CLEARFIELD – At Monday night’s Clearfield school board meeting, parents and students showed up to voice concerns about how the “weighting” of dual enrollment classes is impacting the students’ class ranking.
The class ranking determines the students who will graduate as the valedictorian and salutatorian. In addition, it determines each student’s ranking among their class of peers.
Parent Michael Ternoway said he remained concerned about the changes in the class ranking system due to comments Superintendent Terry Struble made in the media reports after last month’s meeting.
Ternoway said it was published that Struble had commented about students being able to pick up as many dual enrollment classes, which are “weighted” and worth more points, as they wanted and “loading up.”
According to him, Struble admitted that the students below them would never be able to catch up. Ternoway said this wasn’t fair to the students who just want a “K-12 education” and then to get their college credits at college like his son.
Ternoway said it wasn’t just about his son, a ninth grader in 2015, either but the entire group of Top 20 students. “It’s about all of the kids,” he said. “That’s who I feel bad for.”
Ternoway said parents were concerned about the class rankings and attended last month’s meeting. He said they were even more concerned after because Struble was quoted as saying that the district wouldn’t recalculate the class rankings since they were by the rule.
“It doesn’t even get to the school board members who we voted for,” he said. “We voted for these people and they should have a say in the decision. It shouldn’t be a couple of people making the decision.”
Ternoway said Clearfield Area Junior-Senior High School Principal Tim Janocko should have been “hit hard” after last month’s school board meeting. He said this was academics and must be put first, not sports.
Ternoway said students who want to take weighted elective courses follow the chain of command. However, he said some were told that they could not while they were scheduled at the same time as core classes.
“It’s discriminating against the students who cannot get in,” he said. He said parents were not trying to complain and stir things up but merely to get to the bottom of the problems with the class ranking system.
Under the current class ranking system, Ternoway said a student who scores a 70 percent in weighted classes can be ranked higher than a student who has “straight A’s” but who is not in weighted classes.
“That’s crazy and ridiculous,” he said. He said it was disgraceful to receive a letter from the district’s attorney who wanted to know if he’d spoken to any teachers or seen students’ grades.
Ternoway said district administrators were scared and he vowed not to miss another school board meeting. He said people were scared to speak up for fear of losing their jobs, and it would have been nice to have a guidance counselor at the meeting to answer questions.
Parent Jeff Luzier said he was also disappointed in Struble’s comments in media reports after last month’s meeting. He said they left with the impression that the district had 30 years of grading records to determine if any mistakes were made in the class rankings.
However, like Ternoway, Luzier said that Struble was quoted as saying the district wouldn’t recalculate the class rankings, as they had followed the rules.
Luzier said that Struble had indicated the formula to determine class ranking was on the district’s Web site. He said parents were unable to find the formula as of the day after the meeting.
Luzier said it was still clear that a change was made in the class ranking formula, and calculations were done differently from any other senior class in school history.
Luzier said he’d received his son’s official transcripts, which indicate a class ranking of fourth for 2015. He said his son had previously been ranked seventh per the class ranking for Awards Day and the Principal’s List, which was three weeks before graduation.
According to him, another student received their official transcripts and was ranked second in their class. However, Luzier said this student was not recognized by the school as their graduating class’ salutatorian.
Luzier asked board members if they were concerned about the fact that the Top 5 students on the 2014 Principal’s List matched exactly with the final transcripts but were “wildly different” in 2015.
He asked the board members if they were confounded by the fact that the 2015 class rankings were determined just three weeks before graduation and not at the end of the third nine weeks.
He asked board members if they were outraged that an alternative method of class ranking was used without board approval and then noticed by the students.
Luzier finally asked board members if they were disappointed that possibly the wrong student was recognized as the salutatorian, especially with it involving a scholarship award.
“It’s not mostly about the money,” he said. “It’s about the students being treated equitably and consistently by their educators.” He said educators shouldn’t knowingly and intentionally misrepresent their evaluations of students.
AJ Coval said his twins just finished the ninth grade. He said his daughter’s grades were basically identical to his son’s; however, his son was in Geometry and his daughter was in Algebra.
He said they had to go around in circles in order to find out his daughter’s class ranking at the end of the school year. He said they anticipated that she would be in the Top 20.
However, Coval said when they finally got an answer recently his daughter had finished 34th in her class in 2015. He said they were told the 33 students ahead of her had two weighted classes.
Coval said weighted classes should be core classes, such as English and mathematics, and not the “fluff,” or “pop culture.” He said he wants his children to take core classes to prepare them for college and the real world after.
Student Michael Ternoway said it was “disturbing” to find out that students who didn’t make honor roll or high honor roll are ranked ahead of students, such as himself who are earning such achievements.
He said graduating seniors who miss honor roll or high honors may not be as affected because they have had four years figuring into their class ranking. However, Ternoway said he only has one year under his belt.
