Its weird - neither of the two schools in my area are known for academics. They’re primarily sports, celebrities and local “bro’s” But, if it helps lesser known schools get attention, I think that’s a good thing!
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Lots of Catholic schools.
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Curious list.
There’s a boarding school up in New Hampshire, can’t remember the name of it, St. Peter’s or Paul’s or something, that I hear has had some influential alums. Kerry, Hearst, Morgan, Vanderbilts, Mueller, Hobey Baker, Cox, et al.
Didn’t make this list…come on.
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Neither did Deerfield, Lawrenceville or Milton, but several athletic powerhouses did.
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That list is hilarious. The Phoenix school included (that several neighbor kids attended) is a prime example of the underwhelming options here. When you tout that 84% of students could eke out a 3 or better on an AP test, you aren’t exactly doing the school any favors. Unfortunately, that school IS among the best choices we have here. At least the list didn’t include any of the BASIS schools. Don’t get me started on those.
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What are BASIS schools?
My mother has a friend who’s kids go to Brophy. Apparently they are very happy there.
I’d love to hear anything about Basis. I follow public and charter school news pretty closely and see their stats all the time. I’d love to know what they do right or not and about the impression of the larger community
Everyone we know here is very happy with their schools. It’s all they know.
They are AP mills. Teach-to-the-test curriculums were the opposite of what we were looking for.
They always rank high in stats based on the fact that a large percentage of their graduating classes get a 3 or better on at least one AP exam (not exactly a high bar) and close to 100% of each class goes on to attend college. However, those stats are pretty easy to achieve when your whole program is AP-focused and the school winnows until the graduating class is small enough to comprise only those serious about attending college. Here in AZ when we were looking at programs for our son, the two highest ranked high schools were both BASIS schools (Scottsdale and Tucson), but both schools had senior classes of fewer than 50 students even though they started in the earlier grades with much larger classes. From an article at that time:
While a school may proudly claim that they graduated all their seniors, a more intensive examination of that school’s summary data may show that between 2006 and 2010, that school’s student population had dropped dramatically.
The Basis (Charter) school in Scottsdale, Arizona, is a good example. Basis Scottsdale was named the top high school in Arizona based on its score on Arizona’s AIMS test, the test used to comply with the No Child Left Behind law. As is true of most charter schools, Basis Scottsdale was able to select the grades they wanted to offer and chose to instruct in grades 5 – 1 2.
The National Center for Education Statistics tells us how many students were enrolled at each of those grades during the 2009-10 school year. Beginning with the 5th grade we find enrollments of 152, 138, 110, and 94. By the ninth grade (freshman year of high school,) the number of enrolled students had decreased to 42, then to 30, 23, and, finally, as graduating seniors, there were 8 students remaining! Thus, while they graduated all their seniors, those students were less than 20% of the current freshman class (and only 5% of the current fifth grade enrollment). We have no data to inform us about the number of students in the fifth grade or ninth grade in this school when the graduating class of 2010 was in those grades. But the small size of the graduating class suggests it is only a fraction of the students who once attended Basis with the surviving seniors.
This pattern is repeated across many schools. For example, the second highest scorer on the AIMS (Arizona’s Instrument to Measure Standard) test: BASIS, Tucson, also offers grades 5 – 12. The decline is slightly less steep for the “second best high school in Arizona.” They started out with 127 students in the fifth grade, had 129 in 6th, and 130 in 7th, then the numbers began to decline rapidly: 100 in eighth grade, and 69 in 9th, the freshman year for high school. But those numbers went down further, to 45 in 10th grade, 27 in 11th, and at the end, they had only 24 seniors left for graduation. The graduating class was only 35th % of the current ninth grade cohort, and they were less than 20% of the current fifth grade cohort. This kind of enrollment drop across grades is repeated across many different schools, not only in Arizona, but across the country.
Because BASIS takes state money, it cannot pick and choose students in the incoming grades through entrance exams (or couldn’t at the time). However, the school administers tests to students as they progress to the upper grades, winnowing those who are unlikely to do well in the upper AP program. So, the schools graduate small classes of those who do well in the AP rat race, cleverly ensuring high magazine ratings by skimming and creaming their students to align with the magazine’s metrics.
This model is diametrically opposed to our definition of education.
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Ah. Thanks. The charter school elementary the kids attend is quite good but then drops off quite spectacularly. It functions in the opposite way where it has a serious brain drain in middle school where the rats with privilege scurry off the side of a sinking ship.
Parents who choose what they believe are the best educational options for their children are not “rats with privilege” anymore than you are for sending your own child to a prestigious boarding school. Equating people with pestilence is a slippery slope, and one that I, whose ancestors were called those types of things before being killed en masse, do not appreciate.
Er. I think I wasn’t clear. My comments were only about myself. We are a founding family at the charter and busted our butts with practical help, skills, crazy levels of fundraising, and donations in an attempt to build a socio-economically diverse, racially just, academic strong public school when the schools in our city are quite poor in quality. But over the years they expanded rapidly and the educational quality declined dramatically. And after working up, down, and sideways we left and helped a lot of people find ways to leave. Basically everyone who leaves can scrounge up options because of money, family connections, hard working or gifted, academic or societal know how, sports skill, arts skill, can get into ABC or the like, basically a wide range of talents, gifts or privilege. I am one of the rats because even though I became disabled while there, we still have more privilege than most. Most of the kids leave for specialty public programs. The kids left behind don’t have those privilege. I am talking about a specific school and a specific culture that we left behind and it was not a comment on independent schools of any type or the families who chose them.
We tried and failed to build something of quality but I still feel like a rat.
I am sorry my words were offensive. It was an attempt at a picturesque metaphor only.
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Thank you for the clarification. Good luck.
At least you tried.
I can understand the feeling that you’ve… given up, rather than be the change you want to see.
My sister-in-law wondered why I never looked into charter schools for my child. Part of that is that the schools she thought I should look at didn’t have the right educational philosophy. Not that the LPS was great, but I found that at least for K-4, it served my child’s educational needs. I didn’t see a pedagogical need for expensive uniforms (there’s no closet for “lightly used” when the charter school is new). And don’t get me started on “STEM”.
Congratulations to the 2021 Presidential Scholars! A number of schools you may know are listed on here…if your student is on this list, I am sending mega-congrats and virtual hugs. Bravo & Brava!
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Interesting. Wondering why some of the often mentioned schools on this board missing from the list, including many HADES and big name NYC schools.
One each from PEA and PA listed in other states.
The selection process would make it almost impossible to see a concentration from any school.
Top 30 SAT/ACT scores each for boys and girls in each state, and then a winnowing process from there. It is a little more complicated than that, but if you come from a very populated state or one that has a lot of high test scores, your chances are pretty low no matter how accomplished you are.
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I see a student from Choate on the list and a couple of Interlochen students ( history of over 40 students having been previous Presidential Scholars) on the list.
It is a bit unfair to have 1 from CA vs WY
Some schools have consistent performance. Greenwich High School in CT has one Presidential Scholar in four out of last five years. I did not check further.