<p>these rankings aren’t fair to IB schools, where the top kids take 6 IB tests (or 7 if they really push it)… in comparison to AP where the top kids can easily take 10+ exams (3 history, 2 English, 2 math, etc).</p>
<p>Thought I’d take a look at the methodology used in the rankings and found an issue with the first two schools I looked at. </p>
<p>School A, a regular public high school, has an AP participation rate of 43 percent, with a exam pass rate of 98 percent. IOW, students pass 98 out of every 100 AP exams they take. This earns the students a college readiness score of 42.</p>
<p>School B, an exam school (students must apply and admissions are competitive and based on standardized test scores and previous GPA), has an AP participation rate of 72 percent, with a exam pass rate of 52 percent. IOW, students flunk almost half of all AP exams they take. This earns the students a college readiness score of 44.</p>
<p>So to recap, the school which takes everyone and where virtually every kid who takes an AP exam passes is surpassed in the rankings by a school taking only the best students but where almost half of kids who take the AP exam flunk.</p>
<p>“Any listing that has Staten Island Tech ranked above Stuy and Queens High School at York College way above Bronx Science is silly.”</p>
<p>I was shaking my head at this too–lots of the NY rankings (NYC, LI, Westchester) looked really strange to me.</p>
<p>CuriousJane–most of the public schools around us have stats like your son’s school and kids get into top schools all over the country. The colleges know the “better” schools from each state and the counselors send along a school profile outlining the information about the school. </p>
<p>As for the “top high schools” list–it’s just silly. Our high school ranks in the top of the nation for ACT/SAT scores but they don’t send the AP information in, why, because a lot of kids don’t take the AP tests senior year (which is the only year they calculate). By AP test time, most of the kids know which school they are attending and if the AP test is beneficial or not. Most find that it is not to their advantage to take the AP test if they are even in AP classes still. Most college bound kids by senior year hear are taking duel enrollment classes at the University and took their AP’s freshman-junior year.</p>
<p>In the national list, my D’s suburban “AP factory” school (I really like that term, justbeach) ranked higher than Stuyvesant. What a joke!</p>
<p>ETA: On the bright side…it does keep my house value up. LOL</p>
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AP where the top kids can easily take 10+ exams (3 history, 2 English, 2 math, etc).
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<p>I don’t think the quantity of AP tests makes much difference. I think there are only 5 offered and my kids’ school and the top kids probably take 2 or 3 that are in areas of interest (for example, only AP Spanish is offered so if the kiddo took 4 years of French (8-11) they don’t suddenly take AP Spanish…so APs are self selecting. If quantity of APs were a measure then the schools that are AP factories with many AP branded classes would out measure other schools and you don’t see that happening…it appears to be what percentage of kids took AP and passed AP (3 or better).</p>
<p>They only look at seniors and the tests they take so it would be very rare for a senior to take 10 AP tests in one year. It doesn’t matter how many tests kids take, 1 or 10, they are counted the same way, as taking A test, which is what they base their results on.</p>
<p>That makes sense. I didn’t read the methodology…maybe someday.</p>
<p>Does anyone know what it means when a high school is unranked?</p>
<p>Do colleges look at high school rankings in the admission process? If so, do they use the US News and World Report ranking or some other ranking? Our H.S. dropped from being ranked around 65 for the past couple of years to below 120…</p>
<p>thanks SteveMA… I guess the methodology has improvement somewhat from previous iterations of these rankings. That said, isn’t the kid that took 6 AP classes “more prepared” than the kid that took 1? Do each of those students count the same in this newer methodology?</p>
<p>Our high school was on the list the first year it came out. It fell off it within a year or two as other schools started playing the AP game. We’re not even listed any more. We certainly aren’t the best school in the county. The top kids do very, very well, but there are too many still being left behind. Now half the winners are magnet high schools - well yeah if you made a magnet for our top performers we’d be the best high school in the county too.</p>
<p>What I’ve found is that the HS 2 miles west of us, which is one of the top schools in the state, “requires” many more of its students to take AP courses and tests than the HS two miles east of us. By that I mean that the west HS’s guidance counselors tell students that they “have to take the AP level of the course”, when there is also an honors and regular course available. Most students and parents follow the guidance counselor’s direction without question. I have had conversations with parents from that HS who were shocked to learn that they have the right to sign their child up for whatever level course they and their child are comfortable with. </p>
