<p>HS ranking is even more irrelevent than UG. They take into account how many AP’s are offerred. At D’s prep. private HS, some teachers simply did not believe in AP’s. Instead, they taught their subjects at higher level than AP’s…which has landed my D. a job at college. She has never had AP Chem., but has been hand picked by Chem. prof. to be Supplemental Instructor, and very successful one as she was recognized for this on top of being paid for it. This is just one example, I could go on and on with other subjects. D’s HS did not make any rankings as far as I know, but it is very well known to colleges, and they apparently do not check any HS rankings either.</p>
<p>Jay Mathews no longer has a hand in the Newsweek high school rankings. He took his ranking to the Washington Post after they sold Newsweek. The Newsweek ranking this year was rushed to press and a lot of schools were left off the list.</p>
<p>[Welcoming</a> a new school rating scoundrel - Class Struggle - The Washington Post](<a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/class-struggle/post/welcoming-a-new-school-rating-scoundrel/2011/06/21/AGFViGeH_blog.html]Welcoming”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/class-struggle/post/welcoming-a-new-school-rating-scoundrel/2011/06/21/AGFViGeH_blog.html)</p>
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<p>The subsidized lunches have not bearing on the rankings. He supplies that as a supplementary information.</p>
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<p>There are what, 35,000 high schools or so? Being in the 30’s isn’t a “middling ranking.” That’s the same kind of mentality that postulates “upper Ivies” and “lower Ivies” and treats the bottom half of the top 20 as the “oh, sigh, I suppose if you HAVE to settle …” schools!!</p>
<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>
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<p>Sorry, I think that’s ridiculous. The vast, vast majority of high schools could never ever offer such courses – and there’s no need to. That’s not their mission. Their mission is to provide good, solid training in the “basics” - English, history, the sciences, mathematics, and foreign languages. (I recognize obviously there are math-and-science schools, and arts-and-theater schools that have different missions, but I’m talking about 95% of hs.)</p>
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<p>Again, your average hs simply doesn’t have capacity to teach languages much beyond French/Spanish/German, maybe Latin, maybe Chinese. Where are 30,000 hs teachers of these languages going to come from? This also presumes a certain economy of scale that just isn’t present in rural areas. The hs that covers the entire county in northern Minnesota isn’t going to be able to run enough of these classes to make it worthwhile.</p>
<p>Whenever things like Intel, etc. are mentioned, I wonder if the posters realize that it’s only the very privileged upper middle class schools and math-science magnet schools that even offer guidance towards these competitions. I’d be willing to bet fewer than 500 schools in the entire country have ever had a student compete in this stuff.</p>
<p>I’m all for wealth and upper middle class schools exerting their privilege, to be sure!</p>
<p>The public high school which is widely considered the strongest in my area is not on this list - I think because it refuses to release some of the data for this survey.</p>