Graduating Seniors May Fly Closer to Home
So at Tuesday’s (genuinely) activity-packed school board meeting, counseling and guidance director Kim Rose mentioned that more Highland Park High School students are opting to stay in Texas for college — thanks, perhaps, to the district’s move to omit class rank for most of its students. We had a bullet about rank, et al, in this week’s issue of Park Cities People, but I’d be amiss not to point you to the DMN’s write up about the ranking system as it relates, or may relate, to college choice.
What’s more, Rose said, a handful of other Texas school districts have opted to follow suit and only rank students in the top 10 percent. Now whether this is incidental or actually modeled after Highland Park ISD, I’ve yet to confirm — but hey. It seems to be catching on.
I view this as a negative, not a positive. Leaving the comfort zone of DFW, Austin, College Station, Waco, Lubbock, etc is a very healthy thing. I left the Bubble for college far away, and it helped me to learn about the many great things to which I hadn’t been exposed at HPHS. And it also made me appreciate some of the things about HP that I had always taken for granted. You just don’t get that if you go to UT with your high school buddies.
So sad to hear that the kids are finding it harder to get into the out of state schools now that they don’t have rank in class. We know several seniors on our block who thought they would get into Vanderbilt, USC, etc. but found that not having a class rank meant that the fartehr away places couldn’t apply a formula to letting them in which left some kids out of luck.
Good for you pigskinnie, but don’t presume to tell me that I missed out on anything by going to UT. I wouldn’t trade 4 years at The University for anything. College is what you make of it, whether you head 200 miles south on I-35 or 1500 miles away.
I would definitely attribute Texas school attendance to the economy. Many families have been affected, but it isn’t discussed as openly as it might be in other areas. As far as ranking- I fear the complaints of parents with underachievers have been allowed to override a working ranking system. What about the negative effect on all those kids who were motivated to be close to the top (knowing they were not in the top 10%) and would benefit from the ranking? They have been left out in the cold and aren’t allowed to request a ranking. Many kids and their parents have been left wondering why they tried so hard, and there are quite a few who are posturing mediocrity with their remaining children who have yet to enter the high school. I fear HPISD will see a gradual decline in AP class enrollment, etc. We just gave them all an automatic excuse. After all, if you know you won’t be in the top 50-55 kids, what’s the point?