That list is ridiculous. My school, which sends around six kids to MIT and many others to the Ivies, as well as another nearby school which sends around six kids to Harvard and many others to the Ivies, didn’t even make the list. My cousin’s school, which only sends a few kids to the Ivies at most, was ranked one hundred something. Another school near my town, which is derided as an awful school (twenty minutes of homework per night at most, unrigorous curriculum) was ranked in the fifties. Furthermore, a lot of very prestigious public schools that I know in general are missing from this list, or should be ranked much higher.
Haha, this utterly senseless list keeps on ticking like all the other nonsense from Mr. Jay. If it is not ranking based on the number of AP courses offered in schools, it will be developed on other moronic elements.
Does anyone believe that the title of the ranking really matches a methodology that starts with “First, we evaluated the universe of regular public high schools based on their proficiency rates on standardized state-level math and reading/language arts assessments, using the proficiency rates to create a high school achievement index for each school.” ? The Newsweek list is a mere ode to the questionable creation of the “schools within schools” system that has been robbing the majority of students in the US of a bona fide education. The list simply “rewards” the cynicism that is painting our purportedly just and equitable educational model.
Fwiw, a similar restriction would start the USNews in the 20s and a handful of LACs. Yep, that works!
It looks so flawed while Stuyvesant HS is not even listed.
I live in NJ near some of the schools listed, which I why these rankings always surprise me. None of the people I’ve met who were looking to put their kids in top high schools ever selected these. You can’t argue with the actual numbers, but I don’t know that many rich people want to flock to say, Neptune NJ.
Theoretically exam high schools and others that cherry pick their students were eliminated. Most years he lists them somewhere else. Somehow though some selective schools are on the list anyway, while others aren’t. Our high school was on the list the first year he created it, but then other schools started making students take APs as a way of gaming the rankings and we fell off the list. It doesn’t matter to me. I know my kids got a pretty good education and were well prepared for college.
Oh another ridiculous thing: only one of the schools had a star next to them. The high school didn’t. Again, no real difference between the two schools.
Utterly bogus list… =))
My D went to that school. It is a county magnet school (Monmouth) and pulls from some well-off areas, despite the fact that it is in Neptune. It is right across the street from Jersey Shore University Medical Center, where the students intern. It’s a nice school with a small, close-knit student body. Monmouth County is not as affluent as Bergen or Hunterdon but is it still pretty prosperous in a state that is always either the second or third richest per capita in the US. Two of the ten “top” schools are part of the Monmouth County Vocational School District. There are fifty middle schools in the county and each school is guaranteed a seat for their individual highest scorer on the placement exam in all of the MCVSD magnets; the rest are apportioned by country-wide exam results. Students may only apply to one of the magnets. Most of the students at the magnets come from big suburban townships like Middletown, Marlboro, Wall etc. and are bussed in.
I agree that lists like this are silly. All it means is that these are very good schools. Next year the list will be different. My D’s school has been in the top 100 of that list for years. It’s no different now than it used to be; some quirk in the metrics landed it high this year. I don’t attach any significance to it.
No. A large number of my D’s classmates went to Rutgers NB, whose Honors College is full of graduates from NJ magnets.
21 of the top 25 are in blue states. I guess this is what happens when your local government values education.
The Newsweek list may as well try to be “politically correct”, I do not know what else would have caused such school as Stuyvesant (#4 on Niche list) to be omitted besides the fact that the student body in this school is about 75% ORM and it accepts kids based strictly on the test score. This is the fairest admission, but the fairest is always “politically incorrect”, so I understand the Newsweek list from this prospective, and this list means absolutely nothing to me. I am familiar with the level of competition to be accepted to some schools and it is not in synch with this list at all.
Agree, “Utterly bogus list”…
It really has nothing to do with valuing education. It is just how they are measuring it. First, take out all the magnet and charter schools, which are, imo, essentially private schools. Then take out all the wealthy suburban schools (with poverty rates under 10%). These students are able to achieve higher test scores not just because their parents can pay for tutors, pay high property taxes which support schools, etc. It’s not just $$. These parents are (mostly) college educated professionals, who raise their kids in households where education is valued and college attendance is assumed from pre-school on, AND they also have passed on their higher intelligence/genetic academic talent to their offspring.
What is left? Not much. In my state there is a random rural school with a total enrollment of about 160 students that happens to have a high poverty rate (over 40%), high graduation rate (at least last year they had 100%, but next year, if a couple students drop out, they’ll be off the list) and slightly above average ACT scores. No AP, no IB. Not a remarkable school in anyone’s book. High poverty/high grad. rate/above average ACT does not make it a great education. Yes, they are serving their students well with what they have–good for them. (And I would say that this is a community that really values education because they were able to achieve above average standards against the odds–in a poor, rural, truly public school.) No one who lives in this state would consider it a good school, however—yet it is the TOP ranked school in the state. A couple years ago an urban magnet school had the top rank. Not for quality, but for high poverty rate/selective admissions (that school is not on the list this year).
