Newsweek 2014 High School Rankings

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You're right. RM is #96. I know... people will say it's because of the IB. Well, you can an also say the W schools do well because a lot of the kids there come from high SES families that can afford tutors, prep classes, enrichment, etc..

Yes, but the difference is that whatever the reason for the W students doing well, if you move to those clusters your kid gets to be with those students. If you move to RM, your kid doesn't get to be in the IB program (putting aside the 11th grade preference), which is why people always want to distinguish. I say this as someone living in the RM cluster btw - the IB program masks the performance of the overall school since they don't report the two "subparts" of the school separately.

If I move to a W school my kids get to go to their tutor with them for free... wow who knew.

Weak attempt at sarcasm. If your kids go to a W, whether the kids there perform well because of tutors or some other reason, your kid gets to be in a class where the kids are advancing at that level. That's kind of the whole allure of attending a high performing school (nobody thinks the teaching is inherently better - it's that you are surrounded by a population of students who are motivated). If you live in RM, your kid simply gets to be in a building (starting in 9th grade) where some magnet kids happen to have their own school within a school.

There's a whole other thread about the issue of high performing kids taking adhd rx or other ways of cheating to get these high results. If an average student is surrounded by such kids, would that average student feel the pressure to also "cheat"?

I hope you are not implying high performing kids use drugs/cheat to get high scores. I find that statment insulting and totally uninformed. Maybe, just maybe, high performing kids try harder, study more, and care more. How about that?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You're right. RM is #96. I know... people will say it's because of the IB. Well, you can an also say the W schools do well because a lot of the kids there come from high SES families that can afford tutors, prep classes, enrichment, etc..

Yes, but the difference is that whatever the reason for the W students doing well, if you move to those clusters your kid gets to be with those students. If you move to RM, your kid doesn't get to be in the IB program (putting aside the 11th grade preference), which is why people always want to distinguish. I say this as someone living in the RM cluster btw - the IB program masks the performance of the overall school since they don't report the two "subparts" of the school separately.

If I move to a W school my kids get to go to their tutor with them for free... wow who knew.

Weak attempt at sarcasm. If your kids go to a W, whether the kids there perform well because of tutors or some other reason, your kid gets to be in a class where the kids are advancing at that level. That's kind of the whole allure of attending a high performing school (nobody thinks the teaching is inherently better - it's that you are surrounded by a population of students who are motivated). If you live in RM, your kid simply gets to be in a building (starting in 9th grade) where some magnet kids happen to have their own school within a school.

There's a whole other thread about the issue of high performing kids taking adhd rx or other ways of cheating to get these high results. If an average student is surrounded by such kids, would that average student feel the pressure to also "cheat"?

I hope you are not implying high performing kids use drugs/cheat to get high scores. I find that statment insulting and totally uninformed. Maybe, just maybe, high performing kids try harder, study more, and care more. How about that?

Maybe..but that other thread seems to imply that "cheating" by taking drugs is a wide spread problem, and there have been articles about it, too. I'm sure there are some students that don't take drugs and do it all by hard work. But I have no idea what the % of those kids are, and I'm guessing neither do you. It's not like these kids tell the adults what they are doing.

[Anonymous]

PP - If you don't know what you kid is doing, I think you have a bigger issue here.