Philadelphia Region's Top High Schools 2017 (PA Only) (Baldwin, Lansdale: private schools, property tax)

[JohnBrown614]

Upper Moreland never makes these lists. I thought it was an alright school.

[cpomp]

Originally Posted by JohnBrown614

Upper Moreland never makes these lists. I thought it was an alright school.

There are plenty of fine schools that didn't make the list. More proof of how strong the public schools are in SEPA.

[kyb01]

Originally Posted by 2e1m5a

Go Masterman and Central!!!


They are most impressive to me-both extremely diverse and with poverty rates among the student body near 30-40%.
Also without all the fancy equipment/funding of a Lower Merion or Haverford, etc.


Masterman, especially, often seems to be ranked the best Public School in the state.

Not quite. The Haverford HS building is about 60 year old so it, along with, Masterman, are( without state-of-the-art facilities) capable of great things. Lower Merion, by contrast, is in a very new physical plant. Also the Masterman Building used to house the Phila. High School for Girls. One of my great-aunts went there in the 1920s.

I'm an alum of Haverford as are/were several of my family members.

[2e1m5a]

Originally Posted by kyb01

Not quite. The Haverford HS building is about 60 year old so it, along with, Masterman, are( without state-of-the-art facilities) capable of great things. Lower Merion, by contrast, is in a very new physical plant. Also the Masterman Building used to house the Phila. High School for Girls. One of my great-aunts went there in the 1920s.

I'm an alum of Haverford as are/were several of my family members.

Interesting! I'm actually not too familiar with Haverford but know that Lower-Merion used to give brand new laptops to their students. I assumed it was similar since Haverford (the private school) is very expensive and elite.


My sister went to Masterman, and I was very close to going to Central but ended up at Saint Joe's Prep.

[1ondoner]

I believe giving students tablets at Middle School and laptops at high school is now a standard practice in most schools. Most of the learning takes place in electronic format nowadays. The books and home-work are now online. Some schools also have online classes.

I don't know if there is financial assistance to needy students, however, the schools now charge some fees to lease/buy the laptops and the cost is borne by the parents.

Originally Posted by 2e1m5a

Interesting! I'm actually not too familiar with Haverford but know that Lower-Merion used to give brand new laptops to their students. I assumed it was similar since Haverford (the private school) is very expensive and elite.


My sister went to Masterman, and I was very close to going to Central but ended up at Saint Joe's Prep.

[kyb01]

Originally Posted by 2e1m5a

Interesting! I'm actually not too familiar with Haverford but know that Lower-Merion used to give brand new laptops to their students. I assumed it was similar since Haverford (the private school) is very expensive and elite.


My sister went to Masterman, and I was very close to going to Central but ended up at Saint Joe's Prep.

Unfortunately I can not post, first hand, about specifics regarding current class amenities at Haverford HS because my last relative who went there graduated about 5 years ago. The main school building was built in, I think, 1958 or 1959.

Now wait.... I have to re-check the list; I thought they were all public schools. The Haverford School(private) is indeed totally different than Haverford Twp' s Haverford HS(public).

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by 2e1m5a

Masterman, especially, often seems to be ranked the best Public School in the state.

I've yet to see a ranking of public high schools in the state where Masterman is not ranked at the top.

The school also regularly makes the top 50 in the nation on U.S. News & World Report's annual ranking of America's "Best High Schools." The only other Pennsylvania high school I've seen in that club is Conestoga, and I'm not sure it's always in the top 50.

Originally Posted by 2e1m5a

True-but it shows that families with children can make it work in the city using public schools-if they are driven and intelligent enough. More money going into schools certainly makes a difference-not feeding the bureaucracy, but money put to good use.


One major reason for the decline in public schools in the city was the decimation of the tax base-and subsequent abandonment of these communities via deindustrialization/globalization and the longest and costliest WAR in US History (no easy feat)-The War on "Drugs", fought solely in disadvantaged communities with lack of any economic options. It's like the Government set these communities up for failure, then started imprisoning people enmass to inflate employment/economic numbers.

You forget the other thing that caused that decline: racism, which preceded the deindustrialization. As white families abandoned many city neighborhoods as blacks moved into them, the local schools fell into decline as well.

Some blame the communities for this decline. I'm not so sure it's not the internalization of the inferiority the white folks ascribed to them as opposed to anything innate. You all might find this article somewhat illuminating:

How Segregated Schools Built Segregated Cities | City Lab

And since I've mentioned Conestoga High School, the pride of the Tredyffrin-Easttown School District, I think most of you might also find this bit of T-E history equally illuminating:

Segregation on the Upper Main Line: The "School Fight" of 1932-34 (Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Quarterly, Vol. 42, No. 1, 2005)

Have we progressed? Undoubtedly. But there's still lots that I think white people still have to answer for.

Originally Posted by ElijahAstin

The order will change somewhat, and this list is no exception (e.g., Haverford is "high," while Upper Dublin is "low"). If one approaches these lists sensibly and internally ranks by broad bands instead of point-by-point, this will have less of an impact. I can't view the data right now, but I'm curious how closely these schools are clustered together. Rankings are less meaningful/more prone to wild fluctuation if everyone is separated by fractions of points.

