US News: HS Rankings

Yet another ranking of American high schools. Sigh. Now we have US News awarding "gold medals" to certain schools.

If the Dayton area, where I live, is any indication, the schools are mostly the wealthy white high schools that made the list. Big suprise.

But not exactly. This ranking includes some suprises...like, in the Miami Valley, the working class and rural Versailles (for you non-Ohioans the l's are pronounced in that name, not ver-sigh but ver-sales).


While the Newsweek rankings were based strictly on AP ratios, the US rankings seem to be based on a combination of state test scores and AP rankings. Furthermore, the rankings seem to be based on minority and low-income students who outperformed expectations, although what's confusing about that is that Oakwood and Versailles, local districts who made the cut, would seem to have such low samples of low income and minority students as to be statistically irrelevant. Indian Hill also made the top 100, at 48. Indian Hill? Clearly there didn't have to be low income or minority in any great numbers to be included.

The authors acknowledge the fact that most schools on the list are upper class schools:

These criteria mean a lot of schools don't measure up—only 505 schools nationwide earned a silver or gold medal this year. The list illustrates at once the promise and the challenge for high schools today. Only about 1 in 8 of the schools on this list serves a student population that is more than 50 percent low income, and only about 1 in 5 has a majority of nonwhite students. Meanwhile, about 1 in 5 selects students based on academic merit, something that obviously boosts the chances of meeting the criteria.

Ohio schools in the top 100: 48. Indian Hill, 81. Wyoming, 83. Walnut Hills (Cincinnati Public), 92. Chagrin Falls.

The rest of Ohio's schools in the complete list here.