after eliminating class rank.
• A long-time admissions officer at a competitive college conveyed to the board that class rank only can get in a student's way and most students who apply don't have a class rank. "He saw it only as a factor that keeps you out," he said. Fried noted that even being the top-ranked student doesn't ensure admission to the student's choice school.
• Class rank can be a distraction, takes the focus away from learning, and for students who are ranked toward the bottom, it can be defeating.
• It might make students more open to taking non-weighted courses they are passionate about, such as in the arts.

On Tuesday, the Board of Education approved a resolution recognizing those who worked on the Class Rank Task Force Committee: David Tubbs, Michael Shera, Emily Barkocy, Mario Maullon, Fran Schlenoff, Leslie Levy, Paul Preztak, Helen Kraft, Frank Lovaglio, Enid LeWinter Davis, Debbie Cho and Pat Morgan.

"The Class Rank Task Force spent many long hours researching the topic of class rank and the potential implications to the students of Montville Township High School" and "the Task Force gave of their time to make multiple presentations of their findings and recommendations to the Montville Township Board of Education and community," the resolution says.