U.S. News Unveils 2022 Best High Schools Rankings

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Notice how there isn't a discussion of #2. Academic Magnet High School (SC) that's 78% white, about its lack of diversity. Funny how a non-white majority that is excelling is taken down by woke whites in the name of 'equity.'

White wokes got woken when their kids couldn't make it. So they changed the process and removed the test. whites up 26%. asians down 26%. mission accomplished.

So you define best as those who spent the $$ to buy access to the test from the prep center?

I never defined best. What are you talking about?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Notice how there isn't a discussion of #2. Academic Magnet High School (SC) that's 78% white, about its lack of diversity. Funny how a non-white majority that is excelling is taken down by woke whites in the name of 'equity.'

White wokes got woken when their kids couldn't make it. So they changed the process and removed the test. whites up 26%. asians down 26%. mission accomplished.

So you define best as those who spent the $$ to buy access to the test from the prep center?

Seems like the well prepped kids are keeping TJ on top.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Congratulations for what??? It's a magazine ranking on a piece of paper. It's not like they have won some competitions.

Agreed. The made-up criteria by US News is quite arbitrary and self-fulfilling. For example, US News came up with "college readiness index" which simply looks at the percentage of kids who took and passed an AP exam. So of course magnet schools would be high up there. A typical school that serves a very poor and disadvantaged population obviously won't have the luxury of having so many kids able and ready to take AP exams.

If US News instead had a metric that tracked improvement of low-performing kids at a school over some years, then one could actually conclude that the school was truly doing a good job.

So what would you rather they use as criteria? Number of drug arrests? Number of teen pregnancies? Academic institutions are typically ranked using... academic criteria!

[Anonymous]

Congrats to TJ students for continued success!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Notice how there isn't a discussion of #2. Academic Magnet High School (SC) that's 78% white, about its lack of diversity. Funny how a non-white majority that is excelling is taken down by woke whites in the name of 'equity.'

White wokes got woken when their kids couldn't make it. So they changed the process and removed the test. whites up 26%. asians down 26%. mission accomplished.

I used to live in South Carolina. The racial percentages are 63.7% white, 26.8% black, 5.6% Hispanic, 1.5% Asian, 0.3% Native American, and 2.1% other. Many kids in small towns had only seen white and black people their whole lives, other than on TV/internet.
While not being ideal, it looks like the #2 High school has closer racial demographics to the state population than TJ currently does.

[Anonymous]

I quoted the wrong post above. I was trying to quote the post talking about the Stem #2 school in SC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Congratulations for what??? It's a magazine ranking on a piece of paper. It's not like they have won some competitions.

Agreed. The made-up criteria by US News is quite arbitrary and self-fulfilling. For example, US News came up with "college readiness index" which simply looks at the percentage of kids who took and passed an AP exam. So of course magnet schools would be high up there. A typical school that serves a very poor and disadvantaged population obviously won't have the luxury of having so many kids able and ready to take AP exams.

If US News instead had a metric that tracked improvement of low-performing kids at a school over some years, then one could actually conclude that the school was truly doing a good job.

So what would you rather they use as criteria? Number of drug arrests? Number of teen pregnancies? Academic institutions are typically ranked using... academic criteria!

DP: But if a school siphons off the best students from a school system and doesn't allow any of the weaker students it's going to be the "best" even if the teaching isn't that great at the school. There are a ton of other ways to consider educational quality--growth rates in students etc. But I think the PP is just suggesting that the magnet schools be considered in a different list because they can be a "great" school just by being located in a highly educated area and drawing students from a dense population. Even if they just had kids sit in a room with no teachers just doing AP exam prep on-line they could max out these scores.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Congratulations for what??? It's a magazine ranking on a piece of paper. It's not like they have won some competitions.

Agreed. The made-up criteria by US News is quite arbitrary and self-fulfilling. For example, US News came up with "college readiness index" which simply looks at the percentage of kids who took and passed an AP exam. So of course magnet schools would be high up there. A typical school that serves a very poor and disadvantaged population obviously won't have the luxury of having so many kids able and ready to take AP exams.

