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Really, this list is incredibly useful because of the data provided (much better than that US news list from a while back). For the the first time we are provided with an average AP test score, which has been impossible to find in the past.
Sorry, totally disagree with you on two points here...
1. I believe it's imperative that we understand how these high schools were ranked by Newsweek's The Daily Beast and the previous rankings by US News, since the ranking results are so very different.
Newsweek reached out to principals, superintendents and other administrators at public high schools across the country. In order to be considered for our list, a school had to complete a survey requesting specific data from the 2010-2011 academic year. In all, more than 2,300 schools were assessed to produce the final list of the top 1000 schools.
There is no mention as to what schools were contacted, nor which did not return a survey, or out of those returned, how many they rejected. All we know for certain based on their statement above is that they assessed more than 2,300 schools based on the surveys returned. So, while a school may not be included in the list, it does not mean that they might have been ranked in the top 1000 had they (1) been sent a survey to complete in the first place, (2) been sent a survey and returned it in time, and/or (3) received a survey and completed it and then it was rejected by Newsweek as being incomplete.
Again, all that we know from the information provided by Newsweek is that a total of 1,000 US high schools were ranked from a pool of "more than 2,300", based on (1) four-year, on-time graduation rate (25%), (2) percent of 2011 graduates accepted to college (25%), AP/IB/AICE tests per student (25%), (3) average SAT and/or ACT score (10%), (4) average AP/IB/AICE exam score (10%), and, (5) AP/IB/AICE courses offered per student (5%).
U.S. News teamed up with the Washington, D.C.-based American Institutes for Research (AIR). AIR implemented U.S. News's comprehensive rankings methodology, which is based on the key principles that a great high school must serve all of its students well, not just those who are college-bound, and that it must be able to produce measurable academic outcomes to show the school is successfully educating its student body across a range of performance indicators.
They go on to state that their data was based on "21,776 public high schools in 49 states and the District of Columbia, the total number of public high schools that had 12th-grade enrollment and sufficient data, primarily from the 2009-2010 school year, to analyze." The only exception was the State of Nebraska, that they state "did not report enough data and therefore was not evaluated for any part of the rankings."
From these data, they were ranked on passing these three steps: (1) whether each school's students were performing better than statistically expected for the average student in the state, (2) whether the school's least-advantaged students (black, Hispanic, and low-income) were performing better than average for similar students in the state, and, (3) from those schools making it through these first two steps made them eligible to be judged nationally on the final step—college-readiness performance—using Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate test data as the benchmarks for success. "This third step measured which schools produced the best college-level achievement for the highest percentages of their students, received an AP score of 3 or higher or an IB score of 4 or higher, the quality-adjusted participation rate was then weighted 75 percent in the calculation, and the simple AP or IB participation rate was weighted 25 percent."
As synchronicity alluded to earlier above, data can be shown in pretty much any form you choose, and in some cases, manipulated to fit any answer desired, so please DO take all of these stats reported like this with a grain of salt... and do your own analyses and fact-gathering as he indicated he was already doing.
However, in this case for these school rankings, I am leaning towards those reported by US News, simply due to (1) how the data was acquired, (2) that it contained all high school data available except for Nebraska, i.e., "21,776 high schools" for US News vs. "more than 2,300" from Newsweek, and (3) for US News, was based on "schools having to serveall of its students well, not just those who are college-bound".
That's my .02 cents... and unbiased I might add, since I and my grown kiddos are well over and done with this stage!
2. At least for Texas, the average SAT and AP test scores ARE provided by TEA on both the TX district level and the individual school level.
State testing is a good indicator of elementary and middle school standards but SAT sores and AP scores are true indicators to see how high schools stand in the real world.
State testing is a good indicator of elementary and middle school standards but SAT sores and AP scores are true indicators to see how high schools stand in the real world.
But, to have a true "real world" view, you would need more than a select-surveyed 2,300 to rank those top 1,000 from.
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Two things - the first is that the USNews list has generated tons of embarrassing news articles from schools saying, "We don't know why we're on that list. It's flattering, but we shouldn't be on that list/so high on that list." Subsequently the revelation is that they pulled from databases that had very wrong data. Garbage in, garbage out - I'm not sure why no one at USN checked that data through and through, given they have an entire department dedicated to rankings. (They also listed HP High School as being one of two high schools in the district; there is only one high school in HPISD.)
The other thing is that you need not survey all schools in order to get a good grasp of the top performers. As in everything, schools only have incentive to participate if they get something out of it and are likely to look good in the final results. If you know it's based on AP and SAT, etc, and they've published the previous years' data for highly ranked schools, you have a general sense as a principal of where your school is going to sit in the rankings. If that's not going to make you look very good to the local newspapers or to realtors, parents, and your constituents, you don't opt in.
