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A three-step process determined the best high schools. The first two steps ensured that the schools serve all their students well, using state proficiency standards as the measuring benchmarks. For those schools that made it past the first two steps, a third step assessed the degree to which schools prepare students for college-level work.
Note: college-level work.
Not 21st century skills.
Westchester County:
Blind Brook High School - Gold #87 of 100
Rye Brook, NY
Bronxville High School - Honorable Mention
Bronxville, NY
Byram Hills High School - Silver
Armonk, NY
Edgemont Junior-Senior High School - Gold #51 of 100
Scarsdale, NY
Hastings High School - Honorable Mention
Hastings-on-Hudson, NY
Horace Greeley High School - Gold #46 of 100
Chappaqua, NY
Rye High School - Honorable Mention
Rye, NY
Saunders Trade & Technical High School - Bronze
Yonkers, NY
Scarsdale Senior High School - Gold #92
Scarsdale, NY
Yonkers High School - Gold #37 of 100
Yonkers, NY
3 comments:
When I saw this story, I checked the list of schools, just to see if my alma mater made the list at all. It doesn't.
Then, looking at your post on the criteria, I realized why. Canisius does not use the NYS Board of Regents for its accreditation. It uses the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools instead, and is thus able to avoid the increasingly incompetent and asinine Board of Regents, and focus on their own curriculum and standards.
The only regents requirement when I attended was the Regents Competency Test for Social Studies. We had to come in 3 weeks after school ended, during our Sophomore and Junior years, to take the test on a Pass/Fail basis. When I asked what to study, the response was "Don't."
I was never a big fan of US News' rankings anyway. I recall looking at colleges many years ago and realizing that absolutely nothing in their criteria actually had anything to do with whether or not you're going to get an education there.
Any sort of major ranking system is going to have its flaws and things it does not account for. I do appreciate, however, that it avoids the hippy-dippy horse hockey which so permeates what passes for education these days.
This year's ranking was done by Standard and Poor's, & I'm taking it on faith (because I have no other means of evaluating it) that it's better than previous ratings.
In this case, at least, the ratings are based on students actually passing the AP test. Andy Rotherham's rating system, which was used last year, also included a standard for passing AP tests.
Jay Matthew's rating system, which has been used for years by Newsweek, ranks based in number of students taking the AP test, regardless of whether they pass.
He chose that route because of research showing that kids who had taken AP courses did better in college whether they passed the test or not. I believe that's why he called it "The Challenge Index." He was trying to encourage schools to give all students a crack at AP course, instead of strictly limiting enrollment to kids who were prepared to do the work and succeed.
I understand why he took that route, but it was too easy to game the system - and once schools do game the system you need to shift tactics.
In my own district, AP courses are open to all students; Honors courses are restricted.
Also: parents pay for the AP test at the beginning of the school year. I gather that is unusual, and I wonder whether this requirement was put in place to encourage all students to take AP tests, including those who did so knowing they were likely not to pass.
In 2007, our figures were:
600 enrollments in AP courses (double enrollments for some students, obviously)
410 tests taken
266 passes
On the basis of figures like those, the h.s. always made the top 200 in Newsweek - and the top 100 for Rotherham last year.
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