If US News instead had a metric that tracked improvement of low-performing kids at a school over some years, then one could actually conclude that the school was truly doing a good job.

So what would you rather they use as criteria? Number of drug arrests? Number of teen pregnancies? Academic institutions are typically ranked using... academic criteria!

DP: But if a school siphons off the best students from a school system and doesn't allow any of the weaker students it's going to be the "best" even if the teaching isn't that great at the school. There are a ton of other ways to consider educational quality--growth rates in students etc. But I think the PP is just suggesting that the magnet schools be considered in a different list because they can be a "great" school just by being located in a highly educated area and drawing students from a dense population. Even if they just had kids sit in a room with no teachers just doing AP exam prep on-line they could max out these scores.

TJ is not just the best in Virginia - it is the best HS in the entire country where we have hundreds of magnet/application high schools. It is recognized as the best of the best so it deserves recognition and appreciation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Congratulations for what??? It's a magazine ranking on a piece of paper. It's not like they have won some competitions.

Agreed. The made-up criteria by US News is quite arbitrary and self-fulfilling. For example, US News came up with "college readiness index" which simply looks at the percentage of kids who took and passed an AP exam. So of course magnet schools would be high up there. A typical school that serves a very poor and disadvantaged population obviously won't have the luxury of having so many kids able and ready to take AP exams.

If US News instead had a metric that tracked improvement of low-performing kids at a school over some years, then one could actually conclude that the school was truly doing a good job.

So what would you rather they use as criteria? Number of drug arrests? Number of teen pregnancies? Academic institutions are typically ranked using... academic criteria!

What if I told you that TJ operated beautifully - indeed, probably better and healthier than it does now - before the existence of systems to rank high schools?

I would rather they use NO criteria because ranking high schools is a needless endeavor and incentivizes the wrong behavior by schools, administrators, parents, and students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Congratulations for what??? It's a magazine ranking on a piece of paper. It's not like they have won some competitions.

Agreed. The made-up criteria by US News is quite arbitrary and self-fulfilling. For example, US News came up with "college readiness index" which simply looks at the percentage of kids who took and passed an AP exam. So of course magnet schools would be high up there. A typical school that serves a very poor and disadvantaged population obviously won't have the luxury of having so many kids able and ready to take AP exams.

If US News instead had a metric that tracked improvement of low-performing kids at a school over some years, then one could actually conclude that the school was truly doing a good job.

So what would you rather they use as criteria? Number of drug arrests? Number of teen pregnancies? Academic institutions are typically ranked using... academic criteria!

What if I told you that TJ operated beautifully - indeed, probably better and healthier than it does now - before the existence of systems to rank high schools?

I would rather they use NO criteria because ranking high schools is a needless endeavor and incentivizes the wrong behavior by schools, administrators, parents, and students.

You mean when TJ was not majority Asians?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Congratulations for what??? It's a magazine ranking on a piece of paper. It's not like they have won some competitions.

Agreed. The made-up criteria by US News is quite arbitrary and self-fulfilling. For example, US News came up with "college readiness index" which simply looks at the percentage of kids who took and passed an AP exam. So of course magnet schools would be high up there. A typical school that serves a very poor and disadvantaged population obviously won't have the luxury of having so many kids able and ready to take AP exams.

If US News instead had a metric that tracked improvement of low-performing kids at a school over some years, then one could actually conclude that the school was truly doing a good job.

So what would you rather they use as criteria? Number of drug arrests? Number of teen pregnancies? Academic institutions are typically ranked using... academic criteria!

DP: But if a school siphons off the best students from a school system and doesn't allow any of the weaker students it's going to be the "best" even if the teaching isn't that great at the school. There are a ton of other ways to consider educational quality--growth rates in students etc. But I think the PP is just suggesting that the magnet schools be considered in a different list because they can be a "great" school just by being located in a highly educated area and drawing students from a dense population. Even if they just had kids sit in a room with no teachers just doing AP exam prep on-line they could max out these scores.

