Is this method of ranking high schools accurate? From the places that I have been placing my fingers to find the cultural pulse, Newsweek’s ranking system has created quite a commotion, enough so to be a Great Debate.
My personal feeling is that this ranking system is at least partially accurate. The number of AP tests and the number of students taking AP classes is a positive relationship and the statistics are easily obtained from the ETS which administers AP and IB tests. The more AP classes taken, the more academically challenging the high school is likely to be… as much as I hold great disdain for typically liberal, emotional, thoughtless, and inacurate journalism such as Newsweek.
You know, doing what is right is easy. The problem is knowing what is right.
I always get a bit leery when schools are rated, there are simply too many variables in my opinion to give a fair estimation of a school’s merit. My High School, which was a rather academically challenging one, didn’t offer the IB program, so if that was what one was basing the rating on, it would have failed dramatically. In any case, since when are High Schools only intended as stepping stones to college(as in the AP tests)?
While it’s probably a reasonably accurate method of rating a school, at least in comparison to other methods that have been used, I’m still rather wary about accepting any of their results.
In our (suburban, fairly wealthy) school district, that’s exactly how they’re thought of, at least from an academic point of view. Our local high school mentions as often as it can that 98% of its graduates proceed to some sort of higher education, and 95% of them go to a four-year academic institution.
BTW, I just looked at the article, and our local high school didn’t make that “top 100” list. In fact, no high school in Pennsylvania made that list. Ah, well…
Is there a link to that article? I’d be curious about Eldest Son’s high school, since it too brags about how 98% of its graduating class goes on to a four year college.
Newsweek claims that there’s a list on their web site that has a lot more schools on it, but I took a quick look at their web site this morning, and that list doesn’t appear to be there. (I think that’s only because the issue in question - March 13th - hasn’t hit their web site yet.)
I don’t think that Newsweek’s intent was to make a list of the “best” high schools in America (regardless of what the title of the list was…). I think that the list was supposed to be read in conjunction with the article, and not taken as the definitive ranking based on some kind of holistic scale. But whatever. Who gives a crap about what Newsweek thinks of your high school anyway?
Now the US News & World Report’s opinion of your college, that’s what matters.
“History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.” -Winston Churchill
There really is no way to rate a high school. I went to the porrest high school in my area (Rancho Cordova for those of you who know Sacramento) and I came out better prepared for college than people I know that went to rather exclusive private schools. You get as much out out high school as you put into it and no school is a replacement for parents that tach you to value learning.
418? Maybe that’s the only schools that they measured. And not all schools have IB programs…what kinda screwed up…wait, my kids’ school is ranked 55. Some of their friends go to 39.
Yeah, my High School was exactly like that as well…I’m just saying that that might not be a healthy way of viewing the system, thats all.
#8 last time I checked, but I’m kind of wary of that as well. The school has been trying to up that number, and as a result the quality of the college experience(though not the necessarily the education) has declined somewhat.
Well I actually spent two years at the #1 ranked school (which I was surprised to see) and it was definately an excellent school. But… it drew from an entire city and brought all the best students to that school so of course they are going to do better on AP/IB.
The high school I went to did not offer AP classes because of our small size (physically). We did not have enough available classrooms to offer any additional classes. However, we have always beaten the three Tennessee schools on the list in every academic (and semi-academic) competition (Academic Decathlon, Scholars’ Bowl, Odyssey of the Mind, Mock Trial, Model UN, etc.)
Students at my school were taking the “challenge” classes (ranked that way by other area schools) as the basic classes. Our advanced classes were more in line with AP material but without the AP credit.
The school also refused to weight GPAs which hurt many graduates when they were competing for spots in top colleges. My class valedictorian decided to take advantage of the non-weighted GPAs and take “filler” classes for all periods (except English) in his senior year. So while my friends and I were taking organic chemistry, macroeconomics and advanced humanities, he was taking music appreciation, typing, and art. We all ended up with basically the same GPAs. Do I sound bitter?
