I went to private so my school is not rated.

My old elementary school was rated a 10. Also, my favorite teacher is still working there!

Mine is a 7 but last year's college admission list looks good.

The greatschools ratings are pretty silly. I see lots of small-town high schools rated 8 or higher in the in area where I used to live, but you better prefer agriculture courses to AP courses.

My HS is a 9. Back when I was there, the town was very much blue collar, offered few AP classes, and most kids either entered the workforce, went to trade school, and the top 20% or so went to four-year schools but very regional ones such as state directionals. I think I was the only student in my graduating class to go out of state for college. It was also one of those towns everyone has the same four or five last names. It was not an SES challenged school at all - we pretty much all lived your average Midwestern middle class lifestyle (think The Middle), but people really had no desire to leave the area.

Then, two things happened that made the school change- the mills started drying up and people realized they needed to get education beyond high school in order to be financially comfortable. There was also new housing growth in the district which brought more college educated parents. These two things led to the rise of AP classes, varied extracurriculars etc. and now it's one of the top high schools in the state, actually.

Anonymous wrote:Maybe not. Or maybe your old HS went downhill after you graduated.

Mine did. It's patheic to go a game, play or concert there now. Awful. And used to have award winning everything.

My parents, 65-70 yo, say the community feels the change was driven by the defunding of the extracurriculars (so now they're all a joke and offered after school, competing with sports practice) and the number of AP classes going up (stressing everyone out and causing class schedule issues, dropping out of more extracurriculars at the same time as AP whatever). Plus the teachers massively turned over. No idea how they are doing common core there, hopefully better than MCzoas did for its elementary school rollout.

I could have written this post. My HS is a 3 and I went to a top law school and am pretty successful. I think it is FAR easier to be a big fish in a small pond and outshine your peers at a low ranked school than to saddle your kids with all this pressure to succeed at top ranked schools like people all appear to want to do around here. I was much more attractive to colleges because of that.

Anonymous wrote:remember people, public schools were very different than when you went through them. this generation is the first to go through the combo of NCLB regs and an increased focus on testing AND common core. it's a very different ball game.

McLean and Langley have always been good , seems like the test scores just provided a way to quantify greatness.

^are very different, not were

remember people, public schools were very different than when you went through them. this generation is the first to go through the combo of NCLB regs and an increased focus on testing AND common core. it's a very different ball game.

I looked it up and my high school was a 9 which I expected. Fwiw I dated someone from another school in our district (only had 4 high schools at the time) where students came from a lower SES background. That school is rated a 6 which was also expected. about on par with when we were there 10-15 yrs ago.

The difference in student bodies was remarkable. Much less emphasis on academics and much more on partying. Lots of parents would go out of town and leave the kids at home. Stuff like that just never happened at my school, maybe in a small crowd. As a whole, many more from my school went to and finished college and have good jobs now. I still keep in touch with the ex and from what I can tell many of his classmates are bar tenders and single parents. Of course I'm sure there were students from his school who did well but I can't help but feel the environment and lack of parental involvement significantly altered outcomes for many.

Mine is is a 9 and was still good back in the 90s

Mine is a "10".

How is this possible. My high school is a 9 and the middle school is a 6. They share the same building connected by a very long hallway.