It's true that then it is difficult to get a sense of whether a "Top 20" school is REALLY Top 20 across the US or not - though chances are good that impressionistically these schools are very high quality and among the very best in the country. However, given broad participation in the DFW area -- realtors care about these, and Newsweek/WaPo rankings have always been very influential and valuable for marketing/fundraising/bragging rights purposes -- what you can be assured of saying is that, based on the things that THIS survey values (AP being the huge one - churning out AP and IB kids is the priority metric defining "best" here), HP and Plano West are neck and neck with each other, both are leagues ahead of X and Y and Z other DFW school, Plano West>PSHS>PESH on AP-creation in Plano ISD, etc. IN other words, this turns out to be a useful metric for DFW because of the broad participation in DFW.
DMN did this analysis, correcting for socioeconomics, a while back. I don't know where I got it - I might have bookmarked it from one of the threads going on here now, so sorry if redundant.
What the analysis addresses is, based on how students would be expected to perform based on their economic profile, does the school exceed demographically-adjusted expectations, meet them, or underperform based on profile of the student body?
Actually Southlake doesn't perform as well as they should with their socioeconomic statistics. They are in same league as Plano 's disadvantaged kid Plano East inspite of all the resources.
Why do you guys think this is? Does this mean Southlake has a large number of not-so-intelligent rich kids?
No worries man! Southlake is a great town as well and if commute suits you then you should go for it.
Commute will blow chunks for me (Plano would be preferable), but it will be much better for my wife. Given the choice of which one of us will have a long commute....yeah, I'm the one stuck in the car.
But, to have a true "real world" view, you would need more than a select-surveyed 2,300 to rank those top 1,000 from.
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First, thanks for the kind words re: my earlier post, but I'm just an excel junkie feeding my spreadsheet addiction....
Re: data and "top 100/1,000/etc" lists, I take all of them with a grain of salt, for reasons you describe. Depending on what data is used and how it's weighted, you can mix around any type of "top" list to favor whoever you want.
THBS, and although I generally agree with you regarding the self-selecting dataset and limitations on it and all that, I do find this list helpful for reasons noted by styron: there are a lot of DFW schools represented in the ratings, which allows for comparisons among those schools by, say, someone looking to live in Colleyville, Southlake, Flower Mound or Double Oak, not that I can think of anyone who is doing that right now who also crunches numbers.....
Quote:
Originally Posted by Warnpeace
State testing is a good indicator of elementary and middle school standards but SAT sores and AP scores are true indicators to see how high schools stand in the real world.
Agree, but you need participation rates factored in as well. If you have a school with an average SAT of 1100 but only 10% of all students took the SAT, compared to a school with a 1080 average but 95% of all students took the test....well, you get the idea. I've noted before that in Illinois ALL high school students have to take the ACT, which makes New Trier's ridiculous 27.5 average look even more impressive. THBS, I'd only be concerned about that if I had a child at New Trier (for example) and we were transferring down here. If there isn't a practical issue of "kid changing from State X's school system to State Y, how will that impact them" then it's just a big rooting interest exercise.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pappy97
Why do you guys think this is? Does this mean Southlake has a large number of not-so-intelligent rich kids?
Who knows? As we've discussed many times before, in general students from higher socioeconomic backgrounds perform better than students from lower income backgrounds, for a variety or reasons (often more parental involvement, more financial family resources available for support, often better educated parents with more "educational" resources to help their children develop, in general a greater emphasis on education which may well be why the parents are better off financially, and so on. There are exceptions to all of these but we're talking about larger population groups. Yes, there are stupid, lazy uneducated people who don't give a darn about their kids' schooling who are rich, and very bright, driven, educated, talented and disciplined people who devote lots of time to helping their kids learn who are poor, but over a large group that doesn't generally hold true).
For whatever reason, Carroll ISD has metrics that are very good, but not as outstanding as one might expect given the demographics of the base they're working from. Could be that the schools really aren't doing a great job of getting the most out of the students. Could be that they care a little too much about football and not enough about math. Could be that too many parents spend time traveling for work and not devoting resources to their kids education other than "here's a good school". Could be that the kids' affluence means they're not as driven to succeed because they figure they'll have a trust fund when they grow up (but that doesn't seem to stop HP from cranking out great metrics). Could be a combination of those factors, or maybe NONE OF THEM AT ALL, that better demographics only help to a certain extent and beyond that it's something of a crapshoot, and/or that the "less-than-stellar numbers" are little more than random chance/statistical noise.
I have no idea, but the fact that Carroll's numbers are good but kinda-sorta "not as good as I'd expect given that it's Southlake", it does make me look a little closer at locating in that district "for the schools".
Why do you guys think this is? Does this mean Southlake has a large number of not-so-intelligent rich kids?
Depends on what you mean by "not-so-intelligent". There's a strata of society that looks at Tech and LSU and even SMU as schools for the "not-so-intelligent". If you are one of them then, "yes".
Southlake is not a place where kids *don't* go to college. But it's also a place that doesn't know much about Princeton. If I may stereotype, the homeowners in Southlake are successful, but are not the top tier lawyer/banker/consultant breed that thrive off of compitative college admissions.
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