What are considered the best public school clusters in Springfield and/or Annandale

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

The reason this ranking is worthwhile is that it tells you which high schools allow and even encourage all of their students to take challenging classes. There was a time, and it was not that long ago, when high schools only allowed a small, select group of students to take AP courses and exams. Research began to show that students who had taken even one AP course in high school performed better once in college. So the Challenge index encouraged high schools to allow more of their students to take AP courses. It is good to know which schools are making the effort to provide opportunities to study higher level material to as many of their students as possible. I think that says something about the academic atmosphere of a school.

It's simply one more piece of information to consider, along with the other important qualities cited here.

With the caveat that pushing students who aren't ready to take a full load of what, at least in theory, are supposed to be college-level courses to take multiple AP courses just to boost a school's ratings doesn't make sense, either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The idea of ranking high schools by the ratio of students that take AP/IB exams is ridiculous. And the fact that they market the list as a ranking of school quality is even more ridiculous. The ranking has absolutely nothing to do with teacher quality, safety, student morale, and college acceptance which in my opinion are much more important than the number of kids who cram their schedules full of mind-numbing AP classes.

The reason this ranking is worthwhile is that it tells you which high schools allow and even encourage all of their students to take challenging classes. There was a time, and it was not that long ago, when high schools only allowed a small, select group of students to take AP courses and exams. Research began to show that students who had taken even one AP course in high school performed better once in college. So the Challenge index encouraged high schools to allow more of their students to take AP courses. It is good to know which schools are making the effort to provide opportunities to study higher level material to as many of their students as possible. I think that says something about the academic atmosphere of a school.

It's simply one more piece of information to consider, along with the other important qualities cited here.

Hi there, Jay!

The Challenge Index is a joke, as is the fact that the rankings include some but not all magnet schools.