Rankings, schmankings

Parents Forum
1

<p>[RANT]</p>

<p>The Newsweek/Daily Beast rankings of "American's best high schools" has just been published.</p>

<p>Newsweek's</a> Annual List: The Best High Schools in America - Newsweek</p>

<p>Here are the criteria (new this year): graduation rate (25%), college matriculation rate (25%), and AP tests taken per graduate (25%), plus average SAT/ACT scores (10%), average AP/IB scores (10%), and AP courses offered per graduate (5%).</p>

<p>And therein lies the problem, specifically with this ranking, but more broadly with rankings in general: it all depends on the criteria, which are arbitrary.</p>

<p>For example, my D's school is on the list, with a middling ranking (in the 30s). That's nothing to sneeze at, but I'm sure its ranking was hurt significantly by:</p>

<ul>
<li><p>Graduation rate. It's a residential high school that serves an entire state. Some kids come from five hours away. Kids leave for lots of reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of the school - homesickness, medical issues, too immature to live in dorms - and those that do leave are not "high school dropouts." They return to their original high schools, or in some cases, because they've exhausted the offerings their high schools have, are admitted directly into college. To compare the graduation rate of a residential high school to one where the kids live at home with mommy and daddy is just ludicrous.</p></li>
<li><p>Educational philosophy. The school focuses on inquiry based learning, not cram courses to pass a test. Therefore, they offer no AP courses. Kids still take AP exams (and do very well on them), but that's not the emphasis. </p></li>
</ul>

<p>Here are factors that to me would be at least as important as Newsweek's criteria but aren't considered in the rankings:</p>

<ul>
<li>Advanced courses offered (beyond AP), e.g. molecular and cellular biology, biophysics, virology, stem cell biology, theory of analysis, differential equations, algebraic structures, organic chemistry, biochemistry, advanced object oriented programming, applied engineering, calc-based mechanics, calc-based electricity and magnetism, modern physics, Victorian fiction, political theory, ancient religion and philosophy, cultural history of biology, epistemology, etc. - and the percentage of students who take such courses</li>
<li>Percentage of faculty with advanced degrees, including PhDs</li>
<li>Percentage of faculty that are certified master teachers</li>
<li>Four-year college graduation rate of graduates</li>
<li>Number of national competitions (e.g. Intel Schools of Distinction) the school has won</li>
<li>Number of kids placed on National Physics Team, National Chemistry Team, etc.</li>
<li>Number of kids winning awards such as NMFs, Intel Finalists and Semifinalists, Siemens Competition, Math Prize for Girls, Russian/French/German/Chinese competitions, etc.</li>
<li>Number of kids completing for-credit independent research projects</li>
<li>How far the average kid advances in terms of standardized test scores from entrance to graduation (very hard to measure, I know) </li>
</ul>

<p>But no - the number of kids who take AP tests is far more important.
[/RANT]</p>

2

<p>My kids’ school was in the 100-300 two or three years ago. This year it’s not in the top 500. I am still happy with the school.</p>

3

<p>Actually, the graduation rates were sort of odd. For your daughter’s school, it showed a 100% graduation rate, which is blatantly false. (I mean, all students graduate from somewhere, not necessarily from that school.)</p>

<p>I also think there was some issue of faculty:student ratio, which, in fact, is high compared to peers. (And indeed, the minimum number of students required to run a class is quite high compared to peer institutions. Makes sense in times of budget cuts, but there you have it.)</p>

<p>Newsweek/Washington Post used to do a quality index that factored in average SAT scores and some other quality factors (AP results, perhaps). That was a much more informative number. Though it does lead to the issue of what value is the school adding beyond a gathering function. Once you collect the best students (or some large percentage of the best students) in any given area, is the school helping or hurting the individual kid? What would that kid have done at their local high school? It may be good enough to just get the best and the brightest together to form community, but then you have to realize that the value is in the selection process, not anything going on educationally at the school.</p>

4

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</p>

<p>Your point is valid (and thus the reason for the last of my suggested criteria). My D’s school, however, doesn’t just take the best and the brightest. Kids are admitted based on a holistic evaluation, and while most of the students are academic superstars, there are some that are just-above-average kids with other attributes that make them attractive. As a statewide school, they also are expected to draw kids from the entire state, and the academic superstars are not normally distributed throughout the state. My D, from a small, rural, crappy HS would not have been on the radar for admission, given her freshman year SAT, had she been at one of the big, wealthy suburban high schools. Nonetheless, she has benefited enormously from the school, although it has been a major struggle for her academically.</p>

5

<p>Newsweek’s rankings: helping people not have to use what they learned in school since 1983.</p>

<p>or</p>

<p>Newsweek’s rankings: not because ******bag snobs want to feel better than you, but because they need to.</p>

6

<p>

</p>

<p>I dunno. The standard teaching load is four classes, and there is (generally) a maximum class size of 24. I doubt that’s substantially worse than any other public HS.</p>

7

<p>This list is so ridiculous, a school they touted last year as one of the best in the country (a Yonkers, NY IB high school) isn’t even on the list this year. Mind you we were all scratching our heads about why it was on the list in the first place. Our school made the list the first few years they ran it, but doesn’t any more. Who knows why.</p>

8

<p>The graduation rate doesn’t penalize for kids who transfer so no worries there. I think these rankings are much better than the previous methodology. Sure, it’s a bit bogus, but I guess if I was a principal I’d rather my school be on it than not.</p>

