However, BASIS schools and Dallas’s School for the Talented and Gifted maximize AP by expecting ninth graders to take those courses. The rankings promote the notion that the best high schools are the ones with the highest outcomes, and because AP success is the only outcome measure they have, they use it, even if the way the top schools generate those outcomes is dubious practice.įor instance, the College Board, which runs the AP program, advises that AP courses are not generally appropriate for ninth grade students. But that is like the proverbial drunk looking for his keys underneath the street lamp. News leans so heavily on AP is that the data are available. But is it a good enough indicator to decide which high schools are best? No doubt, AP success is a high bar for high school students, and since the AP tests are the same nationwide, it provides a usable metric for academic excellence. BASIS schools unapologetically push AP participation, which is why they dominated the top ten rankings. After that, it all comes down to AP passage rates. News rating system? A school's broader performance on state tests has to be moderately above average to clear the first three steps, but that left more than 29 percent of the schools moving on to step four this year. In step four, schools are ranked on a “College Readiness Index,” which is based entirely on their success in Advanced Placement courses. News cuts all schools whose graduation rate is below 75 percent (somewhat odd, given that the national average is 83 percent). News assesses whether historically disadvantaged students performed better than the state average. Passing schools move to step two, in which U.S. In step one, they evaluate schools’ proficiency rates on state math and reading tests against statistical expectations given their student poverty rates. News teams up with RTI International to run 20,000 public high schools through a four-step process to rank which are the best.
But it’s worth doing because the authority the rankings claim to have deserves checking, and because the process of checking them shines a light on how states, which do have the authority and responsibility to rate schools, can improve the way they go about it.Įach year, U.S. News rankings isn’t new and isn’t all that helpful in isolation.
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