The New High School Rankings Are Here

Mr. Morse

I read the revised methodology. Do you have a link to the Technical Appendix companion to the paper? I'm curious as to how Standard and Poors was provided data by the IBO. Do they now have results online like The College Board? Or were the results self-reported by individual schools, as they are in The Challenge Index?

stuyvesant hs - large data error

listed as open enrollment - and not a magnet. The school has an ultra competitive one time only test that only admits a very small percentage of those taking the test - smaller than the # that get into most ivies every year - how is that "open enrollment?"

Non-public schools

Non-Public Schools should count, too! The New Orleans area is full of amazing Catholic Schools. Ben Franklin is good, but some of the non-public high-schools are even better!

Fairfax County - Grading Policies that hurt college opportunites

As President and Co-Founder of FAIRGRADE (a parent advocacy group in Fairfax County, VA), I am excited that 4 Fairfax County Public High Schools made the 2009 Gold Medal Winner list. However, I would like to recommend that USN&WR write a story about the nationwide trend of school districts changing their grading policies (related to both letter grading scales and weights for advanced courses) due to their impact on letter grades, GPA and college admissions opportunities. While the news media has provided extensive coverage of the increasingly competitive landscape of college admissions, it has not covered the recent trend in school districts nationwide that are abandoning their restrictive, less common grading scales (6, 7, 8 Point scales), and moving toward the standard 10 Point Scale (100-90=A, 89-80=B, etc.) Specifically, FAIRGRADE has identified over 75 school districts in 12 different states that have switched, after realizing that their high school students were at a competitive disadvantage for college admissions and scholarships. Since 1979, colleges have cited high school grades as the top factor in admissions.(NACAC 2008)

This trend appears to have increased since the state of Florida’s legislature decided in 2001 to convert their entire public school system to the 10 Point Scale, after determining that their individual school districts were using a variety of restrictive, non-standard grading scales and these scales were putting students at a disadvantage for both in-state and out-of-state college admissions and scholarships. In other words, FL wanted to create a level playing field for their students by adopting the standard 10 Point Grading Scale. (Please note that the US Dept. Of Education and College Board use the 10 Point Grading Scale for their research and publications.)

If you visit our website, www.fairgrade.org, you can view our extensive research. Our research list of high school districts that have converted has expanded from 15 to 75,and there are hundreds more to be identified.

Fairfax County Public Schools (the 13th Largest School system in the US) has been using a restrictive grading scale for over 40 years. It was exactly 30 years ago, December 1978, that Fairfax parents lobbied their school board to convert to the 10 Point Grading Scale, but they were unsuccessful. Thirty years later, in March 2008, FAIRGRADE published its research data and lobbied the school system for this change. After receiving hundreds of email complaints from Fairfax County parents, the Superintendent Jack Dale agreed to study the issue further. FAIRGRADE was asked to collaborate in this research effort and a final report on the research findings is expected to be completed in mid- December.

To date, over 9,000 Fairfax County residents have signed the FAIRGRADE petition which requests converting to the 10 Point grading scale as well as increasing the weights for honors and AP/IB courses to reflect the national norms.

Faulty measurement

As with Newsweek, US News talks about college readiness without actually measuring it.

It's not about the number of IB or AP tests taken or "passed."

It's about how the kids *actually* do in college!

The correct measurement would be asking colleges from which high schools do the best prepared students come.

Ohterwise you are allowing schools (like several here in Washington State) to force kids into AP classes and to take AP tests to get high rankings. One Ivy-bound kid chose not to take some AP tests and his parents were called in by administration, read the riot act, with the message given loud and clear: "Your child HAS to take the tests. Otherwise our Newsweek and US News ratings will suffer." Threats followed.

If you want to truly measure college readiness...do that. Don't measure something that can be manipulated without regard for student success.

By the way, three of the four Washington State "Gold" schools have shown less than state average gains in SATs since they started forcing AP on everyone. Hope that's food for thought.

I'm a little surprised that West Springfield High School in Fairfax County was left off the list completely. The school sends approximately 95% of its graduates to college, offers approximately 25 AP courses, and consistently scores considerably above the national average on standardized testing. The school has also made Newsweek's list for as long as I can remember. When my family moved to West Springfield, a determining factor was the strength of this community's schools. Guess I'm just a bit surprised by your findings, especially in light of some of the other Fairfax County schools that made the list.

Parochial (Catholic) High Schools

Here in NYC area there are quite a few Catholic High Schools. Were they included in your survey? To mention a few, Christ the King Regional HS, St. Francis Prep HS, Regis HS, Archbishop Molloy HS, and Xaverian HS. They all seem to have good reputations, if they were included, how did they rank. If not included, why were they not.

Best High Schools

Well ommitting a State Completely is not correct. We do have wonderful schools in Oklahoma like Oklahoma School of Science and Math & Classen School of Advanced Studies. Just selecting the schools from the states that are popular would not be the right way to judge.

Did this guy just buy houses in Yonkers and he wants his property value to go up? In our local rankings, the school places almost at the bottom. The problem with these rankings is that people believe them unless the actually live near some of these places. Yonkers is a dangerous city and anyone who can moves out to a surrounding suburb. I think their average SAT scores were around 900.

Non-Public Schools

Why don't you include the non-public schools, Catholic, Non-denominational and other private schools?