U.S. News and World Report has ranked U.S. high schools. Three Dayton area high schools — Bellbrook, Centerville, and Oakwood — received the ranking of “silver,” the second highest ranking. No local high schools received ranking of “gold,” U.S. News’ highest ranking.
The Dayton Daily News in an editorial today, “U.S. News’ School Rankings Also Fall Short,” makes this observation: “Not to take anything away from the area schools that showed well on the U.S. News list, but they’re all really homogenous schools and/or relatively wealthy — at least as compared to schools where test scores and other indicators are awful. Succeeding in schools where children come from strong homes and strong communities is always going to be easier.”
U.S. News explains its high school ranking procedure is a three step process. Here are excerpts from the magazine’s explanation:
- The first step determined whether each school’s students were performing better than statistically expected for the average student in their state. We started by looking at reading and math test results for all students on each state’s high school test. We then factored in the percentage of economically disadvantaged students (who tend to score lower) enrolled at the school to find which schools were performing better than their statistical expectations.
- For those schools that made it past this first step, the second step determined whether the school’s least-advantaged students (black, Hispanic, and low-income) were performing better than average for similar students in the state. We compared each school’s math and reading proficiency rates for disadvantaged students with the statewide results for these disadvantaged student groups and then selected schools that were performing better than this state average.
- Schools that made it through those first two steps became eligible to be judged nationally on the final step: college-readiness performance, using Advanced Placement data as the benchmark for success. (AP is a College Board program that offers college-level courses at high schools across the country.) This third step measured which schools produced the best college-level achievement for the highest percentages of their students. This was done by computing a “college readiness index” based on the weighted average of the AP participation rate (the number of 12th-grade students who took at least one AP test before or during their senior year, divided by the number of 12th graders) along with how well the students did on those AP tests or quality-adjusted AP participation (the number of 12th-grade students who took and passed (received an AP score of 3 or higher) at least one AP test before or during their senior year, divided by the number of 12th graders at that school). For the college readiness index, the quality-adjusted AP participation rates were weighted 75 percent in the calculation, and 25 percent of the weight was placed on the simple AP participation rate.
