School Board Approves Liberalized Access to Honors/AP Courses, Drops Class Rank

The San Marino Board of Education unanimously voted Tuesday night to liberalize access to Advanced Placement and honors classes and drop the practice of class rank from students, beginning with the 2011-12 school year.

Prior to the decision, about a year of discussion occurred amongst an academics advisory committee comprised of Board of Education President Chris Norgaard, teachers and admission counselors from universities such as Harvard.

The AAC officially presented a policy to the Board of Education to liberalize enrollment in San Marino High School honors and Advanced Placement courses, drop class rank and eliminate the extra point added when calculating AP GPA.

San Marino parent Raymond Quan, whose wife spoke at length at , said Tuesday that waiting to get into an AP class after a student has gotten one unfortunate bad grade is “like waiting for a kidney” so he applauded liberalized access.

The AAC made a case that more liberal access to AP and honors courses is needed so more students can take the courses, which are especially valued by colleges and universities.

Class rank is gone “absolutely all together,” not just on transcripts, said Superintendent Gary Woods. “We do a thing called Prometheans, we don’t have valedictorians. We recognize like 26 seniors at the end of the year as being phenomenal, so we were already kind of moving in the direction of not ranking but this is our final move now.”

Genevieve Tsoh, another San Marino parent, wondered if the new practice for access to honors and AP classes is lowering the standard and setting kids up for failure. She also questioned eliminating class rank.

“Getting rid of class rank is absolutely the best thing for the majority of our kids,” said Kleinrock after the meeting. “We have no evidence that colleges are going to penalize kids from schools that don’t have class rank because all the top schools got rid of class rank.”

The committee’s proposal includes stipulations for the new AP and honors access policy, such as:

• Plunge briskly into the course material at a high level of intensity during the first two weeks with the aim of showing students the challenge they have undertaken.
• Permit students to drop the course for up to three weeks after it begins, subject to the constraints of available alternatives
• Counsel students believed to be at risk of failure, urgently if necessary, and notify their parents. This counsel can be provided by faculty and/or college counselors. To minimize ambiguity, counselors may ask parents to acknowledge receipt of a form that the student is taking the course “against academic advice.”

“There’s a risk to the student to take a really different class sometimes and we want to be very upfront with our students and make sure our parents and students know what the highs and lows could be of taking AP,” said Woods. “It’s not for everyone.”

Kleinrock said the amount of new honors and AP courses that will be added varies by subject and depends on how many students apply as well as maintaining a master schedule that enables all students access to classes required for graduation.

Tentatively, 12 new honors and AP courses will be added, said Kleinrock: one math course, four English courses (one per grade level), five science courses and two foreign language courses.

San Marino High School staff will notify parents of the new honors and AP access policies via constant contact and/or a phone message, Kleinrock said, and the information will also be posted on the school’s website.

The Board of Education will hold a study session April 26 to further discuss possibly dropping the extra point from AP GPAs.

San Marino High School principal Loren Kleinrock said last month that the extra point may make students and parents feel better but does not ultimately matter on transcripts because colleges and universities recalculate GPA so students from all schools are measured using the same system.