high school rankings criticized

[George Sheridan <learn@jps.net>]

 The following item is reproduced from The Morning Bell: Today's News for the
National Education Association from Newspapers, TV, Radio and the Journals - a
digest of current articles on education distributed by email to NEA members.


Columnists critique U.S. News & World Report high school rankings.

Columnist Samuel Freedman writes in the New York Times (12/5) that this week's
issue of U.S. News & World Report, which includes the magazine's first ranking of
U.S. high schools, "must be understood...as an exercise in business, in extending
the U.S. News brand, in helping it survive in a financial and technological
climate hostile to news magazines." He writes that the "factors the ranking used
appear sensible and supple -- overall student achievement, academic performance
of the most disadvantaged students, and college readiness as reckoned by results
on Advanced Placement tests." But, he argues, the rankings are "a centerpiece of
what we might call the Anxiety Industry, the same booming market that includes
test-prep classes and private college-admissions consultants." He concludes that
no one should "blame U.S. News for filling the vacuum left by the absence of any
meaningful federal standard for comparing schools."

In his Class Struggle column for the Washington Post (12/5), Jay Mathews, who
authors his own set of high school rankings published annually in both the Post
and Newsweek magazine, writes that the U.S. News list is "too complicated for its
own good." He argues that "college-level test participation is the only available
comparative factor that allows parents to see how much value schools are adding
to their children's lives," and that test scores "largely reflect not how good a
school is but how wealthy and well-educated its parents are." He also defends his
practice of isolating many magnet schools from his own list, and quotes Mel
Riddle, "a former National High School Principal of the Year who now runs T.C.
Williams High School in Alexandria," Virginia, as saying, "Comparing schools that
can improve test scores by sorting applications does nothing."

George Sheridan