After a years-long review, Plano ISD staff on Tuesday recommended for the first time the board adopt a different class-ranking practice: Report a cumulative GPA to be published on all students’ transcripts and a separate, ranking GPA used solely to determine the top 10 percent of the junior and senior classes.

If the board accepts the recommendation as presented by district staff, some previous practices will remain intact, such as naming the top two ranking students in the class, awarding Latin honors and allowing students to receive high school credit prior to the ninth grade.

Students would also have the ability to request their standing within the top 10 percent and submit that ranking to universities.

Board President Missy Bender expressed her support for the recommendation, which is expected to go before the board for consideration in June.

“If there is any bit of the recommendations that you could escalate from a recommendation point of view sooner to make a favorable impression and favorable experience for more kids sooner rather than later, I’m all for that,” Bender said.

In the recommendation, the cumulative GPA was presented as being the number students would see published on their transcripts—similar to the way the district currently reports students’ GPAs.

Staff presented the ranking GPA as only factoring grades from the following course areas: English, math, science and social studies. The ranking GPA would only be used to determine the top 10 percent of the junior and senior classes. The students in ninth and 10th grade would have to wait until their junior year before they can learn if they are in the top 10 percent.

Those who do fall within the top 10 percent would still be able to submit their ranking status for automatic admission into universities. However, Susan Modisette, the assistant superintendent of campus services, said some students who are in the top 10 percent may benefit from not disclosing that position.

“For them to be ranked in the top 10 percent but perhaps be in the ninth percent in Plano ISD—it really might be more advantageous for that student to say ‘I don’t want to disclose my rank,’” Modisette said.

Some universities that consider class ranking use a predictive model to determine the ranking of applicants who submit a transcript without a class rank, said Todd Kettler, a professor at the University of North Texas who spoke at the Tuesday meeting.

District staff found that school districts that did not rank beyond the top 10 percent reported higher college acceptance rates, according to the presentation.

If any changes are implemented, they will not go into effect in the 2018-19 school year, PISD Superintendent Sara Bonser said in a previous interview with Community Impact Newspaper.

In order to form its recommendation, the district tasked a weighted GPA work study group with researching, discussing and evaluating the district's weighted GPA practice.

A separate advisory group was tasked with serving as a sounding board for all points of view in regard to the district’s weighted GPA practices.

“We pieced together this parent advisory group so that they reflected all kinds of kids in all kinds of situations so that all voices are heard in this process,” Bonser said in the previous interview. “We feel like that conversation of learning and discussion and listening and contribution to the conversation will help us make some quality recommendations to the board.”