TJ is not just the best in Virginia - it is the best HS in the entire country where we have hundreds of magnet/application high schools. It is recognized as the best of the best so it deserves recognition and appreciation.

TJ is ranked the best on paper

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Congratulations for what??? It's a magazine ranking on a piece of paper. It's not like they have won some competitions.

Agreed. The made-up criteria by US News is quite arbitrary and self-fulfilling. For example, US News came up with "college readiness index" which simply looks at the percentage of kids who took and passed an AP exam. So of course magnet schools would be high up there. A typical school that serves a very poor and disadvantaged population obviously won't have the luxury of having so many kids able and ready to take AP exams.

If US News instead had a metric that tracked improvement of low-performing kids at a school over some years, then one could actually conclude that the school was truly doing a good job.

So what would you rather they use as criteria? Number of drug arrests? Number of teen pregnancies? Academic institutions are typically ranked using... academic criteria!

What if I told you that TJ operated beautifully - indeed, probably better and healthier than it does now - before the existence of systems to rank high schools?

I would rather they use NO criteria because ranking high schools is a needless endeavor and incentivizes the wrong behavior by schools, administrators, parents, and students.

You mean when TJ was not majority Asians?

No, I mean before we started ranking high schools.

When we started ranking high schools a lot of people started pursuing TJ for the wrong reasons - prestige rather than fit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Notice how there isn't a discussion of #2. Academic Magnet High School (SC) that's 78% white, about its lack of diversity. Funny how a non-white majority that is excelling is taken down by woke whites in the name of 'equity.'

White wokes got woken when their kids couldn't make it. So they changed the process and removed the test. whites up 26%. asians down 26%. mission accomplished.

So you define best as those who spent the $$ to buy access to the test from the prep center?

Seems like the well prepped kids are keeping TJ on top.

One might believe that if these rankings had any merit but since we know it's just a reflection of the student's family's HHI this simply indicates that the admissions process overly favors the wealthy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Notice how there isn't a discussion of #2. Academic Magnet High School (SC) that's 78% white, about its lack of diversity. Funny how a non-white majority that is excelling is taken down by woke whites in the name of 'equity.'

White wokes got woken when their kids couldn't make it. So they changed the process and removed the test. whites up 26%. asians down 26%. mission accomplished.

So you define best as those who spent the $$ to buy access to the test from the prep center?

Seems like the well prepped kids are keeping TJ on top.

One might believe that if these rankings had any merit but since we know it's just a reflection of the student's family's HHI this simply indicates that the admissions process overly favors the wealthy.

TJ ranks higher than Langley!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Congratulations for what??? It's a magazine ranking on a piece of paper. It's not like they have won some competitions.

Agreed. The made-up criteria by US News is quite arbitrary and self-fulfilling. For example, US News came up with "college readiness index" which simply looks at the percentage of kids who took and passed an AP exam. So of course magnet schools would be high up there. A typical school that serves a very poor and disadvantaged population obviously won't have the luxury of having so many kids able and ready to take AP exams.

If US News instead had a metric that tracked improvement of low-performing kids at a school over some years, then one could actually conclude that the school was truly doing a good job.

So what would you rather they use as criteria? Number of drug arrests? Number of teen pregnancies? Academic institutions are typically ranked using... academic criteria!

You are wrongly assuming that US News (or any other ranking organization) is the rightful arbiter and judge for creating meaningful "academic criteria" for our K-12 public schools to be ranked and penalized with. These organizations are not led by peer-reviewed professionals who actually work in the fields of education research.

They take the most basic statistics available to the public, like AP exam participation and state standardized scores for different racial groups, and make all the conclusions about the schools based on those few numbers. They do not account for valuable school quality measures that can give you real insight into the success of the school itself like in-field teacher licensure, the educational attainment of the school's teachers and administrators, or tracking success of at-risk students.