Education suffers because of poor coverage by the media. For years, the media have been interested only in sensationalism and bad news.
Many newspapers do not have regular education writers, so when they do publish a story about schools, they don’t have a deep understanding of education issues.
I just read a story in the Buffalo News that said that a local high school succeeds because it gives tougher tests than other high schools.
Buffalo is a low-performing district with many poor students.
The high school in the story, called City Honors, is a college-prep magnet high school with selective admissions. It enrolls students from grades 5-12. This year, more than 1,100 students competed for 150 openings in the school.
All students are required to take AP and IB courses. Many succeed. City Honors does very well in the rankings of Newsweek and U.S. News, which are based on how many students take those courses.
If you read this story carefully, you understand that the school succeeds because it attracts and selects the very highest-achieving students in the city of Buffalo. You would recognize that very capable students do very well when they take the AP and IB courses.
If you read the story quickly, especially the headline, you would conclude that the school succeeds because the students take hard tests. You would conclude that if all schools required students to take tougher tests, they would get the same great results as City Honors. You would be wrong.
Diane
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I teach at a specialized high school in New York City, and big shocker: we were on the list of best high schools in the country, too.
Well, when your test screens out those who can’t perform well on entrance exam, not to mention kids with parents who are not informed enough to get them to take the test, it’s no surprise the student body will do well on the AP tests, and on the (far, far easier) regents exams.
Principals do funny things, to get on the US World News Report lists: they will encourage more students to enroll in AP courses, since that, more than anything, raises their school’s scores. This is what happened with our last principal. We have had students enrolled in AP that really shouldn’t have been, but, what’s good for the school’s PR campaign isn’t what’s best for learning.
Schools don’t succeed because they assign harder tests. They work if they accept their students, including their limitations, and give them all of the services they need. Schools are being PR machines more concerned with bringing up numbers with some fancy clerking than looking at students as organic, living humans with individual needs.
So I think those best high school lists are meaningless. Great high schools don’t just tweak the numbers, find ways to screen out students, and kick out the miscreants, those that don’t fit in (yes– that happens). They nurture the kids they have.
By the way, we are getting rid of our art department. I suspect that won’t hurt our school’s ranking. What does that tell you about the value of these rankings? Would a great high school not include an art curriculum?
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The #10 high school in the nation (information recently shared by its supporters) is a local charter school that for the past fifteen years has attracted some of the brightest students from the region; administers entry tests–supposedly for placement; counsels parents of lesser students about how their child will have difficulty “fitting in”; has extremely low percentage of special needs students–less than 2%; and attracts so much glowing and positive attention about the success of this charter school that the populace is distracted from careful and well-considered analysis of many of the other charter schools in the area. There is no denying that this school is an unqualified success.
One of the missions of our state’s charter school law is to create experimental schools that can flourish and grow so that they can then share their experiences and success formulae with other public schools. So, what can the rest of us learn from their example?
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fsjenner: I attended a similar public (at the time, now charter, post-Katrina) high school. We certainly had entry tests, but likely not some of the shadier practices you describe.
Thing is, managing a classroom of gifted kids is not exactly a cakewalk. But when gifted kids misbehave or disappoint, it’s considered a motivational issue best addressed by choice, engagement, and differentiation in the classroom, and when non-gifted kids misbehave, it’s a disciplinary issue.
What you can learn from these schools is how they treat their students. It’s taken for granted that they want to learn and can learn. It’s taken for granted that if you provide the right environment, they will rise to the challenge.
When I hear stories of miraculous school turnarounds, it’s often because someone at the top respects more, expects more, and engages more than students were used to.
I’ve seen this dynamic at work at the university level, too. Students who are accustomed to just putting in their time and paying their dues begin to light up and love learning again in certain classes.
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I have never yet seen a story about a miraculous school turnaround that was true. Gary Rubinstein created a wiki to collect accounts of “miracle schools” that are much ballyhooed but are not miraculous. If you want to check it out, google his name and miracle schools.
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Alfie Kohn wrote about this almost 15 years ago. We’re still confusing “harder” with “better.”
http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/edweek/chwb.htm
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Interesting that the newspaper article buried this information deep in the article: “City Honors has long been a magnet program in Buffalo with a focus on college prep — and one of the most competitive high school programs in the city. This year, more than 1,100 students vied for 150 open seats in the school, which houses grades five to 12.”
This assertion: “And of course they asserted that harder tests.” was right near the beginning.
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Error in my post: This was at the beginning of the article – What’s the key to the school’s success? College-level tests.
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Simple answer, NO!
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