No Such Thing As Too Much Coffee

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

High School Rankings May Not Be As Good As They Seem

High school rankings look to be getting a batch of attending these days. Parents and functionaries are always on the expression out for new information about how their child's school is ranked. Rankings can be a nice manner to acquire an thought about a schools performance, but parents should understand that not every commanding system is as good as it may seem.

Newsweek's High School Rankings

One of the most popular rankings come ups from Newsweek. Newsweek prints their high school rankings yearly. They started doing this in 1988 and it have shown to be quite influential.

Newsweek's rankings are based upon the figure of AP diagnostic tests that are given at a school. It is not based upon diagnostic test tons or any existent academic information whatsoever. The existent expression for the high school rankings is the figure of AP diagnostic tests given at the school divided by the figure of alumni for that year. Many people reviewing the Newsweek rankings have got no thought that this is the criteria for them and believe that something more complex travels into the commanding results. Since the initial Newsweek high school rankings were released the figure of AP diagnostic tests given at school have doubled.

US News and World Report's Rankings

Another magazine that have started commanding high schools is United States News and World Report. This magazine alkalis its rankings upon diagnostic test scores. It compares the diagnostic test consequences of schools with similar demographics. It also gives some weight to AP diagnostic test scores. This commanding system is more than elaborate than that of Newsweek. It existent have some academic footing and may be a better pick for parents to reexamine than Newsweek's rankings. It offers a better position of the school's existent public presentation and academic achievement.

What Parents Need to Know About High School Rankings

Parents have got to understand a couple key factors. First, they have got to actually understand the high school rankings system. They should see what criteria were used to rank the schools, so they can understand what the rankings actually mean. Second, parents necessitate to see multiple ranking systems so they can acquire the best thought of exactly how their school is really doing compared to other schools. Commanding them is not clear cut. Rankings cannot be relied upon as the exclusive agency of determining a school's performance. Instead they should be a portion of how a school's public presentation is determined by parents. The underside line is that parent's should acquire involved in their child's education. They should do the finding on their ain if the school is doing an adequate occupation of instruction their kid and not go forth that determination up to high school rankings by some random 3rd party.

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