How much stock should people place on the new list of the nation's best public high schools that was released this week by U.S. News & World Report.
As noted in today's article, the rankings saw some schools that do well on other lists such as Raleigh Charter High, Enloe High and East Chapel Hill High not getting ranked. Less academically heralded schools such as Garner High and Southern Wake Academy were honored on this new list.
The difference from the lists done by Newsweek and The Washington Post seems to be that U.S. News requires schools to do well with their low-income and minority students.
According to the methodology, U.S. News first looked to see whether a school was exceeding overall academic expectations on state reading and math exams. They made adjustments for a school's percentage of low-income students.
They then looked to see whether the school's black, Hispanic and low-income students exceeded state averages.
If schools met the first two steps, U.S. News then assessed their college readiness by looking at data from Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate exams.
School schools have questioned how many North Carolina schools are listed as N/A in their English I and Algebra I exams that were used for the rankings.
Robert Morse, director of data research for U.S. News, said the N/A listings didn’t hurt a school’s ranking.
Morse said they determined that for some schools the Algebra I and English I exams weren't sufficient. He said they wound up using other state test data to determine the rankings in those cases. But they're not publishing online what other data they used.
Overall, the Wake County school system had three schools do well enough to achieve rankings. That's out of 73 North Carolina schools and 4,877 schools nationally to get rankings.
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system had nine schools receive rankings.
There were none ranked in Durham, Chapel Hill-Carrboro, Johnston or Orange counties.
Comments
Strange....
Thu, 05/10/2012 - 11:10 — Bob_SconceThe primary use of these rankings (other than bragging rights) is to help parents decide where to send their kids to school. And, my decision there isn't going to be influenced (except on a thin margin) by that school's "success in closing the achievement gap." The only place I'd really care is if there were two schools that were otherwise about equal -- I'm certainly not going to tell my child "Yeah, you won't get nearly as good of an education at school A than at school B, but school A has a smaller gap between the performance of its black and white students, so that's where you're going."
So, why do it? I suspect US News is hoping that schools will respond to its rankings by trying to shrink that gap. Unfortunately, the gap is a really bad measure. Why? Because a school where 60% of white students pass, and 50% of black student pass comes out better than a school where 90% of white students pass and 75% of black students pass. So, focusing on the gap, instead of on raw performance numbers, creates really bad incentives for the schools.
Think you may be misinterpreting "closing the gap"
Thu, 05/10/2012 - 12:32 — nmoskalI think they, as do many who use the reference, mean relative to state and national averages not relative to students within the same school. Unless I am misinterpreting their methodology the performance of low-income and minority students was compared to state avg for those groups and only the schools where performance was above state avg made the cut. So, in your example if state avg was 60%, the 75% school would make it and the 50% school would not.
Yeah...
Thu, 05/10/2012 - 13:02 — Bob_SconceI re-read the methodology, and think you described it correctly. But, still, I think my first paragraph is still valid.
Excellent point. If the
Thu, 05/10/2012 - 11:34 — shearertwExcellent point. If the "gap"is how they measured whether or not schools are doing a good job with low income or minority students, that's certainly stupid. I thought it was just low income/minority performance but I didn't read the study.
Glad to see Garner HS
Thu, 05/10/2012 - 10:37 — jenmanGlad to see Garner HS getting some recognition. Good for them! I'm also glad that they are looking at how well the low income and minority students are doing. That's crucial imo for how a school is doing.
Whatever JT did there...
Thu, 05/10/2012 - 14:19 — bpuli9999is obviously working. Time for him to do that at the state level!
"....U.S. News requires
Thu, 05/10/2012 - 10:23 — shearertw"....U.S. News requires schoo(l)s to do well with their low-income and minority students."
I wish the diversity crowd including but not limited too Jim Martin, Susan Evans, Kevin Hill, the Rev Barbar, Bev Perdue, the Democratic Party, the CCCACCCCACCC, and GSIW also held this criteria.
http://www.usnews.com/educati
Thu, 05/10/2012 - 10:10 — spiffy1http://www.usnews.com/education/high-schools/articles/2012/05/07/best-high-schools-methodology ---this is the link to the study article. Interesting quote from it "This is the total number of public high schools that had 12th-grade enrollment and sufficient data, primarily from the 2009-2010 school year, to analyze. (Nebraska was the only state that did not report enough data and therefore was not evaluated for any part of the rankings.) " Kind of dated data they are using. However, glad to see at least 1 of our magnet HS made it.
That aside. I would have expected ALL our magnet HS to be ranked due to the amount of $$ we are investing to keep those program rolling and based upon how it is used by special interest groups to say that is what is necessary to help the "base" students.
Puts another dent in that argument.