Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most people (parents) erroneously think that the Challenge Index is some sort of school achievement measurement. It is not meant to be that and there are plenty of other, better tools for that task.

Matthews has been pretty explicit about his goal, which is to encourage districts to offer their richer, more challenging curriculum to a broader base of students beside just the elite students.

If that's the case, then he shouldn't be including WIS, NCS, etc., in the rankings. By any definition, those populations will consist almost entirely of "elite students," or at least students who have had an "elite education."

I have a child at one of those and agree that simply counting the number of kids who take an AP or IB test is not an accurate measure of a school's worth.

It at least contextualizes the public offerings. WIS, NCS are in there to compare to TJ, McLean, Whitman etc.

Different poster. Matthews actually pulls TJ and other magnets out of the list, saying it's because schools like TJ aren't aimed at average students, as evidenced by their high SAT scores. But he leaves in the private schools with similarly high SAT scores, which doesn't make a lot of sense on its face.

Personally, I think he's got three competing goals, which leads to how he does things:

(1) Compare average populations on how many students challenge themselves by taking AP exams. This is why he creates the list. Makes sense to me. Not the best methodology, but I guess it's one.

(2) Protect TJ. Matthews simply loves TJ. He doesn't want to leave it in the mix because it gets beaten by several other school. Also, it highlights the weakness of his methodology because he has to explain why schools with weaker track records than TJ score better. So to avoid these problems, he pulls TJ and other magnet schools out of the list and "recognizes" them separately on his "elite schools" list.

(3) Take a potshot at private schools. Matthews doesn't like private schools, and rarely misses an opportunity to knock them. I suspect he'll even come out with a column in the next few days where he points out that many expensive private schools don't do so well on his challenge index. He'll suggest parents aren't getting their money's worth, and also will criticize the private schools for withholding the data he uses to include them in his rankings. I consider this silly because many of those private schools have SAT averages just as high as the magnet schools he pulls off his list, and the private schools kids are just as non-representative. But Matthews leaves them in the rankings for the same reason he pulls TJ off - he wants to protect TJ from competition, but wants to put the private schools in competition.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's the dumbest methodology. A school would be #1 in the country if it made every 9th grader take 20 AP exams and 90% of them dropped out afterwards. It wouldn't even matter if the kids got all 1s on the tests.

As research has shown, the rigor of one's high school courseload is more predictive of college success than SAT scores. That's why this methodology is used. There are lots of rankings out there that just look at SAT scores or Ivy acceptances. You are free to consult those as well.

Loading up a donkey with broken legs and expecting them to finish isn't a good idea.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:here is why this scoring is pretty much worthless

2. Why do you count only the number of tests given, and not how well the students do on the tests?

Some schools brag about their high passing rates on AP or IB, meaning the percentage of test-takers who scored 3, 4 or 5 on the 5-point AP exam or 4, 5, 6 or 7 on the 7-point IB exam. Passing scores make students eligible for credit at many colleges and universities.

I decided not to count passing rates in this way because I found that many high schools kept those rates artificially high by allowing only top students to take the courses. AP, IB and Cambridge are important because they give average students a chance to experience the trauma of heavy college reading lists and long, analytical college examinations. Research has found that even low-performing students who got a 2 on an AP test did significantly better in college than similar students who did not take AP.

I actually think this methodology makes a ton of sense. And the bolded part explains why having kids at Ballou take APs makes all the sense in the world (I mean, apart from giving kids from all walks of life challenge and opportunity, which I think is reason enough). An AP class is more rigorous and thus is better prep not just for college but for life.

No, this is nonsense. Having high expectations and providing rigorous classroom and extra-curricula activities has nothing to do with rigor. When you have students at CHEC who need intensive ESL support in order for them to have any hope at succeeding in college or a job it makes no sense sitting them in an AP class. When I have high school students who don't know how to use a period, capital letter or a comma that is the instruction they need. They need to be taught other strategies and skills that DCPS is not providing and sitting in a dumbed down AP class when they could be sitting in an enriching class to build them up and plug in the gaps is what is important. I don't understand this mentality that only AP is rigor.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:here is why this scoring is pretty much worthless

2. Why do you count only the number of tests given, and not how well the students do on the tests?

Some schools brag about their high passing rates on AP or IB, meaning the percentage of test-takers who scored 3, 4 or 5 on the 5-point AP exam or 4, 5, 6 or 7 on the 7-point IB exam. Passing scores make students eligible for credit at many colleges and universities.

I decided not to count passing rates in this way because I found that many high schools kept those rates artificially high by allowing only top students to take the courses. AP, IB and Cambridge are important because they give average students a chance to experience the trauma of heavy college reading lists and long, analytical college examinations. Research has found that even low-performing students who got a 2 on an AP test did significantly better in college than similar students who did not take AP.

I actually think this methodology makes a ton of sense. And the bolded part explains why having kids at Ballou take APs makes all the sense in the world (I mean, apart from giving kids from all walks of life challenge and opportunity, which I think is reason enough). An AP class is more rigorous and thus is better prep not just for college but for life.

Anonymous wrote:here is why this scoring is pretty much worthless

2. Why do you count only the number of tests given, and not how well the students do on the tests?

Some schools brag about their high passing rates on AP or IB, meaning the percentage of test-takers who scored 3, 4 or 5 on the 5-point AP exam or 4, 5, 6 or 7 on the 7-point IB exam. Passing scores make students eligible for credit at many colleges and universities.

I decided not to count passing rates in this way because I found that many high schools kept those rates artificially high by allowing only top students to take the courses. AP, IB and Cambridge are important because they give average students a chance to experience the trauma of heavy college reading lists and long, analytical college examinations. Research has found that even low-performing students who got a 2 on an AP test did significantly better in college than similar students who did not take AP.