In the auditorium of Old High Middle School, which used to be the high school, the names of past valedictorians and salutatorians – the no. 1 and no. 2 ranking students – are emblazoned on the back of chairs.

In a cafeteria at Bentonville High School, banners hang with the names of highly ranked students from past classes.

The tradition is meant to honor students dedicated to academics. But amid state rule changes and rising college admissions pressure (and the anxiety that causes students), educators in Bentonville Schools have concluded the practice is no longer beneficial.

At the school board meeting on Tuesday, September 16, Bentonville West High School Principal Jonathan Guthrie, with assistance from Bentonville High School teacher Lora Pate, laid out the case for stopping the rankings.

Class rankings are currently listed on report cards and transcripts.

They are based on grade point averages (GPAs). In a standard-level course, an “A” earns 4 points, a “B” earns 3, a “C” earns 2, and a “D” earns 1. When all courses are averaged, that becomes the student’s GPA.

Things get more complicated with “weighting,” where certain honors courses are assigned higher values, largely to reward students who take the risk of enrolling in more academically rigorous classes.

Highly motivated students, under pressure to gain admission to colleges, load up on these weighted courses — even taking extra classes in the summer — in order to boost their GPAs.

Bentonville West High School has about 600 seniors, and Bentonville High School has about 800. Both are regularly ranked among the top high schools in the state.

Speaking as a teacher, Pate said, “The unhealthy competition that class rank instills just induces more stress and anxiety, which these students need to decrease.”

Educators in Bentonville have been rethinking the value of class rankings since at least 2017, wondering how it might affect students’ mental health and course choices, Guthrie said.

About half of high schools in the country have already stopped ranking students, according to one estimate from The College Board.

State education officials control how GPA is calculated and recently determined that a host of classes that were once unweighted should now be weighted.

These changes aren’t retroactive, meaning a student who took these newly weighted courses last year won’t receive the same GPA boost as peers taking them this year. That could reorder class rankings in ways students could not have predicted, and it was the final push administrators needed to recommend ending class rankings.

“These weighting rules are rules that we cannot change at the district level. These are not local control rules. We can control if we rank or not, and how we do it,” Guthrie said.

Additionally, there is the matter of non-core classes that can broaden students’ horizons but don’t boost GPA like weighted courses.

Top-ranking students “are choosing the other courses that are going to give them the weighted credit and the GPA,” Guthrie said.

High-performing students and their parents might have concerns about what this means for college admissions. Guthrie said he and his colleagues studying the issue asked themselves those same questions.

“We don’t want to hurt our top two students while we help everyone else,” he said.

For students trying to do everything they can to secure college admission and scholarships, class ranking might seem incredibly important. However, it’s no longer a top factor for college admissions officers.

“Not ranking encourages colleges to make a more holistic decision on a student,” Guthrie concluded.

Before moving forward with the changes, the district will host two information sessions to collect feedback and discuss the proposal:

The change would need to be approved by the school board, and no official action was taken at the Tuesday meeting. However, several school board members shared supportive comments after the presentation from Guthrie: