I think we can all agree that the number of AP courses you offer isn't even HIGH on the list of quality measures we should be evaluating to determine the quality of a school.

What a stupid waste of time, energy and money. I stopped buying Newsweek back in 2000, when as a high school senior I found out the methodology of the "Best college" rankings and decided I didn't want to waste money on such a publication.

Mr. A:

What do you see as the single most definitive standard to rank HS that's quantitatively measurable?

Surprising that you're commenting on the BSun blog when the rag you attack has some of the most esteemed journalists alive (Meacham, Miller, Zakaria, to name a few).

City gets ranked, but not Poly?? This just shows you that this whole thing is very faulted. They've got some spreadsheet, and from what I can see, it has a lot of inaccuracies (like, Perry Hall is in Baltimore). This is just a way to sell magazines...

I have a son at Poly and have been sad at the drive to get on this list by turning a HS into a community college for teens. AP is great, challenging students is needed, but to me the measure of a HS is not just getting kids into college, but preparing them for life and exposing them to subjects that will let them find their passion.
The methodology is faulty - totally. I really do not want our schools making curriculum decisions to get on this list.

@ Mr. B -

That's exactly my point - you CAN'T just use "the single most definitive standard" in ranking anything, much less schools. There are many quantifiable as well as qualitative measure that go into making a school great. For example, how much time do teachers spend outside of class running clubs, organizations, sports, etc. That is quantifiable. However, equally important is the quality of that time - how much are they inspiring and how well are they helping the children. I can't quantify that but I would argue vehemently that it is an extremely important way to measure the quality of a school overall.

As for your comment about being surprised that I post here on the Bmore Sun blog; was that supposed to be suggesting that the journalists for this paper are somehow mediocre or less than the ones at Newsweek? I didn't quite understand the point of what you were trying to say. If it WAS suggesting the reporters here aren't as great, well then I would submit that last I checked, the BMore Sun didn't publish an asinine report about schools that is so obviously only meant to sell and not effectively inform. You can name drop all day, but any journalist that would use the methodology of the Newsweek team and any editor that would publish it, doesn't know a lick about proper research.

The list considers only how many kids take how many advanced courses. The list does not consider if the kids even pass the courses. A school with 100% of the kids taking all APs and passing none of them and scoring 1 or 2 would be high on this list. check out Binghamton High School (NY) for example. The scores for over 2/3 of the tests taken are below a 3! That other news mag does consider scores and the list of schools is entirely different.

Got my magazines mixed up. sorry scores matters on this one and not the other.

Note from Liz: The Newsweek list does include in its score for each high school how many students take a test, but does NOT include not how many pass.
Newsweek does give readers the information on pass rates however. The E&E score in the far right column of the rankings on the website is the percentage of seniors in the class of 2009 who passed at least one exam during their years in high school.

@Mr. B -
Quantitative measurments have their place as does a nationwide ranking, but this metric seems to be picked more for the reporters' ease of data collection than for any sense of how this indicates a good school. How about:Safety, attendance, college acceptances and to what level college, college graduations, SAT/ACT scores, drop out rate, teacher to student ratio. Those come to mind with hardly any thought. Once you have the data you could come up with. Some sort of formula that would be subjective, but at least the data put into the formula would be meaningful.

This rating was quick and easy and totally drives schools and kids into making unwise decisions. For me, that moves it from being a strange but interesting school metric to being a very bad list that should be abolished.

Mr. A:

No need to be angry or vehement. There is a middle ground and just because there's one ranking that you don't like, doesn't mean you impugn the whole magazine, which arguably, has several of the most important US journalists. And any Baltimore Sun reporter would agree. As a general principle, you might find long term relationships elusive if you get so angry over reports unless you have some personal agenda tied to this one (i.e. you didn't take AP courses and are bitter, you scored poorly on the scholastic aptitude test and are jealous, the above kept you out of a good school, etc...)

You seem more happy to discuss what everybody knows, weaknesses of rankings, rather than to create solutions. Newsweek is already aware of the limitations of their report and has said so and addressed your criticisms.

In any case, I think you are guilty of the heap fallacy. Is it 2 grains of sand, 100, a million, when we clearly know that 1 grain is not a heap and a billion is. A school with an average of 5 AP tests is clearly going to be better than the school with no AP courses and dismal SAT scores. Or at least I'm sure that 99% of people would come to that conclusion. Or Harvard is clearly better than Copin and Princeton is better than Salisbury.

I agree with A Parent. I would like to see how students scored on the AP tests and weight those and include average SAT/ACT tests, perhaps at one-third each. Those tests, while they may discriminate against students with limited aptitude and knowledge, provide a perfectly clear apple-to-apples comparison about how the average student performs and what they know.

And maybe the term "best high schools" is ultimately misleading. Maybe high schools with the highest performers would be more accurate.

@ Mr. B -

No anger here buddy - but I am always vehement about issues I feel strongly about. If we were speaking face to face, you would see I'm not angry, I just prefer to be blunt and discuss issues without sugar coating.

Issue 1: when a magazine has forged a great chunk of its fame from this school ranking (of high schools, colleges, etc) and people then reference these rankings at face value, I have every right to impugn the whole magazine. It suggests to me that profits are more important to the leaders of the magazine than good research and impartial, unbiased reporting of facts. In today's day and age, too many journalists in publications like Newsweek are more concerned with their own fame than simply reporting facts and letting the public form their own opinions.

Issue 2: I most definitely didn't attack you personally yet you took it there against me. You seem to think my aptitude must be the reason I am against such rankings. I don't feel the need to run my credentials by you. But yes I disagree that a school that offers 5 AP classes is automatically better than the one that offers none. If the students at school A don't pass any of those AP tests, don't get into college, or get a job etc, than they are no better off. If you read what I wrote in response to you, you would see I DID offer a solution - come up with better parameters. I even gave you an example.

Issue 3: Believe it or not, I would disagree with you when you say Harvard is better than Coppin, as well :) Harvard students start out life, typically, ahead of their peers at Coppin. They typically have many more resources through out their life than some of their peers at Coppin. Coppin allows access to most students who are willing to work hard - they don't just cherry pick off the top (based on test scores, etc). If I was given the Los Angeles Lakers to coach and Phil Jackson was given a Division 4 team, I guarantee you I would win that game - but does that make me a better coach? There are plenty of hard working students at both schools and amazing professors with top-notch teaching skills at both schools (Full Disclosure: no, I did not go to Coppin and have no bias/interest in defending them. I actually went to a school that Mr. B would argue is better than Coppin, based on name recognition only).

Ultimately, my argument comes to this: there are some things that just don't need to be ranked, like high schools. There are plenty of hard working teachers at EVERY high school in this nation doing their best, with the resources and students they have been given. But if we INSIST on ranking, don't publish a faulty, useless ranking based on very poor methodology.