Let’s say your moving to an area and wish to put your kid in a public high school. Money is no issue and you can choose a high school over a wide area.
How would you do it?
Would you base it on things like ACT scores? College readiness? Students taking advanced AP courses? Sports programs? Fine arts programs? Racial and economic diversity?
Would you use some sites like
Sorry, not good response other than to say it largely depends on the kid and his/her goals.
Curiously, my wife and I were looking at our HS senior yearbooks yesterday. I attended a Chicago public HS, and she attended a public HS in a near western burb. We graduated 1 year apart in the late 70s. My school was maybe 10% Asian, 10-15% black, 10=15% hispanic. She had to look hard to find a hispanic student.
My school had a ton of shop/technical classes - hers, not so much. Hers offered a ton of classes like psychology - that I do not recall our school offering. My HS had a number of “ethnic” clubs - Russiann, Ukrainian, Korean, etc. Hers, none.
She was her class valedictorian. Me, not so much.
Long story short, we ended up meeting in law school. So the different high schools did not seem to affect our trajectories too much.
I’d probably focus on what I thought my kids’ strengths/desires. If I thought they wanted to attend college, I’d look for college acceptance, and depth/breath of honors/AP classes. If I thought they were planning on a non-college route, that would be less significant. Diversity of student body would be a plus, so long as academics were also strong. Also, I am personally a big supporter of public education.
Well of course it depends on what the child’s (ie parents) goals are. If sports are a huge part of the student’s life, looking at the coaches and team results will be important. If diversity is important, that can be checked. The usual thing people want to know is academics. That depends, as everything in school does, primarily on the student body. One of the easiest proxies for that is the number and popularity of the AP courses. That and noise level. 
In my experience, of course that is a single data point, the noise level in the halls and cafeteria between classes are a good proxy for the school. If the students get out of class and and need to let off steam in the middle of the day, that isn’t the best indicator. If they are quietly discussing the next class or Friday’s game, that is a good sign. If others don’t find this to be their experience, it is probably just me.
By that indicator, my HS would give you a heart attack. Those 19th-century cavernous hallways are echo chambers in the purely physical sense of the expression.
I’d ask for a few recommendations on a good school district and buy a house in that district. After that it would be a crapshoot.
This may be a crazy idea, but do you know any substitute teachers in the area? We subs are among the few people who get an up-close inside view of multiple schools. Most folks will be able to say whether they like or dislike the one school they know, but without any basis for comparison.
Depends on a lot of things. Diversity is something I want but for a kid with specific talents or interests it may not be possible. I’m not looking for the newest or biggest or best; more a place that has a well-rounded academic base and includes some arts/music.
Wow, great idea. Never thought about asking subs.
Back in '75, my mom made sure to buy a house in the same school district that my cousin was going to go to. We had just moved to Denver from Illinois and my cousin was my best friend. Even back in '75, Denver was a ‘big city’ to me.
My cousin had been my best friend for a long time, and she still is.
That’s how my High School was picked.
I think the more AP classes, the better. Going to a school where all the cool kids take AP classes has a spillover effect: everyone wants to be in the AP classes.
If the band is better than the football team, that’s likely to be a good sign.
100% this. AP classes and the number thereof dominate every other measure. IB is a far distant second. If you have a lot of AP classes, you have a college focused high school with 4+ years of classes in every subject and teachers that are generally motivated and student focused. AP classes also denote a harder, heavier workload and colleges recognize that as a student up to the challenge of college courses.
We have many neighbor kids who in their 11th and 12th grade years wish they had gone to a different high school as they “have taken every class offered and don’t have any more impressive classes” to build or fill out their report card for college. And they went to the local high schools with 0 or 4 AP classes.
That’s half the equation. The other half is how dedicated they are to working with students with special needs. Find a school that’s equally committed to both ends of the spectrum, and it’s a good bet they’re committed to the middle, as well.
