Just looking at the first page, the numbers that jumped out at me were the student/teacher ratios. OK, we all know that schools fudge those numbers--so add 5 students to each one and we're still nowhere close to my class sizes. My contract caps my classes at an average of 33 students per class with a maximum of 36 in any particular class. That, dear readers, especially you readers outside of California, is not a typo.
The school at which I teach is ranked the highest in our district using US News' methodology. Even still, we're beyond #1000 nationally and beyond #200 in California. We are well above our district average, as determined by looking at the cumulative district data.
8 comments:
Their rankings are ridiculously skewed. I looked at our district, and the school that everyone considers the best in the district is not even ranked in the state. A school that most of the district thinks is "average" is ranked. And our "Exceptional" school (it is a concurrent enrollment with our local JC, and has an API score of 944) is not ranked at all either. I have no idea what their formula was at USN&WR, but I give very little credence to these rankings.
Sour grapes!!!
Their data is 3 years old, and incomplete at that.
My school is ranked 20th in the state (behind my ex-bf's school! *shaking fist*). It doesn't even make their ranking... And a simple Google search could give them much of their 'unavailable' data. (Seriously? You dont know how many teachers we have? You have our phone number... Just call us! Or read our online SARC paper...)
I wish it was just sour grapes. The school I am at isn't ranked, nor should it be. But neither should the 1 in the district that is ranked.
But in all seriousness, it is even possible to accurately rank every school? We all know that there are some really good schools, and some really bad schools, and ultimately, education is not always about the school. It has more to do with the student. There are some great teachers at bad schools and some bad teachers at some good schools, and neither of them get noticed.
Interesting that the top 30 schools had Teacher/student ration under 24. I suppose that could mean their ranking algorithm weighed that more heavily than other criteria.
On the other hand, I have done observations in AP3 English that had 40+ students, and some excellent learning going on.....
I posted this more as a "funny" than as anything serious. Take it with whatever size grain of salt you think is appropriate.
I'm not sure how I feel about this. My school is a silver medal recipient, but frankly I think despite all efforts, we are bailing out a sinking ship. The new policies put in place are killing our programs. Consider this, in this economy it is RARE to find high school level art jobs available in good districts. We have FIVE such jobs open in our district. I think this speaks to policies that value only core subjects and use electives as dumping grounds for every kid with a problem. You can only deal with that kind of situation so long before you break. And while core subjects should be the meat and potatoes of education, I do think that music, art and other humanities are what keeps us human. There should be some balance. Not every kid is going to be an engineer nor a musician. There's got to be an effort to serve the average kids. BTW, the school my kids attended, which actually has a higher college prep rate, is actually unranked. I don't know how they do this sort of stuff, but it seems a great deal like vanity publishing.
I'd feel more sympathetic toward art and music programs in MS-HS if they included something for those not interested in performance. My kids would have loved to take art history or music appreciation but neither was available at their excellent HS, or at its neighbors. I actually made appointments with the art and music teachers, to see if one of them would sponsor an independent study but neither had any interest in anything other than performance. Since my kids had neither talent nor interest in performing in either field, we tried to cover history and appreciation at home. Now, with the internet and lots of good DVD programs, I would push harder for the independent study, but in the 80s, the resources were more limited.
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