Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How are those graduation rates calculated? If a student is not on diploma track, are they still included in the numbers? LFI, SCB, and Autism are certificate-track programs so any school that houses them (and some have multiple) would take a hit if so. For example, Wheaton has LFI and SCB. Einstein has LFI, SCB, and Extensions. BCC has nothing. Nor does Blair or Poolesville. It wouldn't be a huge hit, but it would be a few percentage points.

What are LFI and SCB?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you want to base your ratings on something, at least do it by graduation rates. You can come up with your own tiers from here.

1. Walt Whitman High (97.9 percent)
2. Thomas S. Wootton High (97.8 percent)
3. Winston Churchill High (97.4 percent)
4. Poolesville High (96.2 percent)
5. Walter Johnson High (95.8 percent)
6. Quince Orchard High (95.6 percent)
7. Northwest High (94.95 percent)
8. Bethesda-Chevy Chase High (94.42 percent)
9. Damascus High (93.98 percent)
10. Sherwood High (93.89 percent)
11. Richard Montgomery High (92.24 percent)
12. Clarksburg High (91.52 percent)
13. Paint Branch High (90.55 percent)
14. James Hubert Blake High (90.21 percent)
15. Montgomery Blair High (86.21 percent)
16. Col. Zadok Magruder High (89.59 percent)
17. Springbrook High (87.83 percent)
18. Seneca Valley High (86.21 percent)
19. Rockville High (86.02 percent)
20. Watkins Mill High (84.5 percent)
21. Albert Einstein High (81.93 percent)
22. John F. Kennedy High (81.22 percent)
23. Northwood High (79.36 percent)
24. Gaithersburg High (77.39 percent)
25. Wheaton High (77.36 percent)

Eh, I went to a small rural high school that had a 99.9 percent graduation rate (low FARMS rate too), and something like 90% of us went to college in the fall. So I guess you could say we were a fantastic high school. But then I would also tell you that there were no AP classes, very few kids got to calculus, no National Merit Scholars, I was in honors English classes the entire time and only read one complete novel in four years, few kids did 4 years of foreign languages, there were few specialized courses beyond the basic history, math, English, sciences, we had no rigorous instruction in writing papers, and most of the schools that students headed out to were community colleges or some local branches of the state university system. Very, very few top tier schools, probably 2-3 per class (by which I mean a school like Notre Dame).

So you know, there are different ways of saying how excellent a school is. I'd take my child's amazing high school education at Blair with its 86.21% graduation rate any day over my 99.9% graduation rate high school. It's 10x more rigorous than what I experienced.

Anonymous wrote:Here's a few more added.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Great schools rankings are as follows

Churchill-10
BCC-9
Poolesville-9
WJ-9
Wootton-9
Damascus-8
Quince Orchard-8
Whitman-8
Clarksburg-7
Northwest-7
Sherwood-7
Magruder-6
Montgomery Blair-6
Paint Branch-5
Rockville-5
Seneca Valley-4
Springbrook-4
Watkins Mill-4
Wheaton-4

GreatSchools rankings are meaningless drivel. This is a simple average that merely reflects an areas SES and has nothing to do with educational outcomes. It also fails to capture the racist nonsense and bullying that are ubiquitous at schools like Churchill.