The Business Journal ranked the schools by taking the sum of the percentages of students in each school who scored "proficient" or better on the Algebra I, Biology and Literature exams in the Keystone battery. (IOW, if 88 percent of the students did that well in Algebra I, 90 percent in Biology, and 92 in Literature, the school's score was 270.) Passing these three exams with scores of "adequate" or better was to have become requirements for graduation in this state before a law passed last year put that off for a few years.

Originally Posted by kyb01

Not quite. The Haverford HS building is about 60 year old so it, along with, Masterman, are( without state-of-the-art facilities) capable of great things. Lower Merion, by contrast, is in a very new physical plant. Also the Masterman Building used to house the Phila. High School for Girls. One of my great-aunts went there in the 1920s.

I'm an alum of Haverford as are/were several of my family members.

Your great-aunt attended Girls High in a predecessor structure, then: the building that now houses Masterman dates to 1932. Girls High relocated to its current campus at Broad and Olney (four blocks east of Central, which moved up that way in 1937) in 1955, and Masterman opened in its old home three years later.

One of the things I note about Masterman: Its formal name is the "Julia Reynolds Masterman Laboratory School." Unless I'm mistaken, a laboratory is a place where one conducts experiments which, if successful, are then replicated outside the laboratory. Why is it that the School District didn't try to reproduce Masterman in some of its other facilities? (I suspect some might argue that the better magnets, such as Bodine, CAPA, and GAMP, are reproductions.)

[timeEd32]

Originally Posted by MarketStEl

I've yet to see a ranking of public high schools in the state where Masterman is not ranked at the top.

The school also regularly makes the top 50 in the nation on U.S. News & World Report's annual ranking of America's "Best High Schools." The only other Pennsylvania high school I've seen in that club is Conestoga, and I'm not sure it's always in the top 50.

Schools like Masterman have a college-like admissions process (in elementary school!) so IMO it shouldn't be compared to true public schools.

[RightonWalnut]

Here is the list of the top PA & NJ Private Schools for the Philadelphia Region:

1. Germantown Friends Academy - Philadelphia, PA
2. The Episcopal Academy - Newtown Square, PA
3. The Haverford School - Haverford, PA
4. The Baldwin School - Bryn Mawr, PA
5. The Agnes Irwin School - Rosemont, PA
6. Friends' Central Select - Wynnewood, PA
7. George School - Newtown, PA
8. The Shipley School - Bryn Mawr, PA
9. Germantown Academy - Fort Washington, PA
10. William Penn Charter School - Philadelphia, PA
11. Devon Preparatory School - Devon, PA
12. Friends Select - Philadelphia, PA
13. Moorestown Friends School - Moorestown, NJ
14. Abington Friends School - Jenkintown, PA
15. Springside Chestnut Hill Academy - Philadelphia, PA
16. Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy - Bryn Mawr, PA
17. Doane Academy - Burlington, NJ
18. Malvern Preparatory School - Malvern, PA
19. St. Joseph's Preparatory School - Philadelphia, PA
20. Academy of Notre Dame de Namur - Villanova, PA
21. Holy Ghost Preparatory School - Bensalem, PA
22. La Salle College High School - Wyndmoore, PA
23. Al Aqsa Islamic Academy - Philadelphia, PA
24. Mount Saint Joseph Academy - Flourtown, PA
25. Villa Maria Academy High School - Malvern, PA
26. AIM Academy - Conshohocken, PA
27. Country Day School of the Sacred Heart - Bryn Mawr, PA
28. Bishop Eustace Preparatory School - Pennsauken, NJ
29. Phil-Mont Christian Academy - Erdenheim, PA
30. Nazareth Academy High School - Philadelphia, PA
31. Merion Mercy Academy - Merion Station, PA
32. Hope Church School - Philadelphia, PA
33. Academy of the New Church - Boys School - Bryn Athyn, PA
34. Valley Force Military Academy & College - Wayne, PA
35. Academy of the New Church - Girls School - Bryn Athyn, PA
36. Christopher Dock Mennonite High School - Lansdale, PA
37. The Phelps School - Malvern, PA
38. Delaware County Christian School - Newtown Square, PA
39. Delaware Valley Friends School - Paoli, PA
40. Baptist Regional School - Haddon Heights, NJ
41. Gwynedd Mercy Academy High School - Gwynedd Valley, PA
42. Villa Joseph Marie High School - Holland, PA
43. Saint Basil Academy - Jenkintown, PA
44. The Crefeld School - Philadelphia, PA
45. The Woodlynde School - Strafford, PA
46. Camden Catholic High School - Cherry Hill, NJ
47. Gloucester County Christian School - Sewell, NJ
48. Archbishop Wood High School - Warminster, PA
49. International Christian High School - Philadelphia, PA
50. The Christian Academy - Brookhaven, PA

http://www.bizjournals.com/philadelp...lphia.html#g50

[cpomp]

A good amount of those private schools are high in national rankings too, I always see Episcopal pop up.