<p>You have to understand, Jay Mathews is fully aware that these rankings are bogus. His straightforward agenda, and if you read what he says it's obvious, is to promote the access of AP classes in poor neighborhoods. That's the reason he gives for not counting the scores. From Newsweek's FAQs of this year:</p>
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Alameda, CA: Your ranking is amazingly one-dimensional, since anyone can take and fail the AP exams...why not at least include percentages of takers who get scores of 3 and 4-5?
Jay Mathews: Ah, great question, which gets to the heart of why I decided to rate schools by participation, not scores. Most schools restrict access to AP. I hope I have shown how bad that is. But when you ask them about their AP program, they say, We're great! 90 percent of our kids passed the AP test! What they don't tell you is that they only let about two dozen kids take AP, their A students, and so the results were foreordained. It is a scam, and the list is designed in part to expose it.
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<p>Last year someone asked, then why call this list the Best High Schools, why not just say, a list of high schools that are providing access to higher level classes. His answer? Attention on the newstands!</p>
<p>The FAQs from last year was selectively "edited" just before this year's list came out. In one Q, someone was reaming him out for the significance of the rankings and he comes out and actually says that he is "slightly ashamed" of the ranking aspect of the list. You're apparently not supposed to make any distinction there but just to note that a particular school is on the list, period. </p>
<p>Again, though, his mission is to advocate for a model a la the movie Stand and Deliver, based on the successful experience of a superlative math teacher, Jaime Escalante with a group of inner city kids sent to summer school for remedial math. This model was Mathews inspiration, and he wrote a book about Garfield High and what they accomplished there. So his goal is to raise the standards of American education - from the bottom up. </p>
<p>Bottom line is I have no issue with Mathew's ends , it's his misleading means to which I object.</p>
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