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So many lists out there but I prefer the lists from US News and Newsweek for ranking top high schools particularly because they are ranked in relation to the rest of the country:
The US News (and at least one other I can't recall) have INCREDIBLY stupid ways of rating high schools. The highest ranked schools get there by sending all their students to AP courses, whether or not they're prepared for them and succeed at them. They get incredible numbers of 1s and 2s. It's a debacle caused by US News that's wasting a ton of resources
The US News (and at least one other I can't recall) have INCREDIBLY stupid ways of rating high schools. The highest ranked schools get there by sending all their students to AP courses, whether or not they're prepared for them and succeed at them. They get incredible numbers of 1s and 2s. It's a debacle caused by US News that's wasting a ton of resources
There may be other rankings such as you describe but the methodology of US News is quite thorough. Student graduation rate is the first of several sieves that all schools are screened through. The fact is student success in IB or AP evaluation is a key part of the rankings; schools with poor success records are not highly ranked -- How U.S. News Calculated the 2016 Best High Schools Rankings | Best High Schools | US News
Agree about Deerfield. No so much about Highland Park being top 5 - or at least consistently top 5. Deerfield and Stevenson have been trading places as #1 in Lake County - and the entire Chicago suburban area for that matter, for years. I don't see how any "top" list for Lake County could be excluding Deerfield. I would expect to see it at #1 or #2. Libertyville and Lake Forest have historically been in the very top tier in Lake County (and still are) and Vernon Hills more recently has consistently joined that club. VHS was built new about 15 years ago to relieve overcrowding at Libertyville. It took a little while to get going, but it now seems to have hit its stride. Both are in the same HS district (in fact they are the only schools in the district) and so have very similar goals and philosophies.
Really? Highland Park has not historically always been in the top tier of Lake County? Do you live in Lake County? This is absurd using almost any data point at any point in the school's history.
U.S. News has Stevenson ranked 166, Deerfield 229, Highland Park 548, Libertyville 554, Lake Forest 580 and Vernon Hills 588.
Further, the ACT scores of HP, Deerfield, Libertyville, Lake Forest and HP are the only schools at 25 or above in Lake County.
HP does this all with 15% low-income student body (as opposed to .1% at Stevenson, 3% at Lake Forest and Deerfield, 6% at Libertyville and 11% at Vernon Hills).
And finally, find some college counselors and ask them what five schools from Lake County send the most prepared students to college.
Or better yet, find data that proves that Highland Park High School students attending IL state schools are more prepared than 99% of their peers.
Performance of students at University of IL freshman GPA over three year period (GPA for all IL public universities)(average ACT of admitted students at U of I)
For comparison purposes:
IL Math and Science Academy 3.35
Northside College Prep 3.20
Hinsdale Central 3.13
New Trier 3.11
Walter Payton 3.10
Glenbrook North 3.10
There may be other rankings such as you describe but the methodology of US News is quite thorough. Student graduation rate is the first of several sieves that all schools are screened through. The fact is student success in IB or AP evaluation is a key part of the rankings; schools with poor success records are not highly ranked -- How U.S. News Calculated the 2016 Best High Schools Rankings | Best High Schools | US News
Ok, it's been a while since I've looked into it, but the last rating I looked at years ago really was just % of students in "AP"/"IB" classes
I note that they're still just counting students who get at least 1 3 on an AP, so no difference between taking 8 APs in math, history, and science at 4-5, and the Chinese kid who takes Chinese or anyone taking geography or psychology and getting a 3.
Getting a 4 on the English composition AP meaning I had to retake it at Northwestern really sucked, to go a bit OT.
@Paige LOL at comparing students of wildly different economic backgrounds attending state schools. That's never going to work. Yeah, the Ivies and Ivy-ish schools are very generous with the aid these days, but the schools between about top 15 and top 50 (around where Illinois sits) are not. The rich kid with the 1350 SAT and the 3.4 (unweighted) GPA is going someplace better and more expensive, while the middle class or lower kid is looking at state, or a worse school than the rich kid where he is offered aid.
IOW, controlling for race, the wealthier the school district, the poorer you'd expect the students at IU to have done on their exams. Btw, I wrote this all before going back to your post and seeing your comment about the low-income students in each.
@Paige LOL at comparing students of wildly different economic backgrounds attending state schools. That's never going to work. Yeah, the Ivies and Ivy-ish schools are very generous with the aid these days, but the schools between about top 15 and top 50 (around where Illinois sits) are not. The rich kid with the 1350 SAT and the 3.4 (unweighted) GPA is going someplace better and more expensive, while the middle class or lower kid is looking at state, or a worse school than the rich kid where he is offered aid.
IOW, controlling for race, the wealthier the school district, the poorer you'd expect the students at IU to have done on their exams. Btw, I wrote this all before going back to your post and seeing your comment about the low-income students in each.
Thanks for going back to look that I included some low-income data (but not as it relates to the college preparedness study that I linked). But the point is that the high schools I included are sending kids with very similar average ACT scores - within 1 point, regardless of their socio-economic background, and some public high schools are performing better than others with regard to college freshman year GPA, which is as good a measure as any as to a high school's quality. So, when you take out race, income, etc. and just look at first year GPA's of admitted students to U of I, the state's flagship, you can see which high schools prepare their students better than others. This study was included to provide further objective proof to the poster, wjj, who didn't consider Highland Park one of the best schools in Lake County (and, notably, in another recent post, wjj also didn't consider Highland Park part of the North Shore until the 50's or 60's. Perhaps indicating he has some sort of bias against the town itself).
Is your point that a student with a similar ACT but a different socio-economic background is not going to do as well in college? I could see that with a high school GPA, because schools can be wildly different in how they distribute grades, but the ACT is testing the same material to all students. It should be a good indicator of a student's ability to perform well in college, regardless of socio-economic background.
