<p>
Actually it’s worse than that. Here’s what it says at the Newsweek site:</p>
<p>“We take the total number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate or Cambridge (AICE) tests given at a school each year and divide by the number of seniors graduating in May or June.”</p>
<p>So the index is not based on the percentage of students who take AP exams–which, while still problematic to my mind, would at least be defensible in terms of the kind of research WISCBadger22 pointed to–but on the average number of AP exams taken per student. A school therefore prospers in the rankings not just by encouraging as many students as possible to take APs, but by encouraging them to take as many APs as possible. I don’t see how this benefits anybody other than CB.</p>