Newsweek's Top High School rankings (Dallas, Plano: credit, best schools, college)

[synchronicity]

I always take lists like this with a HUGE grain of salt, but Since we talk schools on this forum a lot -

Newsweek put out their list of top 500 high schools in the nation: America's Top High Schools 2016

Their methodology is obviously slightly different from the US News list that has been referenced here before (again, "rankings" and "big grain of salt"), but it's interesting to see multiple sources develop ratings and see where they agree and diverge.

Unlike US News, TAG was not very close to #1. In fact, it was ranked 24th in the nation - very impressive, but behind Plano West, which was ranked #22. (Thomas Jefferson HS for Science and Technology, in Virginia, was ranked #1).

Plano West and TAG were the top DFW area schools. Others in the area that cracked the top 500 are:

#43 Marcus HS (in Flower Mound, Lewisville ISD)
#59 SEM (Dallas Magnet)
#107 Highland Park HS
#111 Cedar Hill Collegiate (this is a charter HS within Cedar Hill ISD with some degree of selective admissions. We don't talk about it much but I recall awhile back checking the numbers and it strongly outperformed given the socioeconomic status of the student body. Again the caveat that it's selective so it should perform better than "average", but it's an often overlooked school for parents in the southern suburbs. This ranking might help it get a little more mention here and elsewhere)
#117 Flower Mound HS
#232 Uplift - North Hills Prep (charter in Irving)
#243 Coppell HS
#250 Prosper HS (I *know*, right? Go figure)
#307 Ranchview HS (In CFBISD. This one's a shocker to me. I know it's better than many people give it credit, but top 500? Well, good for them. Again, a school that's not one of the Usual Suspects)
#351 Allen HS

And that's your top 500. Conspicuously absent are names like Carroll, Plano Senior, Plano East, Pearce, and a few others that normally top our conversations. Don't know if that's from not sending in information or if they just fell short.

Check out the article if you're interested. Just thought it would be something else to see and another source of info.

[Saintmarks]

You obviously haven't been to Prosper in a while. It is slowly but surely turning into the Southlake of Collin County.

[bankingdom]

Great post, thanks for the info!

It goes to show that these rankings are mostly BS. Its more important to go by info from "boots on the ground" such as parents, teachers and people in the local area that actually know the schools.

Surprised to see Highland Park so low on the list, but since it makes most lists in some shape or form you can conclude it must be a consistently high performer. I'm also surprised like you that Carroll didn't make the list.

We are still in the process of moving but have been researching schools a lot recently. We initially narrowed it down to Southlake, but now think Flower Mound may be our top choice. Look forward to others comments.

[numbersguy100]

Originally Posted by bankingdom

Great post, thanks for the info!

It goes to show that these rankings are mostly BS. Its more important to go by info from "boots on the ground" such as parents, teachers and people in the local area that actually know the schools.

Surprised to see Highland Park so low on the list, but since it makes most lists in some shape or form you can conclude it must be a consistently high performer. I'm also surprised like you that Carroll didn't make the list.

We are still in the process of moving but have been researching schools a lot recently. We initially narrowed it down to Southlake, but now think Flower Mound may be our top choice. Look forward to others comments.

You understand that there will be, if anything, a negligible difference between your child's achievement living in Flower Mound vs Southlake, right? I don't place much weight on these rankings either, but I actually see value in objective data against anecdotal stories about whether one local school is good relative to another. Having said that, if the high school rankings went away tomorrow, I'd be happy to see them go.

[Wittgenstein's Ghost]

numbersguy100 is right -- I can't imagine there being any measurable difference in student outcomes between Southlake and Flower Mound. Heck, I'd throw about 20+ other schools into that mix as well. There may be specific programs that are of interest at one school and not the other, but there isn't a sufficient difference in quality between these schools to make a given student have a reliably different outcome at one school but not the next (so long as we're talking usual suspects).

I really hate these lists because they make a lot of folks conclude that a given student will walk away with a better education at school #100 than he or she would at school #400. That probably isn't true.

IMO, most people fret about schools too much (again, talking within the usual suspect pool). There is mounting evidence that what happens before age 3 or 4 probably has more of an affect than school quality, and parental actions during formative years are almost certainly more important than schools.

These lists don't measure the quality of education provided by schools. They measure the quality of output produced by students. The latter is heavily influenced by a host of factors that are all very, very good at predicting student output quality. To use those factors to rank "the best schools" is misleading.

[CREW747]

Originally Posted by Saintmarks

You obviously haven't been to Prosper in a while. It is slowly but surely turning into the Southlake of Collin County.

Agreed...Not sure why it would be surprising that Prosper High School is on this list.I think a lot of people on these boards have not actually driven thru the area in a long time.Prosper has grown in a really good direction,exponentially in the past few years.The median income is roughly $119,000 and the median listing price is close to $500,000 at this point.Those numbers usually equate to good schools.

Prosper does not blend in with say Frisco.Frisco is great but Prosper is not just an extension of it.Prosper will ultimately be a town of 65,000 at build out,very similar to Flower Mound in my opinion at this point.I think many people forget that cities like Mc Kinney and Frisco are already nearing 200,000 in population and will be close to 300,000 at built out (Plano is obviously already there).

[synchronicity]

Originally Posted by Saintmarks

You obviously haven't been to Prosper in a while. It is slowly but surely turning into the Southlake of Collin County.

I know that that's essentially what Prosper is aiming for, but in terms of school, I thought we'd see at least one Frisco school (Liberty is the one putting out the metrics now, IIRC) before Prosper. Last I checked Prosper's markers were good but not excellent.

Also:

Originally Posted by numbersguy100

You understand that there will be, if anything, a negligible difference between your child's achievement living in Flower Mound vs Southlake, right?

and:

Originally Posted by Wittgenstein's Ghost

numbersguy100 is right -- I can't imagine there being any measurable difference in student outcomes between Southlake and Flower Mound. Heck, I'd throw about 20+ other schools into that mix as well....there isn't a sufficient difference in quality between these schools to make a given student have a reliably different outcome at one school but not the next (so long as we're talking usual suspects).

These lists don't measure the quality of education provided by schools. They measure the quality of output produced by students. The latter is heavily influenced by a host of factors that are all very, very good at predicting student output quality. To use those factors to rank "the best schools" is misleading.

Agree with you both, and have been saying that for awhile (much as you and others here have). School "metrics" are VERY highly correlated with socioeconomic status, for dozens of reasons that have been rehashed here before and many of which should be obvious. When we're talking Usual Suspects schools and even some a tier below them, the +/- impact the school will have an academic achievement is small, and even that impact will probably revolve more around how well a student "fits in" at a school and the strength of their support group of friends than some 30 point difference in average school SAT score or slightly higher AP pass rate percentage.

Also, many of the "top" schools are magnets/selective admissions, which muddies the waters more. If a school takes top qualifying students who (ostensibly) come from backgrounds where education was prioritized (which is why they'd be applying to magnets most of the time, right?), then you've got a serious self-selecting population.

Having said all that, data is data and it can be helpful, if you take it for what it's worth.

[TheOverdog]

Agreed...Not sure why it would be surprising that Prosper High School is on this list.

They did the bare minimum to even create this list - that's why. Out of 12 data points when you click on a school, only 5 are even populated for Prosper, and one of those is 'location'. No data for SAT, IB, AP, ACT or much else.

[Soonhun]

Surprised on Ranchview. Of course the methodology isn't always based on what I think. I mean, maybe the IB program and early college is pulling the school up, but, if I remember correctly, it has worse scores than Newmansmith and Creekview.

[unknown00]

odd - where is Frisco?