USNews high school rankings reward schools that help the middling student, no points for high achievement

Pre-College Topics High School Life
1

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/articles/how-us-news-calculated-the-rankings

Essentially, high schools were rewarded for the proportion of students who attempted a single AP class or IB class, and for the proportion who were able to score a 3 on an AP or a 4 in an IB class. Schools were rewarded for “underserved” population coming close to the average for non-underserved students. And so on. No look at PSAT/SAT/ACT scores. No look at the percentage able to achieve a score of 5 on multiple AP exams. Basically, the rankings reward schools for meeting easily-gamed criteria designed to bring the lower rank of the student population closer to the middle of the pack. For example, AP Psych is considered to be a relatively easy AP class, so schools looking to game the ranking criteria might run many sections of AP Psych, push borderline students into them, and get credit for a large proportion of their students at least attempting a single AP class, even if they never take the exam, or score below 3 on the exam if they do take it. Credit is also given for the percentage of students who manage to earn a high school diploma, so tweaking the graduation criteria to try to nudge that F student into the D minus range, so that he can be given a diploma, moves a school up in the ranks.

It is a laudable goal for struggling students to earn a high school diploma, and for low achieving students to attempt at least one AP class. But generally, that is not an indicator of high achievement, but of “equitable” achievement, whatever that means. But I most certainly would not consider these rankings any indication whatsoever of the level of academic excellence of any particular high school. I’d still look at SAT/ACT scores, and at the number of AP classes offered, and the proportion of 4’s and 5’s earned on the AP exams, and at college acceptances, if that data is available (keeping in mind the presence of “hooks” in the student population).

2 Likes
2

With TO and test blind, thousands of students no longer test. In CA, the number has dropped from over half of the senior class, to a fifth.

That would advantage the advantaged high schools that offer multiple APs. Our public school doesn’t even allow them until Junior year, and then only a couple.

3 Likes
3

If you read the article, they adjusted for schools that don’t offer AP/IB. But the reality is, what they’re ranking is the ability of the schools to issue a high school diploma, and to get kids into one AP or IB class, and whether a similar or lesser proportion of “underserved” students were meeting these criteria same as the non-underserved students.

4

Any generic ranking of high schools is necessarily going to reflect the answer to some generic question which may not be particularly close to whatever questions an individual parent or prospect student might have.

So, US News starts off by defining in general what they mean by a “great high school”, and then offers a rankings methodology they assert is suited to that definition, which in a way is actually supplying the details of their definition.

And if the way they define a “great high school,” as explicated through their methodology, is not how you would define it, that doesn’t mean they have done something objectively wrong. It just means they are providing an answer to a question that you did not ask, and might not care about.

1 Like