by Elly Beauchamp | editor in chief
As the 2019 school year starts to come to a close, NEISD is beginning discussions of a district wide ranking change, which would change the current GPA multiplier of 1.29 for all AP classes.
“There is discussion in the works, nothing has been finalized yet,” Principal Gary Comalander said, “It’s usually, in this case, a year long process from when it first started, getting people together committees, to discuss what we currently have, what other schools have, and do we want to make a change or not and then it just progresses from there. So right now, from what I’ve heard it sounds like we’re probably about 80 percent along the way and this summer something might be decided on whether yes there is a change to be made or no we’re not going to make a change.”
The change is being considered in order to help students get in college and hopefully change how colleges look at applications.
“It’s been a while since the last change and then colleges start changing how they admit people into college; what they look for, what’s important to them, how it compares to other people, not only in Texas but in the nation, and so you start getting that feedback over many years and as one makes an adjustment you have to decide whether you need to make an adjustment. Right now our rank system is a little bit different than most districts, it’s a little bit higher, but it’s coming up with what’s going to be best for the northeast students,” Comalander said.
However, this change would only affect new incoming freshmen.
“No one that’s in high school would be affected by a change. If you’re already under the ranks system right now, that will not change. It would start with the new class, whenever they make that discussion,” Comalander said.
The district is confident that even with the ranking change, Pre-Ap and AP classes will continue to have high attendance, despite the lowering of the 1.29 multiplier.
“Students hopefully just don’t take AP for rank, it’s hopefully also that preparation for college because that’s what it is, it’s a college level course and that’s one reason our students, both at northeast and especially here at Johnson, do so well at college because they do take lots of college level courses in our AP system and so quite often students come back and say wow, I was more than ready, in fact my AP physics class was harder than my physics class in college because I was prepared for it, so I don’t think that’s going to really change,” Comalander said.
Since the change would affect the multiplier and make it more in line with other districts, NEISD is hoping that it will make colleges pay more attention to student GPAs.
“Well it’s definitely going to, if a discussion is made to make the change it’s going to be because it’s going to help future students going to college, based on what colleges are looking for and what they’re using to determine people being admitted. That’s the whole reason. If we didn’t feel like it was going to help our students then we wouldn’t be looking to make a change just to make a change,” Comalander said.
