The removal of the decile ranking system, seen here as reported on the Palo Alto High School 2011-2012 School Profile, will not be included in the School Profile starting next year.

– David Lim

The Palo Alto Unified School District will discontinue the grade point average decile ranking next year after pushback from a college admissions coordinator.

After concluding that the decile ranking hurt more students than they benefit, the PAUSD decided to stop reporting the statistic, according to Director of Secondary Education Michael Milliken.

“This change in practice started with a conversation between [Superintendent] Dr. Skelly and an Ivy League recruiting coordinator,” Milliken said. “The coordinator suggested that ranking our students against one another, especially in such a high performing district, likely hurt our students more than it helped them.”

These changes will affect both Paly and Henry M. Gunn High School. Milliken and others at the district believe eliminating the decile rankings will ultimately help students with their college admissions chances.

“Paly and Gunn are academic outliers — we have incredibly strong students academically,” Milliken said. “Last fall, a report to the PAUSD school board showed that PAUSD students who score at the 25th percentile on the SAT within our district are at roughly the 75th percentile in the state of California. Accordingly, when we rank our students by decile against one another, this may incrementally help the top 10 to 20% of students, but it likely hurts the remaining 80 to 90% of students who have good grades, a strong transcript, and good test scores.”

The district is making this change in light of Mission San Jose High School’s experience with eliminating decile ranking, which recently made a similar change with positive results for their college bound seniors, explains Milliken. 

“Mission San Jose saw an improvement in their students’ college-going prospects — more students got into better colleges,” said Miliken. “We are hopeful that Paly and Gunn will see a comparable benefit.  This is consistent with conversations that we have had with other college and high school staff members about the possible benefits of this change.” 

Currently, Paly reports decile ranking but does not send class rank. Decile ranking in the past has been provided to give context to students’ relative performance, explains guidance counselor Sandra Cernobori.

“At Paly, [Teacher Advisers] do not complete the ratings sections because they work with only a very small section of seniors,” Cernobori said. “So instead, we would provide deciles and therefore the colleges could look at the courses we offer, and what students have chosen to take, and then their GPAs compared to where they fall within their class, and the admissions officers would make their own rankings or ratings.”

Milliken and others hope these changes will reduce student stress and help lessen the sometimes “hyper-competitive” climate at Paly and Gunn.