<p>The HS to the east of us does not push AP classes in the same way. They are available, and students are encouraged to challenge themselves by taking harder courses, but nobody tells them they “have to” take any level. In fact, the AP government teachers visit the ninth grade social studies classes to discuss course sign up for the following year, and tell the kids to take AP Government only if they have a real interest and passion for it because they can expect a great deal of daily homework and reading in the course. This HS is ranked 15 spots lower in the state. </p>
<p>And then, at the end of the year, the HS to the west requires AP students to take the AP tests, but the HS to the east doesn’t.</p>
<p>Both HS’s draw from a similar socioeconomic group of students. One is playing the ranking game, and one is not.</p>
<p>D’s high school (which has flown up the rankings over the past few years) no longer has an option for regular U.S. History in 9th grade. You have a choice of honors (where the under-performing kids go) and APUSH. My D13 (who loves history) was put in APUSH for 9th grade next year, but she refused (with my blessing). Who pushes children into AP classes in 9th grade? Does that even make sense?</p>
<p>This ranking is meaningless. My school is ranked in the top 1500 (barely) but it is based on old data. The USNWR site lists our AP pass rate as 21%. </p>
<p>Last year it was 93%!</p>
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<p>Not necessarily. AP is a branded program so it’s entirely possible that good schools that choose not to have a plethora of AP brand classes could have plenty of rigorous classes that prepare students for college. AP is a nice “shortcut” to put kids on a national context but not all schools utilize the same amount of curriculum and have the ability to define how it will be applied (no AP for 9th grade/some AP for 9th grade, pre-reqs/no-pre-reqs etc.) If an attempt is made to rank order high schools on a national level (like USNWR) I’m sure the easy go-to is something like AP but like any ranking it attempts to quantify something that isn’t easily quantifiable. I think, if in fact, USNWR only looks at senior APs that is a viable attempt to equalize the information. If you think about it senior year is better than junior year because alot of kids pile up junior year to beef up college apps then kick back some senior year so speaks well of schools that have seniors that keep their nose to the grindstone.</p>
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<p>Colleges are savvy enough to realize that college rankings are nonsense; they’re hardly going to give any more credence to high school rankings.</p>
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<p>DD’s selective math and science school teaches no AP classes, but the kids take lots of AP tests and do very well on them.</p>
<p>luckypeach–our high school doesn’t send data and they are considered “unranked” even though our pass rate is about 20% higher than the “top” school in our state—that school also has a graduation rate if 45%–but they ONLY look at the kids in the IB program, which is about 7% of that school and rank based on that. The methodology isn’t any better, they just added the student:teacher ratio and state proficiency rates for the students that took the AP tests. Again, you are only sampling a small portion of most schools. For our “top” high school, only 64% of the kids that took their IB tests are proficient in math but if you look at the entire school only 28% are proficient in math. The #2 ranked school in our state has almost a 100% rate of kids taking at least 1 AP test with a 70% passing rate, but they have 80+% proficiency rates on state tests and 100% graduation rate and 99% of the kids go on to 4 year colleges, the other 1% to military. </p>
<p>In real numbers, about 80 kids at our “top” school to IB tests and 64% of those kids passed, so about 51 kids. At the #2 school, the senior class is about 600 kids with about 590 taking the AP tests. I know at our high school, we had close to 90% of the kids take AP tests, around 400 kids. Last year we had 350 of those kids score 4’s or better on at least 4 tests taken all years in high school, those other 50 kids, about 90% of them got 3’s or better on at least 4 tests (released with the commended scholars, etc. information). We are “unranked” because our school doesn’t send the info because they don’t want to become a school that focuses only in AP testing (even though most of the kids do test).</p>
<p>So, which school is a good school?</p>
<p>I’m not sure why these rankings even exist and who really cares about them.</p>
<p>does it really matter who is #1, etc? It is clear that the highest ranked HS in our state are private, prep schools. Of course, they are going to be higher than the local HS.</p>
<p>I’m really astounded that schools get away with paying their students to take AP tests and raising grades as a result of AP scores, etc. At our school the student pays for their own test and it has no connection to their final grade, which is the way it should be.</p>