C'Mon!

The hits just keep on coming....

Newsweek mag just came out with its list of the "best" 1500 schools in the USA. C'mon, what a joke! How can anyone take the list at all seriously? To its credit, one local school district said it appreciated the high ranking, within the top 200 I think, but noted the flukish criteria.

According to the accompanying article, the rankings are determined by the number of Advance Placement, etc. tests students at the school take. Then, that number of AP tests is divided by the number of senior graduating to get a ratio. The rankings are then determined from those ratios.

Ah, you've already seen the foolhardiness of this! Yep, it doesn't matter how well the students do on the tests (we'll ignore the legitimacy of tests for now). They can all score the lowest possible; it makes no difference. All they have to do is take the tests. One of the schools listed, in the district where I live, require students who take AP classes to take the AP tests. (I told one of the teachers who so required that was silly. When he protested, but not too much, since I am a former teacher of his, I added if my kid was in his class--he wasn't in that school--if he was required to take the test, the school would be paying the $85 to take it and I'd have the law on my side!) Again, it doesn't matter if they do well. Great criterion, huh? And, to top it off, the guy who computes the ratios was cited as saying it is "dumb" to send kids to college without having taken AP courses. What a Bozo! No doubt, there are administrators and teachers all over the country proud of their rankings. (Certainly, I admit, there are probably some who should be proud, but not because of these rankings.)

Yep, let's reform education, continuing to allow those who should not be allowed to make decisions to make them.