Making Schools Rank

How do you decide how good a school is?

By one measure, the school where I teach is a “B” high school. Ask our principal, most of our teachers and many graduates, and they’ll rank it (subjectively, although every method is subjective to some degree) as an “A+”. Ask some of the disaffected youth that are current students and we’ll probably be ranked (again, subjectively) about even with one of the lower rings of hell. And, of course, there are the highly publicised articles in the Washington Post and Newsweek that tout their version of The Best High School List.

This method of ranking schools, championed by Jay Matthews of the Washington Post, is based on the number of students that participate in Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) classes. This has gotten so much attention that many schools across the country are placing (misplacing?) as many students as possible into AP and IB just to try to improve their position on The List.

To his credit, Mr. Matthews welcomes informed debate and recently published an email exchange with Mark Crockett, described in the article as “a very savvy and energetic social studies teacher at Western Albemarle High School near Charlottesville, Va., [who] has been among my favorite, and most critical, e-mail correspondents for some time.” It’s well worth taking the time to read their exchange (if it’s still online or you can find a copy elsewhere).

Both sides site research and delve far more deeply into the issues than I plan to here. Much of their debate concerns whether high school experiences such as AP and IB classes and taking AP tests are valid indicators of a student’s later success in college. And that, in my opinion, is where the true subjectivity and deepest weakness of The List lies.

Now, let me be clear that I am a firm believer in the need for challenging all of our students and holding them to high standards. (I don’t always agree with how that gets interpreted and implemented in our schools.) I also believe that everyone that wants to pursue higher education should have the foundation skills and every opportunity to do so. However, I do not believe that preparing students for college is the primary job of high schools — preparing young adults to be productive members of society is our primary goal. For some, that will mean four-year or advanced college degrees, for some it will mean two-year degrees or technical training, for some it will mean military or civil service. There is NO one-size-fits-all answer that meets all the diverse needs of our students or our society.

Sometimes a single statement can reveal a great deal about an individual’s bias and (lack of) understanding. Granted, I may be reading far too much into this and you should read it in context to fairly judge for yourself.

Jay: Compared to a lot of other things we need to do, such as improving teaching in the inner city, opening up access to AP for all motivated students IS pretty simple. You just announce that henceforth, the only requirement for an AP class is a willingness to work hard. No minimum GPA, no teacher recommendation. Motivation rules, and if you don’t work hard, you are dumped back into the regular class.

Wow, the unfortunate choice of the phrase “dumped back into the regular class” seems to clearly indicate an elitist attitude that parallels the choice of success in college as the determining factor in the value of a high school. And anyone that thinks students can be moved that easily between classes during the school year is grossly ignorant about the complexities of class schedules. It makes one wonder how far that ignorance extends….

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