<p>What we need to know is the student populations and the funding of each school. </p>
<p>My school is ranked 26, but unlike most of the tip top schools we are a large school of 2600 kids and get almost no funding because we are a good schools while lousy public schools get double or triple our funding, run down facilities. About 15 of our teachers' salaries are either paid in full or partially paid by parent and alumni donations. I wonder how many of the other top schools gets shafted like we do and would be that highly ranked.</p>
<p>Does that make my school better because we make more with less, or is it worse than it should be because we don't get the funding we deserve and are punished.</p>
<p>Other schools in my city are ranked in the top 1000, but they are so undesirable that parents protest the school district that they have to send their kids there. Does that really make them a top 1% school in the USA.</p>
<p>Also the amounts of AP tests taken doesn't really mean anything. Many of these schools could have tons of 1's and 2's while others have mainly 4's and 5's. </p>
<p>I know my school administered the 3rd most APs last year, but that means nothing and we have an amazing 5 ratio on every test, though that doesn't make it a good school. Our facilities are poor and we have crowded classrooms (30+ per class).</p>
<p>The arguement that APs mean that there are good teachers is also BS. My AP US teacher last year skipped school for 60 days and taught us nothing. My AP US Gov't Teacher doesn't know what he is teaching. </p>
<p>The APs are more representative of the student body then of the school itself.</p>
<p>I am not sure exactly what their index measures, but it certainly does not seem to indicate how well the schools prepare students at the high end. For example, high schools from Florida seem to dominate the list, yet in terms of National Merit cutoff scores Florida does not have a very competitive high end. Perhaps the average number of AP tests taken does not indicate how strong a program is. I know the PSAT is far from perfect, but it is the same test in every state. This index does not even include the resulting SCORES on the AP tests, or am I reading this incorrectly?</p>
<p>BS man. Lynbrook high school is one of the poorest schools in the city of san jose. and we are ranked in the 400s. Our district had budget problems and lynbrook got around 1/3 of its aps cut so we have 7-8 offered. It is just the quality of the studnets. Well actually, I think a lot of the studnets at my school have private tutors -_-' (bourgeios) including most of the better studnets except me...</p>
<p>This ranking includes Mathews' misguided attempts at Affirmative Action. Schools that shouldn't have made the list (because more than 1/2 of their students had to take entrance exams or were admitted because of grades/scores) make the list (including the #1 school) because their average SATs are below 1300 or average ACTs below 27. So just as affirmative action works in college acceptances, so is it working here for acceptance on this Newsweek list. Check the racial makeup of those schools (including #1) on the list. </p>
<p>Did anyone else notice this? Or did he slip it by everyone?</p>
<p>To be fair, either ALL or NO public high schools with special admissions criteria should be included. The very best public high schools are not allowed on the list, so it <em>appears</em> that high schools are the best that actually aren't. Affirmative Action strikes again!</p>
<p>His definition of "average" seems a little strange to me...</p>
<p>
[quote]
I am not sure exactly what their index measures, but it certainly does not seem to indicate how well the schools prepare students at the high end. For example, high schools from Florida seem to dominate the list, yet in terms of National Merit cutoff scores Florida does not have a very competitive high end. Perhaps the average number of AP tests taken does not indicate how strong a program is.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Keep in mind that there are a lot of schools in Florida- even if top schools perform well on the PSAT, they in the end make up a small percentage of everyone that takes it. Should not be compared to PSATs cut-offs, however I'm not defending that number of AP tests taken says everything about a school.</p>
<p>This is a very very stupid ranking. Only good for sales and making noises for stupid people. Smart people just go to school where they belong and work hard at there.</p>
<p>There are plenty of legitimate rubrics to use for evaluating high school quality; however, it doesn't appear that this list uses them. It ranks based on the number of tests taken, not even caring about whether these tests were passed. You can imagine how trivial it would be to game the system as a high school.</p>
<p>there are way too many factors in judging how schools should be ranked. i mean, some schools offer only AP/IB or regular level classes. And some schools definition of an AP class may be a lot easier than taking an AP level course at some other high school. If they're going to do an AP comparison, they should also at least take account to the grades that students get on the exams. Some school might have a whole bunch of kids taking AP classes and either don't take the exams or get 1s and 2s on them. I think the least that should be factored in would be the graduation rate, class GPAs, and demographics among others..</p>
<p>Like generally AP Psychology is considered to be an easy course, with an easy AP exam. Obviously the difficulty of the exam can't vary much, but the course does.</p>
<p>AP Psychology at my school covers figuratively miles past what's on the AP exam. It's brutal, and the highest grades are in the low A range if you work your butt off.</p>
<p>I went through just looking at the schools in my state that I was familiar with. Some of the Inner-City schools that have absolutely terrible SAT averages beat out Up-Scale suburban schools with SAT averages in the 1200's offering all of the AP classes. This ranking is useless..</p>
<p>This year they actually included Public Academic Magnets which had previously been excluded. I guess they finally had to admit that leaviung off the top performing high schools just because they had an entrance requirement might not be acurate or fair. Yeh, they require a B average and a 70% in reading and math testing. That's a pretty big pool of kids. We now have 2 schools in the top 50 in Nashville. Martin Lther King was 39th and my daughter's high school, Hume Fogg was 43rd.</p>
<p>In terms of Connecticut schools this list has it horribly wrong.....my school placed top 40 in overall high schools (public and private) by the WSJ a few years ago, and top 15 in public schools. Here we are ranked in the 400s. Plus, we are behind some schools from CT that do not belong ahead of us. Weird.</p>
<p>wow, I feel really lucky that my school offers AP classes</p>
<p>I never knew that so many schools hardly offer any. I think my school offers at least 10...us history, euro, spanish, french, latin, german, macro, micro, calc BC, calc AB, english lang, english lit, pysch, music theory, bio, chem, and 2 physics</p>
<p>our school will most likely be getting rid of all AP classes soon because we are an extremely liberal school however our students continue to take the test and very very few people score below a 3 and no one in the past year has gotten below a 3 in Calc or Physics.</p>