Looking at the affluent suburban schools in our state, there is a district with 5 extremely similar schools. They always appear on these lists, and their rankings shuffle by 100-200 places or more every year. For whatever reason, two schools do not appear this year–including the one that had been higher ranked in recent years. No real difference between these 5 schools. Also, the affluent schools from another city do not appear this year. That’s weird.
It is fairly obvious that high schools that require higher previous academic achievement to enter, or which are neighborhood schools in areas with high parental educational attainment, will tend to have higher performing students and will therefore tend to rank highly in many academic respects. But that is more of a function of selection rather than treatment.
It’s fairly difficult to assess selection versus treatment effects, in general, for education.
To do so rigorously, you’d need SUSTAINED random assignment.
While there have been studies of outcomes after random assignment, the problem is that human beings are not guinea pigs. For those students randomly assigned to what is perceived as an inferior school (lower SES demographics, larger class sizes, less $ per student, or whatever), then the more motivated parents will work harder to get their assignment changed or just opt out in various ways.
Bottom line, while I THINK many of the usual suspects (including the ones I list above) have broadly the positive/negative effect that is usually attributed to them, assessing the magnitude of these effects is difficult at best.
All else equal, would I prefer our kids to be in the schools in our county with smaller class sizes, more $ per student, and higher SES students? Probably, but there’s at least one partial offsetting factor - while the higher SES students and parents are probably more educationally ambitious, which I think would have positive peer effects on our kids, the elitism and snobbery that I suspect these schools also have would be a negative.
And so my preceding post was sort of off topic.
As to the list itself? While many of what I would consider relatively strong schools in our county were on the list, the two schools that I think are most elite (highest SES, most $ per student, strongest test scores) were, I think, not on the list. Odd…
"All else equal, would I prefer our kids to be in the schools in our county with smaller class sizes, more $ per student, and higher SES students? "
-it is very rewarding and enriching for a kid to be in a school where the competition was 30 for one spot and the acceptance was based strictly on the test score and absolutely nothing else, no any kind of legacy, no skin color, no socioeconomic or any other background, not even GPA. Just one number, you are in or you are out. The kids selected this way are not only very talented, they are very hard working bunch with numerous interests outside of academics. They definitely “feed of each other” and get more out of HS experience than at other schools. They tend to develop many non-academic skills in area of their personal interests. Small classes sometime are possible and sometime are not. Class size by itself is only one condition. Who is in your large or small class is more important. I have in mind two very different HSs that I am somewhat familiar. One is very large - Stuyvesant (roughly 900 kids in class, not familiar with class sizes) and another is tiny private HS in my hometown, D. graduated from the class of 33, most classes were no larger than 15 kids. The results that I see so far are very rewarding, would be rewarding for every parent and not only in academic terms.
Except they are not. So, you overall premise is incorrect.
See, the thing is, Blue states have much more well-off populations than Red states. So, buy doing this you are pretty much just cooking the books to get the result you want.
Ironic, given that Red is supposedly the party of the rich…
Small class size is a red herring. You need to have students who want to learn and teachers who want and know how to teach and the class size becomes irrelevant. It is ploy to hire more teachers.
How can my opinion–that magnet and charter schools are not “truly public”-- (shared by many) be “incorrect?”
If this weren’t an issue, if everyone looking at this ranking weren’t rolling their eyes and saying, “Of course the Math and Science Magnet school has high scores–duh-they picked out all the smart students, and left the LD kids in the truly public schools,” they wouldn’t be telling you which schools are magnets and charters. (People might mistakenly get the idea that their kids could just sign up for these great “public-but-not really-open-to-the-public” schools.)
Not trying to get any particular results. Just showing how their results basically show nothing that we didn’t already know about magnet/charter schools and affluent suburban schools. And giving points for poverty of a school doesn’t make sense. If a poor school is above average in a couple categories, it is a “top” school?
It might be doing a good job compared to other poor schools, but it isn’t in the same category with selective and affluent schools.
BTW, the blue/red divide is largely an urban/rural divide. Rural schools/rural populations tend to be small/poor/lacking resources. $ is in the cities.
If the school is safe, the home the student is coming from is many times more important than the school they attend. Every student starts out with the same curriculum, the same teachers, but some drop out after never progressing past 9th grade, while others from the same school get accepted to some of the most selective schools in the country, the student, rather than the school is the most important variable in academic success.