Newsweeks 2006 Top 1000 Public High Schools

<p>My class has 550 and we have about 50 IB candidates. However, there are many people like me who take IB courses and complete it exactly as if we were IB students, save sending it overseas for grading. Many people do that for TOK or IB art because my school has no philosophy program or AP art.</p>

<p>Woohoo. We're ranked #452.</p>

<p>Regardless, though, these rankings are crap. I prefer NJ Monthly, which ranked us as #1 based on more relevant characteristics like graduation and attendance rates, rather than AP tests (not even performance! And mad kids take AP's here cause everyone is super rich. Same with Princeton, but they're more obsessed with AP's than we are. And that academy in Jersey City that's in the top 100 - nobody's heard of it...).</p>

<p>Conclusion: the rankings are crap, but I like them for putting us on the list. =P</p>

<p>My town's school is in the top 500..that's surprising. MY school is #2 on the public elite list..one might even say #1 because New Orleans is probably no longer in session...
<a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12551652/site/newsweek/#storyContinued%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12551652/site/newsweek/#storyContinued&lt;/a>
(if anyone points out the list is alphabetical they get cyberkicked)</p>

<p>mine's around 480 or so..i'm kind of surprised at which NC schools rank above it--because their reputations (academically) aren't as good as ours around here..except for enloe high school. anyone go there? if you do, you're a crazy masochist :)</p>

<p>even top 500 is considered great because there are like 30,000 high schools. Seeing that a lot of people here have schools not only in the top 500 but also in the top 150 and 50 shows that it is atleast somewhat valuable. People at CC are overachievers and many come from these schools. Now i do think it does matter how well they do on the test. They only count 3s and above. I will have taken 10 APs so i did my part but there are people that have much more. Thomas S. Wootton class of 2005 sucked it up.</p>

<p>That is the cool thing, these are basically rankings by class. So this is last years class, i guess. So our 04' class was the 17th best 04' class in the US. </p>

<p>The rankings are still no where near accurate.</p>

<p>I'm kind of angry.......Gunn High School is about 40 minutes away from me, ranked in the 50s somewhere, and instead, I'm at Pescadero High, which would probably rank somewhere after 20,000. I wish I had known how good Gunn was! ARRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGG.
Pescadero is okay, I guess.....but ultimately, not very good in terms of kids going to four-year colleges!</p>

<p>I don't understand...last year we were 929, this year we aren't even on the list......:(</p>

<p>HELL YEAH BI*** my brother's old school (04 grad) is #1, while my school is like 1,569,8787,985,256,451,289,743,621,514th</p>

<p>im not gonna lie to you, TJ kids would own the entire top 100</p>

<p>Sorry, yea...I stereotyped Baltimore High Schools. I was going off of my prior knowledge of the ones Ive been to and know students from. Poly was aight....but southern, dubois, digital harbor, and douglass didn't seem too hot. City may very well be the best school in Baltimore, I just unknowingly grouped it in there with the others.</p>

<p>Yay, my school's not on there and never will be, but I got into Tufts while many at schools on there from my area are going to UF, great rankings....lol</p>

<p>I think Gunn should be ranked higher.
They send 30-40 kids to Stanford every year...
Their professors come from Stanford too.
It's stupid just basing it on # of AP exams taken.
In fact, my physics teacher was saying how he doesn't stick to the traditional AP style of teaching physics. He was at this one conference and went on about how he never gives mult. choice tests then only gives a couple 2 weeks before the AP. The other physics teachers laughed at him (they're from pretty elite schools) and then one posed a question: "What's your pass rate?"<br>
Reply: "100% for the past 5 years"
Our school doesn't encourage students to take tests just randomly; teachers will suggest you not to if they don't think you will pass. It's unfair to schools that actually believe in success and not "well, if we can pay for it, our ranking goes up." The attitude here is that we don't care about our rankings or API since those scores mean nothing in terms of achievement, as long as we have good teachers giving a quality education.</p>

<p>P.S. We are in the 900s. A nearby school (5 miles away), which stresses adherance to state standards and signups for the AP is ranked in the mid 200s.
I've been to their school before and took a summer class. The teachers are nowhere near as good and lectures rarely go beyond course material (i.e. no insight or application to modern society).
Talk about randomness.</p>

<p>Hmm, that's kind of interesting, my school jumped from 714 to 522.</p>

<p>mine ain't on it. beat that.</p>

<p>Mine isn't either. But it's cause we weren't qualified in the first place.</p>

<p>Now beat that. ;)</p>

<p>We have never been qualified. 0.000000000000% of our students take APs. Or IBs.</p>

<p>You can't beat that-- I am invincible. :D</p>

<p>My school isn't on there...but a good number of the nearby rich schools are, heh. The way they derive that index score is ridiculous...basically, to make the list, your school has to have at least the same amount of AP tests being submitted for scoring as students graduating. This year, my school is probably at an all-time high for AP testing...and we have about 30-40 tests being taken for 325 graduating seniors.</p>

<p>I think the whole study is again ridiculous. Not as much so on basing it on the exams, but rather it should be based upon how well students perform on the exams. At my school, a 3 is not considered passing. I think thats why that E and E% statistic is absolutely useless.</p>

<p>our school is 435, which i guess is pretty good for a non magnet public of 2200 kids. We also have a 90% pass rate, which again, despite what this study says, is much more important.</p>

<p>Once again we see the shallow minded processes used to further concrete the position of these so called elite schools. They use factors that will lead them to the answers that they look for, not considering the numerous other factors that may possibly cause them to have a deviation in the stereotyped beliefs. (i.e. how any college based study will have Harvard univ, ivies. on the top)</p>

<p>The only thing that testing rates proves is that the school has the money to employ teachers and materials that is needed to teach these courses along with a student population that is encouraged/motivated to take the tests and most likely predominently middle/upper class. </p>

<p>Now if college rankings are considered controversial, this ranking would be more so, judging secondary schools that have roughly the same curriculum and teaching processes. If Advancement Placement testing is what is needed to break the cut, then I have say this is a pile of BS.</p>

<p>My school will never be on this list, nor will I feel different if it was. I know that this just a list popped out after putting certain data into the computer and writing a fancy article togo along with it.</p>