Reply to Academic strength of Sidwell and Landon

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[quote=SAM2][quote=Anonymous][quote=SAM2]
If you're the type to credit the WSJ/Worth methodology, then you might subscribe to my analysis, because it's just an extension of the same approach that makes it more robust. Alternatively, if you want a bigger palette of colleges, but few high schools and fewer years of data, then you'll likely subscribe to Matriculationstats. [/quote]
My whole point is that your approach is not more robust and that Matriculationstats has [i]more [/i]years of data and is much more current.  [/quote]
Perhaps I'm not making myself clear enough. I used the [u]exact same data[/u] as Matriculationstats. In fact, I'm the one who led him to much of his DC data. In addition, I used the WSJ/Worth data. I suppose everyone is entitled to decide for herself whether or not the addition of extra years of data to the WSJ/Worth approach leads to something more robust than the original WSJ/Worth analysis. And I'm not suggesting my approach is better or worse than Matriculationstats' approach -- they're just different. 
[quote]I give up trying to persuade you, and presume others wouldn't persuade you to change your methodology either, because then different schools might emerge on top in your rankings.  I suspect there's some sort of a bias.[/quote]
I'm disappointed by your accusation. I've tried to make clear that I really don't care which schools come out "on top," and I don't even think any of this analysis lends itself to ranking of schools. Take a look at NCS, for example. It's numbers are varied -- high in some respects, and not-so-high in others. I'd look at this data and say NCS has very strong students academically, but I don't think I could legitimately "rank" it as the 3rd or 4th best school, or the 1st or the 10th. It's just a good school like many others in DC/MD/VA. It might be the absolute perfect school for one child, but a terrible school for another.

Maybe one reason you and I are not seeing eye-to-eye is that you're more interested in using data to rank the schools, while I'm focused on using the data as just one tool for comparing and contrasting the schools. Maybe those different viewpoints come from where we are in life. My kids are far too young to attend any of these schools, so I'm more interested in studying them to consider which schools my children might one day attend. It sounds like you might have more of a connection to some of these schools.

In any event, I'm glad you're interested. If you can find more/better data on any schools, please let me know so I can include it.[/quote]

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