20/05: Best High Schools in the Nation?
Category: American Culture
Posted by: an okie gardener
Newsweek has a story on "The complete list of the 1,300 top U.S. high schools."
Public schools are ranked according to a ratio devised by Jay Mathews: the number of Advanced Placement, Intl. Baccalaureate and/or Cambridge tests taken by all students at a school in 2007 divided by the number of graduating seniors.
What this criteria measures, therefore, is the ratio of top college-bound seniors to the total number in their graduating class in each school. Notice that the results of the tests are not a factor, simply whether a student took one of the exams. In other words, the list is simply a ranking of the percentage of ambitious college-bound seniors in each school's graduating class.
Big deal.
(1) When I was a high-school classroom teacher, I figured my students could be divided into three groups: those bright hard-working kids I could take no credit for because they would learn in spite of me; those kids who for whatever reason could be reached by no one that year; and the large group in between whose learning or lack of it I could take credit or blame for. A better measure of school success, but hard to measure, would be how well a school does with this middle majority of its students--those whom the school has a direct impact upon their learning or not learning.
(2) This list accepts the falsehood that the real purpose of high school is to prepare students for college. Wrong. College is over-rated. I know the owner of a plumbing company in Lawton, Oklahoma. He anticipates a possible shortage of licensed plumbers in a decade or so. A licensed plumber starts work for his company at $20-25 per hour, based on experience. Getting a skill is important in life; getting a college degree may or may not be important. Vocational education matters also.
Public schools are ranked according to a ratio devised by Jay Mathews: the number of Advanced Placement, Intl. Baccalaureate and/or Cambridge tests taken by all students at a school in 2007 divided by the number of graduating seniors.
What this criteria measures, therefore, is the ratio of top college-bound seniors to the total number in their graduating class in each school. Notice that the results of the tests are not a factor, simply whether a student took one of the exams. In other words, the list is simply a ranking of the percentage of ambitious college-bound seniors in each school's graduating class.
Big deal.
(1) When I was a high-school classroom teacher, I figured my students could be divided into three groups: those bright hard-working kids I could take no credit for because they would learn in spite of me; those kids who for whatever reason could be reached by no one that year; and the large group in between whose learning or lack of it I could take credit or blame for. A better measure of school success, but hard to measure, would be how well a school does with this middle majority of its students--those whom the school has a direct impact upon their learning or not learning.
(2) This list accepts the falsehood that the real purpose of high school is to prepare students for college. Wrong. College is over-rated. I know the owner of a plumbing company in Lawton, Oklahoma. He anticipates a possible shortage of licensed plumbers in a decade or so. A licensed plumber starts work for his company at $20-25 per hour, based on experience. Getting a skill is important in life; getting a college degree may or may not be important. Vocational education matters also.
Tocqueville wrote:
Young people are told, "You can be anything you want to be." Every student is given to understand that he or she is being prepared for "leadership." All of this is a lie. ...You can't be everything you want to be; nobody can. Everybody can't be a leader; not everybody even wants to be. And these lies are not innocent. They lead to disappointment. They lead good young people to think that if they have an ordinary job, if they work with their hands, if they are farmers or housewives or mechanics or carpenters, they are no good."