Ternoway’s father then spoke up again, asking the district why it couldn’t take the Top 10 students without their names and average out their class rankings. “I think you would be surprised. I wish the board would do that,” he said.
Salutatorian Nicholas Hudson said he returned to the CAJSHS not with the jubilance he left with on graduation day but with disappointment. He said others were seeking to “tear down” the accomplishments of so many students by attacking the grades that they worked so hard for.
He asked how anyone could accuse him of not having earned his grades if they didn’t have access to them. Otherwise he said it was unfounded speculation and if someone did have access to his grades – although it’d be troubling to him – they’d clearly see his record of academic achievement in high school, junior high and elementary.
Hudson said he was willing to go “toe-to-toe” with anyone’s grades in the class of 2015. He said if anyone wanted to see his grades, all they had to do was ask him to.
After questions about the class rankings were raised last month, Hudson said he was astounded that no one came to the defense of his grades and those of his classmates.
He said he’s always strived to be a stellar student, as well as to make his school a better place. “To see that almost slandered in a way, it hurts. However, I have thick skin,” he said. “What makes me the most irate is that this not only affects me, but also my fellow alumni who have worked hard to earn their grades.”
Hudson said those who were attacking their grades were ignorant to the facts. He said the argument that a student shouldn’t be a salutatorian if they haven’t been on the high honor roll every time is ridiculous.
He said that would ignore the basic principles of mathematics. He said the valedictorian and salutatorian are determined by a cumulative, four-year ranking and based not on a single quarter but 15 quarters through a senior’s third nine-week marking period.
He said it was “entirely possible” for a student to have high grades, except for one quarter or two, and achieve the top class rankings. He said, “It’s an average of a long period of time. Merely looking at one or two nine-week periods doesn’t illustrate the whole picture,” he said.
According to Hudson, it was “laughable” that people claimed students don’t have equal access to weighted dual enrollment classes. He said as a student, he took three – all during his sophomore year – which doesn’t make anyone a salutatorian.
Additionally, he said a family’s ability to pay for dual enrollment classes doesn’t have any impact on who can take them. He said if memory serves him correct, students don’t have to complete paperwork and pay until after the beginning of the school year.
Hudson said it was “completely false” that the district’s administrators used a new method to calculate the class rankings. He said the “most twisted concept” was that the district shouldn’t weight the students’ grades.
According to him, students’ grades are weighted at 1.0 in normal difficulty classes; 1.1 in extremely difficult classes and at various weights for any class that falls in between.
He said if a student takes a relatively easy class and gets a 95 percent, it shouldn’t be treated as the same as a 95 percent earned by a student in a more difficult class, such as Advanced Chemistry.
“Not all classes are created equal,” said Hudson. “Weighting equals the playing field for students who go above and beyond by taking difficult classes to challenge themselves mentally, which is what education is supposed to be about.”
Hudson said if the district impeded upon or completely eliminated weighting, it would result in the academic decay of preparing students to graduate from CAJSHS and enter the real world. Hudson pointed out that a loss in weighting would put students at a disadvantage when competing against others.
For example, Hudson said he will attend the University of Southern California this fall. He said to get in he had to compete against 50,000 other students, because it is a world-class institution. “Weighting is exactly how it should be,” Hudson said.
He said it wasn’t the school’s job to coddle students who couldn’t compete against their classmates on an academic level for a ranking. Instead he said it was the school’s job to hold each student to a certain standard and to encourage willing students to go above and beyond it.
“Not everyone has that ability, which is OK,” said Hudson. “People have different abilities and priorities.” However, he said this hasn’t been a problem before and he believed it was now with money being attached to the positions of valedictorian and salutatorian.
In his honest opinion, he felt parents and students hoped to earn the titles for the scholarships. “Just because you haven’t earned it or won’t get it, doesn’t mean you have imperative to completely shake up the whole system.
“If I had to guess the motivation of the attackers on last year’s grades, it’s that they’re trying to rig the system unfairly simply for the money. I find this very disappointing.”
In response Struble clarified that students can take a weighted class without making it dual enrollment for college credit. He said any qualified student could enroll in a weighted class that’s available and there isn’t a need to pay for it.
Struble said there are several methods for weighting classes, including the one used by Clearfield for the past 30 years. He said every school district does it differently, and Clearfield administrators are currently examining the current system and others to see what makes sense.
Struble said Clearfield has historically used a weighted average, which produces three, different class rankings before graduation. “This is where the confusion starts to come in with the senior class,” he said.
Struble said at the end of the third nine weeks, administrators calculate who is in the Top 10 based off the senior year, which is similar to that done for the ninth through eleventh grades.
He said that can be different from the cumulative class rank that is also done through the third nine weeks of the senior year. He said that can then be different from the cumulative overall once students graduate and they factor in the fourth nine weeks.
