Newswek Top High Schools: All 4 Arlington High Schools in top 2% in nation

[Anonymous]

At the risk of being politically incorrect, I suspect the schools have very little to do with kids passing the AP/IB tests...it is the kids that "got it" that passed.

Where the schools can help is establishing peer groups such that the smarter kids can seek each other out, and being smart does not get you picked on. The former can be accomplished by proper classes and groupings, the latter I do not know.

Taking a test means nothing....doing well on the test matters.

(I remember a while back, one school saw a significant drop in their SAT scores...turns out, under a previous principal, they had been actively discouraging the less capable kids from taking the test....then thy encouraged everyone to take it -- that dropped the average down 100-200 points.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:At the risk of being politically incorrect, I suspect the schools have very little to do with kids passing the AP/IB tests...it is the kids that "got it" that passed.

It's not politically incorrect, just willfully blind to practical reality.

Of course, the schools and teachers matter, for most students in most instances, in terms of their preparation and subsequent ability to do well on AP exams.

There will always be some students who are so bright that they can essentially teach themselves how to pass an AP test. But they are a a minority; for most students, a good teacher will have a significant impact on their ability to acquire the knowledge and information needed to do well on an AP or IB exam.

Unfortunately, the "Challenge Index" simply tracks the number of exams that are being administered to seniors at a school, and tells us nothing about whether the school actually graduates students who have demonstrated a mastery of the subject matter.