<p>U.S. News and World Report Magazine included one of the local high schools in its list of top 500 high schools in the nation. A few months a John Hopkins University study labled that same school a "dropout factory." Go figure.</p>
<p>I've long since stopped paying attention to claims that high schools with high test scores or high gradation rates are better than those with lower scores/rates.</p>
<p>The high school my daughter attends could best be described as urban. It probably has fifty percent low income students. I think the average ACT score hovers around 20. I expect these stats would make make many cc parents look elsewhere. But stats don't tell the whole story.</p>
<p>When deciding on a high school for our daughters, my husband and I deliberately did not looks at test scores. We looked at programs. So long as the local public school was safe, had sufficient honors and AP classes to challenge students, plus variety of extra curriculars, we felt comfortable sending our children there.</p>
<p>I really believe that the "high rankings" of many schools is a reflection of the high income area in which these schools are located. Give those schools students with the challenges associated with urban poverty, and their rankings would shift down.</p>
<p>Marlene, I wonder if we are in the same town....that is the identical scenario detailed in our newspaper today about one of our high schools.</p>
<p>And one more comment.</p>
<p>One of my sisters sends her sons to one of the public high schools ranked highest in our state. Another sister sends her children to a parochial high school. And a brother has moved to a rural community partially to escape problems associated with urban schools. I respect all their choices. And most of my nieces and nephews are good students. </p>
<p>Yet, even though my children attend the most poorly rated high school of the group, they are the most intellectually engaged. Best reason I can determine for this is that being intellectually engaged is important in our family. And by being intellectually engaged, I don't just mean high GPA and tests schoresgetting high grades, but rather interest in and enthusiasm about their classes.</p>
<p>Packer - I wouldn't be surprised if we were, but to maintain privacy I'm not going to name the school.</p>
<p>Yeah, my son's high school for his first 3 years was profiled on Oprah, got a lot of press coverage, all this kind of stuff. It was being put forth as a model of how schools of the future should be, and what was "really working" in eduation. It was so awful that he transfered to spend his senior year at a school that didn't suck so badly, because he was concerned his school was going to damage his chances at the colleges he was considering. </p>
<p>At the end of what would have been his senior year at the crappy year (had he not left) the "school of the future" announced it was closing. Financial problems, never hitting their enrollment numbers, only retaining the bad teachers -- it was a mess. It was a mess that kept being profiled in the media as a great school, though.</p>
<p>My alma mater is in the top 30, and it belongs there. The ratings have flaws, but there is certainly validity in them, to an extent.</p>
<p>It's important for me to have my kids be with other kids whose parents make education a priority. That's really hard to quantify.</p>
<p>If there is a solid group of parents that make education a priority, plus teachers and staff that do so too, it enough for me.</p>
<p>My children are going to live and work in a world with people from all sorts of backgrounds, so I feel it better they go to school with a wide range of students. </p>
<p>Just how I make decisions about my children's education. Realize others come to their decisions based on their particular values regarding education. :)</p>
<p>As I mentioned above, all my nieces and nephews appear to do fine in shcool, although they are attending schools with distinctly different atmospheres.</p>
<p>I don't think I would have gotten into a top college if I had attended a high ranked and competitive high school. I perform much better when there's less pressure from my peers.</p>
<p>Some people do perform better in low pressure environments. How's Harvard going? For most people a big part of education in both HS and College is the intellectual stimulation that comes from being surrounded by other smart people. The rankings are obviously problematic from a practical point of view but the concept is not flawed. I think it is neat that a public school is at the top.</p>
<p>OK, by getting on my soapbox, I digressed from the original point of this thread -- how ridiculus it is for a school to be named a "dropout factory" one month and a US News top five hundred high school one month.</p>
<p>to paraphrase: numbers, damn numbers, and statistics</p>
<p>At least one of the Yonkers high schools on the list has only a 60% graduation rate well below state average of 93%.</p>