Thanks for going back to look that I included some low-income data (but not as it relates to the college preparedness study that I linked). But the point is that the high schools I included are sending kids with very similar average ACT scores - within 1 point, regardless of their socio-economic background, and some public high schools are performing better than others with regard to college freshman year GPA, which is as good a measure as any as to a high school's quality. So, when you take out race, income, etc. and just look at first year GPA's of admitted students to U of I, the state's flagship, you can see which high schools prepare their students better than others. This study was included to provide further objective proof to the poster, wjj, who didn't consider Highland Park one of the best schools in Lake County (and, notably, in another recent post, wjj also didn't consider Highland Park part of the North Shore until the 50's or 60's. Perhaps indicating he has some sort of bias against the town itself).
Is your point that a student with a similar ACT but a different socio-economic background is not going to do as well in college? I could see that with a high school GPA, because schools can be wildly different in how they distribute grades, but the ACT is testing the same material to all students. It should be a good indicator of a student's ability to perform well in college, regardless of socio-economic background.
My point is that my father would have gone to Harvard if his parents had the income he made. My mother's father would have gone to MIT instead of UW. I would have gone to Oberlin instead of Bates to begin my college career [edit: had my parents been poor], and probably never have gone to Northwestern.
It's not that they're not going to do as well, it's that students with the same qualifications who are marginal are going to go to different schools based on the cost. I could afford to go to a $50,000 a year school. Were my parents poorer, I would have gone to a school offering me a merit-based scholarship, or a state school. The person who scored the same as I did and had the same grades and was poor would definitely be going state.
That's going on at mass scale in the state. Students of roughly identical qualifications are going to sort by family wealth into schools (as always, controlling for race).
Wjj may simply not be aware that DF and HP are a single HS district.
[
QUOTE=Paige65;45712967]Really? Highland Park has not historically always been in the top tier of Lake County? Do you live in Lake County? This is absurd using almost any data point at any point in the school's history.
U.S. News has Stevenson ranked 166, Deerfield 229, Highland Park 548, Libertyville 554, Lake Forest 580 and Vernon Hills 588.
Further, the ACT scores of HP, Deerfield, Libertyville, Lake Forest and HP are the only schools at 25 or above in Lake County.
HP does this all with 15% low-income student body (as opposed to .1% at Stevenson, 3% at Lake Forest and Deerfield, 6% at Libertyville and 11% at Vernon Hills).
And finally, find some college counselors and ask them what five schools from Lake County send the most prepared students to college.
Or better yet, find data that proves that Highland Park High School students attending IL state schools are more prepared than 99% of their peers.
Performance of students at University of IL freshman GPA over three year period (GPA for all IL public universities)(average ACT of admitted students at U of I)
For comparison purposes:
IL Math and Science Academy 3.35
Northside College Prep 3.20
Hinsdale Central 3.13
New Trier 3.11
Walter Payton 3.10
Glenbrook North 3.10
Wjj may simply not be aware that DF and HP are a single HS district.
I am aware that they are in the same district, but that does not mean that both schools perform the same. Libertyville and Vernon Hills are in the same district and Libertyville consistently ranks better than Vernon Hills (though the gap is closing). Hersey and Prospect are in the same district as Wheeling and no one would say Wheeling is at the same level as Hersey or Prospect. So being in the same district really does not mean much.
I have lived in Lake County for 30 years and know people from all over the north and northwest suburban area and their kids who attended many of these Lake County schools including Stevenson (where my kids went), Libertyville, Vernon Hills, Lake Forest, Highland Park, Deerfield, Mundelein, Lake Zurich, Antioch, Warren, Wauconda as well as northern Cook County schools like New Trier, Fremd, Palatine, the Glenbrooks, etc. There are plenty of threads on this forum discussing issues at HPHS. Anyone can cherry pick this or that statistic to try to make a point, even if misplaced. My response was to a top 5 list that excluded both Deerfield and HP. All I said was that IMO, it was crazy to exclude Deerfield which has #1 or #2 along with Stevenson for years. I did not, and do not think that HPHS is a slam dunk consistently top 5 Lake County school like Deerfield, Stevenson, or Libertyville. Top 10? Sure. But this was a top 5 list.
I am aware that they are in the same district, but that does not mean that both schools perform the same. Libertyville and Vernon Hills are in the same district and Libertyville consistently ranks better than Vernon Hills (though the gap is closing). Hersey and Prospect are in the same district as Wheeling and no one would say Wheeling is at the same level as Hersey or Prospect. So being in the same district really does not mean much.
I have lived in Lake County for 30 years and know people from all over the north and northwest suburban area and their kids who attended many of these Lake County schools including Stevenson (where my kids went), Libertyville, Vernon Hills, Lake Forest, Highland Park, Deerfield, Mundelein, Lake Zurich, Antioch, Warren, Wauconda as well as northern Cook County schools like New Trier, Fremd, Palatine, the Glenbrooks, etc. There are plenty of threads on this forum discussing issues at HPHS. Anyone can cherry pick this or that statistic to try to make a point, even if misplaced. My response was to a top 5 list that excluded both Deerfield and HP. All I said was that IMO, it was crazy to exclude Deerfield which has #1 or #2 along with Stevenson for years. I did not, and do not think that HPHS is a slam dunk consistently top 5 Lake County school like Deerfield, Stevenson, or Libertyville. Top 10? Sure. But this was a top 5 list.
I think the reason Deerfield and HP have fallen out of the rankings this year is because of the district-wide effort to bomb last year's PARCC. Something like 6% of students in 113 met expectations, compared to ~60% at other schools that fully participated.
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You are mistaken.
