Friday, November 27, 2009

Best High Schools

Best High Schools: Gold Medal List

Posted December 4, 2008
yellow
Based on Advanced Placement (AP) tests
blue
Based on International Baccalaureate (IB) tests
green
Based on both Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate tests
Rank School Name and Location Quality-adjusted
Exams per
Test Taker
College
Readiness
51 Edgemont Junior-Senior High School Scarsdale, NY 3.8 73.9
52 Yes College Preparatory School Houston, TX 1.4 73.2
53 Oscar De La Hoya Animo Charter High Los Angeles, CA 1.0 73.2
54 Thomas S. Wootton High Rockville, MD 3.9 73.0
55 McLean High McLean, VA 2.9 72.5
56 Michael E. DeBakey High School for Health Professions Houston, TX 2.3 72.2
57 Winston Churchill High Potomac, MD 3.7 72.0
58 Westshore Junior/Senior High School Melbourne, FL 2.5 71.8
59 Northland Preparatory Academy Flagstaff, AZ 2.5 71.6
60 Mission San Jose High Fremont, CA 3.2 71.5
61 Alexander W. Dreyfoos, Jr. School of the Arts West Palm Beach, FL 2.9 71.5
62 Jericho Senior High School Jericho, NY 4.2 70.9
63 Payton College Preparatory High School Chicago, IL 2.3 70.8
64 Piedmont High Piedmont, CA 2.9 70.1
65 South Texas Academy of Medical Tech San Benito, TX 0.7 70.0
66 Masterman Julia R Secondary School Philadelphia, PA 2.5 69.9
67 Brooklyn Technical High School Brooklyn, NY 2.0 69.8
68 Signature School Inc. Evansville, IN 3.6 69.5
69 Peak To Peak Charter School Lafayette, CO 2.9 69.4
70 Hawthorne Math and Science Academy High Hawthorne, CA 0.8 69.3
71 Townsend Harris High School Flushing, NY 2.1 69.0
72 Paxon School/Advanced Studies Jacksonville, FL 2.5 68.9
73 Monta Vista High Cupertino, CA 3.6 68.8
74 Henry M. Gunn High Palo Alto, CA 4.9 68.2
75 Pittsford Sutherland High School Pittsford, NY 3.9 68.0
See schools 76-100 »
yellow
Based on Advanced Placement (AP) tests
blue
Based on International Baccalaureate (IB) tests
green
Based on both Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate tests

Reader Comments

This whole study is a cherry-pick

When a study judges the quality of a school by the performance of its students, and then biases its sample by including schools like TJ which select for high-performing students in the first place, it amounts to cherry-picking. Anyone truly trained in science should understand that with such a sample bias, there's no evidence that the higher performance of the school's students has ANYTHING to do with the school. If TJ were really so great at teaching math and science, its students and alums would be mentioning that serious flaw in their comments here, instead of cheering themselves on. Don't they teach statistics there?

Whether it's publicly funded or not is a moot issue; all performance-admission magnet schools can be expected to outperform the schools they draw from. Even if the teachers were rotated around between the schools, and other factors kept the same, kids with better grades separated into their own group are likely to continue to get better grades on average. The only scientific way to prove it's really the school would be to set up a control group.

I could have gone to TJ's first year, but I hadn't been working hard enough on grades. It turned out much better that I stayed at my original school. I knew a lot of the kids in TJ's inaugural class, and I doubt any of them could have managed a BA in math in under 2 years like I did. It was FCPS that prepared me for that, I didn't need any science/tech specialty school. If I'd gotten into TJ, I doubt I would have learned much about political science, sociology, history, classic literature, or philosophy either. Instead of learning Russian to fluency, I'd have just gone through the motions like the physics grad students who took the class because it was co-requisite. Better to have a broad, comprehensive education than to end up a well-paid nerd in a lab somewhere.

nonsense

Why do they have a handicap factor for the minority and poverty levels, to get these scores.

Double Standard

everyone was perfectly aware that it's double standard since they choose not to consider private & public schools. If I was them, I would redo it correctly since it's not accurate! I'm sure they are not interested in this since they did not make any plans to redo it

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