I am really steamed up about the utter absurdity of the U.S. News & World Report’s listing of the “best” high schools in the nation. The more selective the school is, the higher its ranking. The “best” school is the one that enrolls the “best” students.
But what about the schools that take all students and help them become the best they can be? Are they inferior to the school that excludes those kids?
The U.S. News ranking is offensive to the fundamental values of American education, which is equality of educational opportunity. Not for a few, but for all.
From a reader:
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?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
https://www.centerforhealthjournalism.org/fellowships/projects/separate-unequal-education-students-special-needs?utm_source=March+29+Newsletter+Created+2017%2F03%2F28%2C+3%3A48+PM&utm_campaign=Newsletter150708&utm_medium=email
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The phenomenon of choosing the “best” school or the “best” teacher by allowing wealthier, more stable and more dominant culture students to be the measure for “good” outcomes is a truth which rankles; an associated fact missing when lawmakers and from-a-distance “progressives” step in to laud and label “good” educating is the fact that poor and non-dominant-culture populations seldom write those glowing letters of recommendation which so dazzle award-givers.
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Quite true ciedie!
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Our obsession with rating and ranking stems from marketeers whose goal is to create a demand for a product or, in this case, a school. Like the movable cut scores in standardized tests, criteria to select one quality over another are subjective. The whole “Great Schools” ratings are a joke too as charters seem to be favored over most public schools. With Great Schools the objective is to pump up the value of real estate in certain, mostly white areas. There are many quality schools doing wonderful work with young people that will never get attention or acclaim. These schools and teachers are our unsung heroes, and the education they provide is just as valid as those that garner “high scores.”
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Diane: This is a strong and needed statement on behalf of many of us. “The U.S. News ranking is offensive to the fundamental values of American education, which is equality of educational opportunity. Not for a few, but for all.”
Retired Teacher is correct about the GreatSchools ratings. A large number of California Districts (called CORE Districts) have signed on to a foundation-funded “data collaborative” that shovels test scores directly to the GreatSchools website. I pretended to be a parent seeking information about the performance of an elementary school in Oakland, one of the districts in the data collaborative. To my astonishment, I was immediately taken to GreatSchools, not the Oakland district reports.
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RT: You are so right. US News ratings of hospitals are the same sort of piffle.
Subjective ranking of things is an American invention and obsession. The US News rankings are a silly sports trend that has pervaded every corner of our culture. College football rankings and halls of fame—a pure American invention—are the most obvious examples. And to take it further, there’s a whole cottage industry of pundits who then try to rank individuals and teams across the ages; is so-and-so the best (insert sport and position here), is team A in this decade better than team B from the 1930s, could the winner of this Super Bowl have defeated the winner of that Super Bowl?
American English even refers to Nobel Prize laureates as “winners,” something that is now used in the mother tongue. In every other language of which I am aware (I used to play this game with people of other cultures), Nobel Prize recipients are “recognized,” “honored,” or “cited” with the award. We make it into a competition.
The sad consequence is that it has seeped into our collective consciousness and we apply it to everything, especially in things in education, where it has no business. “Keeping up with the Joneses” is the American credo and now has made subjectivity “scientific.” It frees us from doing messy things like thinking, observing and deciding.
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Especially Advanced Placement!!! College Board is “non-profit” but I find it hard to believe that this organization isn’t making money from AP and SAT and the expenses that go with it.
My daughter, who is autistic but always was fully included, took ONE AP class and switched to a regular class at the semester! She and I were underwhelmed by the AP class. The whole thing was lecture, test. It was extremely rushed because of the testing schedule. It was a history class, too, and I was SERIOUSLY displeased at the way the class was being taught! It was strictly lecture, take a test. No discussion, no outside reading, no interesting films. I am a history buff and I was completely annoyed.
And I don’t buy the whole “prepping for college”. I’ve BEEN to college and rarely had professors or instructors teach like this! We usually had discussions, outside reading and even films to expand on the subject! We ALWAYS had discussions! Especially in history classes! Yeah, you’d occasionally get the fossil that would just drone a lecture but they were the exception, not the rule.
I think AP doesn’t prepare kids in the least for college and a lot of college instructors agree. But schools keep pushing AP and now we just have great little test takers with no intellectual curiosity!
My daughter is now in community college and she agrees that high schools are completely on the wrong track! Instead of focusing on a well-rounded education for EVERYONE, they break everyone into little groups, focusing on TESTING, college tracking and creating a kind of caste system. Our school has different “programs” and if you don’t fit a particular mold, God help your kid! It’s very cliquish. Because both my kids were special needs, they had their “niche”. But what about your “average” student? Someone who’s not much of a joined, gets B’s and just isn’t a stand out? All of this for the prestige of the school and the district. It’s certainly not for the kids.
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retired treacher: your excellent comments on this thread have provoked others.
Thanks to all.
Let me add my 2⍧ worth…
Looking at this from another angle, it’s not just about labeling (and pushing/selling/hyping) the select few “winners” but creating (and disadvantaging/devaluing/eliminating) a very long list of “losers.”
