School District Ratings (Pittsburgh, Reading, Fox Chapel: college, living, safety)

[gg]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

Incidentally, I did my own search of the Post database and it is actually more than seven. I get:

USC, Pine-Richland, Blackhawk, Quaker Valley, Beaver Area, Mt Lebanon, Hampton, North Hills, Allderdice, North Allegheny, and South Fayette.

That's 11. Still no Fox Chapel, however.

Yet in another study you posted Fox Chapel ranks the highest?

Best to have a look at real test scores and see. PSSA's or SAT's will work. Then have a look at what the schools offer as far as amenities. Most schools are going to fall short of what FC has to offer. NA probably has most of it though because they are so huge.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by h_curtis

How they can find a way to rank Dice that high is beyond me, but they are doing much better than in years past.

The "Challenge Index" is a college preparedness ranking, which is a very specific sort of thing. From the Post story:

The formula is simple: Divide the number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate or other college-level tests a school gave in 2010 by the number of graduating seniors. While not a measure of the overall quality of the school, the rating can reveal the level of a high school’s commitment to preparing average students for college.

Again, Allderdice has been doing a good job with college-bound students for a very long time. In that sense this particular ranking really isn't news.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by h_curtis

Yet in another study you posted Fox Chapel ranks the highest?

To be precise, in the Biztimes "Overachiever" rankings, Fox Chapel was #6 in the region. The Biztimes Overachiever rankings are looking at something different from the Washington Post "Challenge Index" rankings.

[greg42]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

Incidentally, I did my own search of the Post database and it is actually more than seven. I get:

USC, Pine-Richland, Blackhawk, Quaker Valley, Beaver Area, Mt Lebanon, Hampton, North Hills, Allderdice, North Allegheny, and South Fayette.

That's 11. Still no Fox Chapel, however.

Those are all pretty usual suspects. Blackhawk is a bit of an outlier but usually among the top few districts in Beaver County after Beaver Area. No Westmoreland places though, or Peters, which is odd when you get to 11 especially with Blackhawk on there. Weird that Fox Chapel is not there though. I'm sure it's perfectly good. I didn't look at what kind of measures they're using.

Or maybe h_curtis needs to look for a new place.

No, seriously, this is just another example of why you need to take in everything when looking for school rankings. Any list is only as good as the methodology used to create it, and most of those are pretty basic and don't tell you much.

[gg]

Originally Posted by greg42

Those are all pretty usual suspects. Blackhawk is a bit of an outlier but usually among the top few districts in Beaver County after Beaver Area. No Westmoreland places though, or Peters, which is odd when you get to 11 especially with Blackhawk on there. Weird that Fox Chapel is not there though. I'm sure it's perfectly good. I didn't look at what kind of measures they're using.

Or maybe h_curtis needs to look for a new place.

No, seriously, this is just another example of why you need to take in everything when looking for school rankings. Any list is only as good as the methodology used to create it, and most of those are pretty basic and don't tell you much.

You need to look at more credible sources. Sorry, but you will never convince me Dice is a better school than FC. I don't think anyone in their right mind could believe that one. This past graduating class saw several kids going to Ivy League. If that happens in Dice it is front page news.

[BrianTH]

Yep, overall that is a very unsurprising list. They apparently had a cut-off index score of 1.000, so I assume what happened with some of the other "usual suspects" in the Pittsburgh area is that they missed that cutoff.

Personally, I think it would be interesting to do an "overachiever" version of this ranking. Presumably that would again have improved Fox Chapel's ranking (also Allderdice, Blackhawk, and likely some others).

Of course all this is very crude. The bottomline is each child is an individual, and there aren't going to be simple ways to determine exactly how good every possible school would be for every particular child. That's why I would really stick by my original statement above: when you get down to it, there is really no substitute for coming up with your own sense of what matters for your child and then talking to other parents who will give you honest information about their schools.

[gg]

It is pretty crude indeed. Have a look at proficiency tests of FC and Dice. Oh my!

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by h_curtis

This past graduating class saw several kids going to Ivy League. If that happens in Dice it is front page news.

Um, no, that happens every year with graduating seniors from Allderdice (see below).

Look, no one is saying you made a bad choice with Fox Chapel. So there is no need to get defensive about the fact that Allderdice also does a good job placing students in top colleges.

http://www.pps.k12.pa.us/14322058101...%20PROFILE.pdf

COLLEGES IN WHICH 2009 PITTSBURGH ALLDERDICE
GRADUATES ENROLLED

Albright
Allegheny
American
Ashland
Baldwin Wallace
Boston College
Brown
Carlow
Carnegie Mellon
Case Western
Central State
Chatham
Cheyney
Clarion
Colgate
Colorado
Columbia
Cornell
Dartmouth
Delaware
Dennison
Dickinson
Duke
Duquesne
Edinboro
Elizabethtown
Florida A&M
Florida State
Franklin & Marshall
Gannon
Georgia
Georgetown
George Washington
Harvard/Radcliffe
Holy Cross
Hood
Hiram
Howard
IUP
Indiana
John Carroll
Johns Hopkins
Maryland
Michigan
Michigan State
Middlebury
MIT
Morehouse
New Hampshire
New Orleans
Norfolk State
N.C. State
Northwestern
Oberlin
Penn
Penn State
U. of Pittsburgh
Point Park
Purdue
Richmond
RIT
Robert Morris
Sarah Lawrence
Skidmore
Slippery Rock
Smith
Spelman
Syracuse
Swarthmore
Toronto
Trinity
Tufts
Union College
Vanderbilt
Vassar
Virginia Tech
Washington U
Wesleyan
Westminster
West Virginia
Williams
Wisconsin
Wooster
Yale

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by h_curtis

It is pretty crude indeed. Have a look at proficiency tests of FC and Dice. Oh my!

That is cruder.

[gg]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

That is cruder.

Maybe, but an average student population needs to be given some consideration.

It doesn't really matter much I guess. If you plug in whatever formula it would come out different. You could make Westinghouse look like Shady Side Academy if you want to I suppose.