9

<p>Rankings are useless and irrelevent in choosing UG. From a parent of college graduate who successfully transitionning to the next step in her professional development after graduating from IS public college, where she took full advantage of opportunites that were well beyond expectaions of her family and where she did not have to pay a dime in tuition because of Merit awards. We had not checked any rankings for UG, D. had her personal criteria for choosing college, visited them all including some overnights and made informative decision based on how well college fits with her personality and wide range of interests. This strategy paid off handsomely not only in success but also in 4 happy and enriching years at college with many life long dreams becoming reality. Great emmories for the rest of her life, could not ask any more.</p>

10

<p>^^^
You know this is about a list of high school rankings, don’t you MiamiDAP? Just checking.</p>

<p>I’ve never seen this list before. My kid’s old high school is #60, but we didn’t pick it. It is just the main high school around here. He’s going to CC, so it didn’t propel him to the Ivy League.</p>

11

<p>WOW–my son’s HS made the list; I think that’s the first time. He left there 7 years ago. He was the first from his HS to apply to his college and a well-respected program in another college. I have no idea what made the difference.</p>

12

<p>Newsweek is using a different formula this year than it has in the past which may explain the disappearance of past favorites and the appearance of new favorites. The reporter who created the original formula took it back to the Washington Post when the WaPo parted ways with Newsweek. Here’s the link to this year’s rankings: [Ranking</a> America’s High Schools 2011 - The Washington Post](<a href=“http://apps.washingtonpost.com/highschoolchallenge]Ranking”>http://apps.washingtonpost.com/highschoolchallenge)</p>

<p>Personally, I think that the WaPo system is pretty dumb, but at least it is blisteringly simple. Anyone can take the relevant data for any school they are interested in, and get a number.</p>

13

<p>I look at those rankings with a grain of salt. The top 2 are in Dallas and I know for a fact that they PAY the kids to take the AP tests. Not just pay for the test, but give the kids cash in their pockets (paid for by grants). So, naturally, their rankings look really good, even with the new criteria this year. I’m not saying that the Dallas magnets aren’t good schools, but they are not in the same category as many of the wealthy suburban schools across the country.</p>

14

<p>Well they’ve narrowed the list from 1000 in the past to 500 this year. Our HS has been on the list in the past but somewhere in the 600-800 range and it’s missing this year. Whatever. We’re in a good district and the kids are happy here and challenged. Don’t need a Newsweek ranking to tell me that (but I’m sure the Realtors are tweaked ;)</p>

15

<p>Apparently this years rankings required schools to participate (ie submit answers to a questionnaire). So the absence of a particular school on the list may be due to its decision not to participate.(That is the case w/ my kids’ school)</p>

16

<p>Hmm, the schools that made it from my area onto the Newsweek list come from the two cities with the highest average income. That’s a funny coincidence.</p>

17

<p>I am worried about how much clout a for-profit company, College Board, is gaining in this process: in order to be considered in these rankings, schools must offer, and students must take, more and more AP tests, which must be paid for by the school or the students.* Those students also buy the College Board books. In addition, the curriculum is increasingly designed for testing, rather than for teaching the subject; the grades reward the ability to memorize and be tested, rather than intellectual curiosity or development. Schools which do not choose to measure their kids this way are simply not considered in these rankings, which is absurd but troubling–and what is the point, in any case, of ranking high schools in this way? Unlike college, the overwhelming majority of families cannot choose their high schools. The rankings, that is, don’t help the students choose their school. It just puts more pressure on the schools and students to pay for more and more tests, which does not, IMO, improve the schools in any way. </p>

<p>*With the exception of IB curriculum-based programs.</p>

18

<p>The Washington Post list has clear mistakes in the amount of subsidized lunch - makes you wonder what other inaccuracies it has.</p>

19

<p>

</li>
</ul>

<p>Such courses may exist at some super-elite high schools, but (a) that is very rare, (b) the number of students who would benefit from such offerings is very small, and (c) students at many non-elite high schools can take many of the same types of courses at their local community colleges or universities (although there may be a convenience factor if the course is offered on high school grounds instead of needing to commute to the community college or university).</p>

<p>Also, unless the courses are offered through some dual enrollment program at a college or university, getting subject credit when the student enrolls in university may be more difficult than for a student who just took courses at a local community college or university.</p>

<p>Of course, how important is a top ranked high school in any case, as long as the high school is not so deficient that it fails to prepare the student for university or other post-high-school activity? Indeed, some people graduate from middling high schools with no AP offerings, go to good universities, do well there, and are successful after graduating from university.</p>

20

<p>The point is not whether they get academic credit when they go to college, but rather the rigor of the high school program. That list is a selection from the course catalog at my daughter’s high school. Everyone takes a selection of those courses, because after the mandatory sophomore year courses, that’s all there is to take - with the exception of the advanced, post-calculus math courses, which only the students who enter with advanced standing in math will ever get to.</p>

<p>The school does not define its mission as getting kids into good colleges with lots of AP credits, although the kids do get into very good colleges, many with lots of AP credits - and in spite of the fact that almost none of them graduate with 4.0 averages. And the almost unanimous report from alumni is that when they get to college, they are much better prepared, academically and otherwise, than their peers.</p>

<p>So they must be doing something very right.</p>