And right from the rheephorm playbook, since the subjective criteria that undergird these allegedly objective ratings are generally not made explicit, in a very sneaky way they leave a good impression of the “winners” and a bad impression of the “losers.”
Those all in for corporate education reform love this sort of thing because thar’s $tudent $ucce$$ gold in them there forced ranking hills.
Understanding, of course, that they are quick to cite such numbers & stats when they seem to favor choice & charters & vouchers & privatization but somehow forget them when the figures don’t add up in their favor.
Kind of like their attachment to 100% charter graduation and college acceptance rates that don’t stand up to close scrutiny…
😎
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We made this point yesterday in discussion on this site. If you want a culture to be good at something, create a system that brings more people into the culture. An example of this is seen in the production of popular music in America. On every level of every genre of popular music, inclusive cultures have produced popular musicians.
Also illustrative is the chess experience where some people have gotten the children interested in competing in chess, and they have produced excellence.
If you want real success, you must create an accepting subculture based on the thing you wish to promote. Selective admission or organized attrition is just a way to look good when you are not really good.
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Well stated. The blowhards and spin doctors are manipulating supply and demand in order to profit. Tune them out, and turn them off!
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It’s not necessarily a measure of the school’s selectivity that U.S. News is revealing in their rankings, it’s a measure of their demographics in general. We all know by now that the higher the socio-economic class of the students’ parents, the more likely they are to be counted as “successful” by our current assessment systems. That’s exactly what is being measured in the U.S. News rankings. My own school is a fine example. I teach at what they say is the #8 high school in North Carolina (and #169 nationally), Chapel Hill High. The other two high schools in our district rank #6 (East Chapel Hill High) and #9 (Carrboro High). All three are general admission high schools, so that would seem to counter the arguments being made above about selectivity. But they’re also schools in a very affluent and highly educated set of communities that have specifically separated themselves from the other schools of Orange County. If you look at the demographics of our students, it’s hardly a wonder that we rank so highly. That’s the real story here, one we know the outline of all too well: if you have relatively affluent and well prepared students from educated families, you’re going to rank highly in our current system of assessing students and schools. In many districts that’s done by the self-selection of magnet and other highly selective schools, but it’s also done by the simple expedient of parents moving to a district that reflects their socio-economic class. Either way, it skews any good discussion of how schools actually perform and shows us the simple truth that no politician ever wants to hear: fix poverty and you fix poor educational outcomes.
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Moreover, when you mix highly motivated students with one another they begin to form what I call a critical mass of students who begin to feed off each other in positive ways, unencumbered by students who do not feel threatened by their inferiority. They feel supported by those of a similar interest, and learning results as a natural part of the culture. A toad could teach them, because they feed off each other.
We have learned to create these environments with socioeconomic culture grouping, a process that has been the result of the price of housing in certain areas. Private schools have created such culture for years, selecting just the right kid for their culture. More recently, magnet schools have used the selection process, some grouping students who are art-oriented, or science-focused to achieve the same result. Some private schools have become magnets for basketball development, and they are so proficient that no one will attempt to compete with them.
I had a friend who grew up in one of these places outside a city that had a college. His high school had classes like “The History of World Revolutions” and the like in science and math as well. Other schools struggle to offer much more than the basic courses. Oddly enough, though the education begins with a slower pace, some of the students from schools that struggle often make it to their college ready to learn like all the other students.
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I’ve seen the critical mass of students who begin to feed off each other in positive ways also work the other way. I taught for 30 years in a high poverty area with dangerous, multi-generational street gangs. If a classroom had several hardcore gang members, they could set a tone that make it a challenge to not only teach but for children to learn that wanted to learn.
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That is always true of any group that does not wish to learn. What do we do?
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We do the best job we can to reach as many students as we can. There is no guarantee of a 100 success in anything on this planet. For those who compete, life is like a horse race. Sometimes there is a tie but most lose. Even lifespan comes with no guarantee.
For instance, it is obvious that the malignant narcissist in the White House, for all his bluster and lies, has lost a few races too or he wouldn’t have been involved in so many bankruptcies and court cases. He won many but lost some.
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And perhaps we beg the reasonable people in the world to have patience and help us instead of hurting us with long-winded lectures on the latest fad or method. Maybe when the real causes of anti-educational feeling go away, we can get somewhere. A generation or two ago, irate families burned textbooks because they represented laziness to them. That is gone now.
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But we’d find many reasonable people outside of the United States. For instance, Finland.
Our challenge is to find powerful individuals in the U.S. who will join the people and stand against the corporate education reformers from the neocon, neo-lib, fundamentalist Chrisitan, and libertarian ranks that have joined forces and worked for decades to subvert the U.S. government and the U.S. Constitution so they could create a dystopian world of mass suffering.
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A regular commenter (artsegal) has inexplicably been blocked by WordPress. This is not the first time this has happened. Ellen Lubic, who commented daily, has been blocked by WordPress for two weeks. Others have been dropped and no longer receive the posts. This is very frustrating and I will complain to WordPress.
