Newsweek's high school rankings

Note: Today I'm looking at Newsweek's school rankings. Tomorrow I'll take a look at their article on the role of principals in schools.

Newsweek has come out with their ranking of "top" high schools in America. Jill at Writes Like She Talks has written about it, and I'm sure some others have too that I haven't noticed. Jill's post is really helpful because she's sorted out the Ohio schools that are on the list.

Now the methodology Newseek uses is pretty simple, and they are pretty upfront about it. This statement is at the very top of the page:

Public schools are ranked according to a ratio devised by Jay Mathews: the number of Advanced Placement, Intl. Baccalaureate and/or Cambridge tests taken by all students at a school in 2006 divided by the number of graduating seniors. All of the schools on the list have an index of at least 1.000; they are in the top 5 percent of public schools measured this way.


Now schools can be ranked in all sorts of ways. By NAEP scores. By graduation rates for students on free/reduced lunches. All sorts of ways. And Newsweek chooses to rank theirs by how many Advanced Placement, or AP, exams (or International Baccalaureate, or IB, exams) are given, and they're pretty open that that's what they're doing. But do they have to call it the "top" high schools?

The rationale seems to be that by getting students to take IB or AP exams schools are preparing kids for college. But I see several problems with their methodology.

For one thing, it encourages "gaming" the system to try to get on the list. Look, I don't know how on earth the school in Dallas manages to get 14 tests per graduating senior, but I can't for the life of me imagine why a student would ever need to do that. Just graduate and go to college already.

Another issue is that not everyone who takes an AP course takes an exam. Especially in Ohio. There are more and more schools who have decided that they don't want to exempt so many students from entry year courses. When I taught AP English, many of my students didn't take the exam because they were going to Miami U. and they weren't going to get credit anyway. It was pointless for them to take the exam. I would have liked to see how they did, so I could judge my teaching more effectively, but that wasn't a good enough reason for them to pay for a test.

In my district we've had repeated debates about requiring AP exams in our AP courses. I'm in favor of it, but not so we can score higher on the Newsweek ranking. I want the data on all of our AP students; I want to see their scores from year to year. The argument my teachers use is this: if they don't need it, they won't prepare adequately, and it will reflect badly on my teaching, and unfairly so. I don't have a great answer for that argument. I tend to think the preparation the course provides should be adequate for students to score well, but that's a little naive. I know students need some outside preparation as well. And I know they need to take it seriously.

An enterprising superintendent who wanted to get some good PR might really push for more kids to take AP courses and find a way for the district to pay for it so that students are required to take the test. And--Voila!--we make the list. I think in my district if every AP student took the corresponding exam next year we would be at or above the magic 1.00 cutoff. But would we be a better high school?

I just think that what Newsweek is doing is a really, really limited way to look at successful high schools. There are lots and lots of things that make schools unique and effective, and I am always more interested in looking at that than silly rankings.