A Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) policy would make more students eligible for automatic admission to the Universities of Wisconsin by avoiding the need to break ties among top-ranked students, the Wisconsin State Journal reports.
The district said its approach to the new Wisconsin Guarantee program is compliant with the law that created it. Meanwhile, the law’s primary author said the law does not address Madison’s approach, and a court challenge will be necessary to determine its legality.
The Wisconsin Guarantee secures admission for students who rank in the top 5% of their class to UW-Madison and students who rank in the top 10% to the system’s 12 other four-year schools.
Since rankings are formulated using grade point average, however, debate has arisen among districts about what to do in the case of ties.
MMSD’s new policy dictates that every student with a GPA placing them within the top 5% or 10% of their class will have that designation noted on their transcripts, even if that means more than 5% or 10% of the total class is designated as such.