Meanwhile, artsegal sent this comment:
“I see things differently than many here. The US News & World Report message is ALL ABOUT CHARTERS in their pseudo rankings. Did anyone notice clicking state by state how many charters are in the top range… a lot! Why? They rank according to percentage of students going to college… ANY COLLEGE… probably TRUMP University or Betsy DeVos backed pseudo colleges. But if the numbers are high… the school scores well. So a great school that has teacher autonomy, a well kept up building, lots of course variety, after school activities etc might not score as well even if a large number of their students are going to top tier schools. Why? Because the percentage of students going to college might only be 85 percent instead of 100 percent (for a wide variety of reasons). Add insult to injury, I wonder how many students complete their higher education since this does not seem to be important to this pseudo ranking system!
“The state where I grew up consistently ranks number one on the NAEP test. People know which communities have active parents who volunteer time and money… people know where teachers have autonomy, where there are many school course offerings and after school activities. There are schools where the majority of students get into top tier schools. But these schools were not in the top rankings for the state – they were in the teens! It is not elitist to think that every public school should have the same offerings as these schools from wealthier communities.
“What we need is for all children to have access to quality schools like the one’s that these communities have. Does every child need to go to college? No. Every child needs to be given the tools to help them achieve their goals and dreams. What we do not need the US News & World Report subtly propagating the myth that charters are serving students well (by gaming the stats with BAD INPUT)! This is what the report indicates to me.”
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Good news! I contacted WordPress Customer Support and learned that artsegal and Ellen Lubic were in Spam. Once I restored them, they are back!
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Nonwithstanding the problems with modern fake reform much discussed on these pages, would we still not have the problem we discussed above where certain students would interrupt the process of education because they were antagonistic to it?
I think we need to rethink the compulsory education for older kids. While compelling very young children to be in school makes sense, I feel we need to get out of the business of the stick and move more toward the carrot. Naturally, the educational reform movement would not favor this, because they would have to sell themselves to rather rather than force themselves on a public. But we would be better served by having only children in school that want to be there.
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Roy, we live in an era where honest talk is devalued. We have gone from “all children can learn,” which is true, to “all children are scholars and will excel and if they don’t, it’s their teachers’ fault.”
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I also have experienced that critical mass tipping point.
School climate is definitely a factor in the success of an institution, either allowing ALL children to be successful OR keeping most students from achieving. And once a detrimental school climate is established, it is extremely difficult to change course.
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Who is Zuckerman, the owner of the News?
Zuckerman is convinced that his paper’s endorsements of the mayoral candidates Rudolph Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg—the only one from a major paper that Bloomberg got in his first election—tipped the votes in their favor. …
Zuckerman is notorious for wanting things, if not both ways, then at least the other way. It is not so much that the editor fails to fulfill the mission as that Zuckerman decides that the mission needs changing. …
“Real estate allowed me to enter journalism at the right level,” Zuckerman says from time to time, meaning that he got into it as a proprietor, bypassing all the ink-stained stages. It’s a clever enough thing to say, but it also suggests a certain contempt for the trade, and may be more charming to his peers than to his employees.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/07/23/the-tycoon
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I see things differently than many here. The US News & World Report message is ALL ABOUT CHARTERS in their pseudo rankings. Did anyone notice clicking state by state how many charters are in the top range… a lot! Why? They rank according to percentage of students going to college… ANY COLLEGE… probably TRUMP University or Betsy DeVos backed pseudo colleges. But if the numbers are high… the school scores well. So a great school that has teacher autonomy, a well kept up building, lots of course variety, after school activities etc might not score as well even if a large number of their students are going to top tier schools. Why? Because the percentage of students going to college might only be 85 percent instead of 100 percent (for a wide variety of reasons). Add insult to injury, I wonder how many students complete their higher education since this does not seem to be important to this pseudo ranking system!
The state where I grew up consistently ranks number one on the NAEP test. People know which communities have active parents who volunteer time and money… people know where teachers have autonomy, where there are many school course offerings and after school activities. There are schools where the majority of students get into top tier schools. But these schools were not in the top rankings for the state – they were in the teens! It is not elitist to think that every public school should have the same offerings as these schools from wealthier communities.
What we need is for all children to have access to quality schools like the one’s that these communities have. Does every child need to go to college? No. Every child needs to be given the tools to help them achieve their goals and dreams. What we do not need the US News & World Report subtly propagating the myth that charters are serving students well (by gaming the stats with BAD INPUT)! This is what the report indicates to me.
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Our Supt of schools found it necessary to report this week to our local rag– in this chi-chi wealthy NJ hi-RE tax town, whose school district is always rated hi nationaaly [just behind Priceton!]– why we did not appear among the US News & World Reports’ top 100 hischs: something to do w/PARCC, she suggested. (Which half of our kids opted out of), & which (she suggested) is being re-examined in Trenton– ’bout time, nu?
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