Are you in the USA? Are you looking at one of the bigger, higher cost of living metropolitan regions?
If so, find some of the better SAT/ACT tutors who’ve been working for several years. They’ll have a good idea of each school’s strengths, weaknesses, and organizational culture.
Well, then, you’d love my school, because that’s all we offer, and we are at or near the top of all the lists because of it. And for the right student, it’s a wonderful school: if you’ve been bored in every math class you’ve ever been in, the chance to take a math class that takes you from Algebra 2 to Calc AB by the end of your Freshman year is pretty freaking wonderful. And colleges certainly know us, and we have a good track record for matching kids with a good schools with good funding.
But some kids really regret coming. There’s real sacrifices. Like, we don’t have sports or cheer or Homecoming or all those traditional high school experiences. We have other experiences–because it’s a small school and almost everyone takes the same stuff, you bond over titrations and SAT prep and college essays much more tightly than at a big comprehensive, where not everyone is coming from the same place and the school part of school is a much smaller part of your relationships with your friends. It’s also different to be surrounded by people that know math and science–you can make some pretty nerdy jokes and be confident everyone will know what you mean.
And I think some of our kids romanticize the “ideal” high school experience they don’t have. (I’m always thinking “you know they have a social hierarchy, right? You know where you’d be, don’t you?”) But I will very openly admit that it’s a mistake for some kids to have come to our school, and not for academic reasons.
Anyway, I give presentations on this, and these are the questions we tell people do ask themselves:
**What are the course offerings/academic opportunities and do they match my goals? ** Not everywhere offers computer science, journalism, physics C, art history, whatever. I have found a surprising number of people don’t realize how much course offerings vary. Not everywhere has calculus! Other places only have certain classes some years–so you can’t be sure it will be there when you need it. Others have barriers to entry–like, only 15 kids out of 600 are allowed to take Physics C. So you may be locked out.
What is the average SAT/ACT score? What supports are offered to improve yours? There are a lot of schools that treat the SAT/ACT as having nothing to do with the school. There are others that offer a lot of support. Depending on your goals, this makes a big difference.
What opportunities are there to get involved? Are they the kind of thing you like to do? From mock trial to journalism to crew to math team to model UN to Physics Olympiad, there are a million extracurricular activities out there–but no school has all of them, and many schools have only a few that they do very well. Generally speaking, high school is more pleasant if you can find your people–and college applications are more successful if you’ve done something besides watch YouTube and hang our for 4 years. So make sure the high school you are looking at has the things you like to do. Don’t assume everyone has an active student council or science fair.
What is the culture of the school? Will you feel at home? This is harder to get a feel for, but it’s important. There are schools that are more competitive, more collaborative, more academic, more sporty, more angsty. Like, we have a sister school that is a lot like us but the culture is a lot more project-based. Our kids would rather have a study guide.
What happens after high school? This is often overlooked. Some schools have one counselor for 500 kids, and they are also the testing coordinator, so the reality is they expect college applications to be handled by parents or private counselors because they don’t have time. That’s an institutional decision that college access is not their jurisdiction. In other schools, you have every stage of the college application process integrated into the classes, and support and advice at every step. And lots are somewhere in between.
Thanks MandaJo, I wish more high schools were like that.
Question on AP courses. Is there some sort of standard that makes a course an AP course? For example at some high schools a regular course in say math is high enough the same coursework would be considered AP in another school.
AP courses have a defined set of skills/content and there is a standardized test at the end graded by College Board.
AP classes at a school have to be approved and vetted by the College Board. The last time I piloted a new AP class was 25 years ago, but the paperwork and developing the curriculum was intense. Schools may have differing levels of classes, but it isn’t an AP class unless the College Board says so.
I’d try to find a school whose students know the difference between “your” and “you’re”.
… or whose teachers do. IIRC, Urbanredneck is a teacher or a sub. I could be mistaken.
If we can turn back the clock to 1967 I wanted the high school with the hottest girls.:p:D