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: BoardBuzz: NSBA's Daily Weblog

Best of the best U.S. high schools?

This week Newsweek magazine came out with their annual Top 100 High Schools rankings. Of course it is an honor for those schools that made the list and should be given a big BoardBuzz hurraaayyy!!! But BoardBuzz does ask the question: How does Newsweek know these are the best high schools? BoardBuzz put on its investigation cap and did some digging. What BoardBuzz found was that schools were ranked primarily on the number of Advanced Placement (AP), International Baccalaureate (IB) and/or Cambridge exams were taken per student. So the more students that took these college preparation exams, the higher the school ranking. The theory behind ranking schools as such is that these schools are exposing a more rigorous college preparatory curriculum to a greater percentage of their students. BoardBuzz wonders if some schools are being left of the list. There are so many factors that go into determining how successful schools are and college prep exams seems like just one piece of the puzzle. Actually, according to the Center for Public Education's Good Measures for Good Schools it is just one of 28 pieces you can use to judge your own schools. These measures include student achievement, graduation rates, teacher quality, school funding, and school safety just to name a few. BoardBuzz highly recommends you check it out to learn more on what measure you should look at to determine the quality of your schools. Because there is certainly more than one way to determine the quality of your local school.

Full post as published by BoardBuzz: NSBA's Daily Weblog on May 22, 2008 (boomark / email).