Gary Rubinstein wrote a post about the curiosity of the KIPP high school in New York City that was ranked one of the best in the nation by U.S. News & World Report, even though it had only 58 students and the three other KIPP high schools had zero students who took and passed AP exams. The name of the school is KIPP Academy Charter School. Were they trying to game the system, he wondered? But some comments on his blog alerted him to the fact, if fact it is, that the only KIPP high school is KIPP NYC College Prep High School.
Gary untangles the puzzle here.
“The reader informed me that there are not four KIPP high schools in New York City, but just one, KIPP NYC College Prep High School. This was puzzling to me since the school that was ranked 29th in the country and 4th in New York was not called KIPP NYC College Prep High School, but called KIPP Academy Charter School.
“When I went to look at the data at the public data site for school report cards, there was no report card for a KIPP NYC College Prep High School, however. But there were report cards for the four MIDDLE schools, KIPP Academy, KIPP AMP, KIPP Infinity, and KIPP STAR. On these report cards, it shows that 5-8 middle schools also have students in 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade, in small numbers.
“One of those four middle schools is the KIPP Academy with its 58 12th graders, and this is the ‘school’ that was rated so highly on the U.S. News ranking.
“But the reality is that there is just one high school and it does not have just 58 students, but around 150 students, basically the four 12th grade classes from the four middle schools are actually not attending that middle school but all attending the KIPP high school.
“Why the students are still ‘officially’ in their middle schools is a mystery to me and why there is not report card for the KIPP high school is also pretty baffling.
“The non-existent KIPP Academy Charter High School that was ranked 29th in the country and 4th in New York claimed to have 58 students with a 100% AP participation rate and a 98% passing rate. We now know that these 58 students are only a subset, around a fourth, of an existing school KIPP NYC College Prep. Though there is no state report card for KIPP NYC College Prep, the school has one on their website for the 2014-2015 school year on which the U.S. News ratings were based.”
Read Gary’s analysis.
One thing is clear: the U.S. News & World Report ranking of high schools is phony. A fraud. Meaningless. They rank high schools to sell magazines. They don’t fact-check. They set themselves up as the arbiters of which are the best high schools in the nation, based on flawed data, and they are not qualified to do this work. Of what value is their product?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Can someone address this to US NEWS & WORLD REPORT? Make them explain?
Their answer will be of great interest. Will they take some modicum of responsibility and offer a correction or at least a (snort) disclaimer? It remains to be seen if they can cross the extremely low bar set by the ironically named NCTQ.
Lists are a big marketing tool….Top 10, Best 100. They draw in a lot of readers. They are the National Enquirer segment of what we may think are reputable news sources. The corrupt part about ranking schools is that many people may use these meaningless lists to base life changing decisions. U.S. News & World Report should be ashamed to publish this – but they don’t care as long as it sells.
“. . .but they don’t care as long as it sells.”
Hey, let the free market decide what sells and doesn’t, eh! If it don’t sell it ain’t worth it. Viva el capitalismo.
I would have them take a good hard look at the criterion of the list. There are some very good schools on it, and many of those correlate with what we know about wealth and student outcomes. They seem to ignore student attrition as a factor which greatly benefits charters and other “choice” schools. It’s not the existence of the list that is so problematic, it’s what qualifies you to be on it. Who decided what to check off in the first place?
Reblogged this on Lloyd Lofthouse and commented:
Breaking, fact-checked news: The U.S. News & World Report ranking of high schools is phony. A fraud. Meaningless.
I know the top schools in my state where I grew up. This state always comes in number one on the NAEP. Well the top schools are “rated gold” whatever that means but there are “corporate” charters coming in way ahead of these top schools on the supposed national rankings. Seem to have emphasis on charters and shaky grounds on which the rankings are made! So if a charter encourages its students to go to shady cn line colleges, this would up their numbers going to college and henceforth their school ranking.
The odds are that the corporate owned media (that’s 90-percent of the traditional media, and that is not counting the Alt-Right hate media machine that focuses on alternative facts that do not exist in reality) will not report this so it is up to us to spread this as far and wide as possible calling for a total mobilization of every group and every individual that supports the community-based, democratic, transparent, non-profit traditional public schools.
City Honors High School in Buffalo, NY is always on the list since it is highly selective and really pushes the students with both their IB program AND AP curriculum. While it looks like a great school (and it is) an average or below average or even an unmotivated advanced student would flounder in this environment. Luckily there are some other excellent high schools in the city which aren’t so “pushy” or “unforgiving”, but ultimately it is up to the student to take advantage of the situation. While students can select which high school to attend, those ending up in the neighborhood schools get the leftovers. Even though they score on the bottom, that doesn’t mean they aren’t worthwhile institutes of learning. For example, The International School services refugees and immigrants who speak over fifty different languages. Needless to say, they don’t score highly on the assessments. The suggestion was to intersperse these children amongst the other schools, but then they wouldn’t get the special services specifically designed to help their transition into this country. (Some of them do go to other high schools when their English improves).
US News and World Reports has a narrow focus on what constitutes a quality education, but in reality which is the better school? The one that prepares exceptional students for college or the one that prepares children from war torn countries to lead a fruitful life in their new homeland?
Supposedly Nevada’s Gulen Coral Academy Charters are on there too. There are nine campuses with two sets of data and they claim to be high-performing. Who really knows. And even if we use the weird data they submit – these academies are at best average – not excelling enough to be on any high-performing list.
That’s wild. I wonder if Gary could address a question I have since he looks at graduation rates a lot.
There are “repeaters” in high schools- students who repeat a whole grade level or a portion of grade level work.
How do they effect reported graduation rates?