Newsweek: where best means average.

Newsweek released their report of the "100 Best High Schools in America." Unfortunately, the popularity of this drivel is another instance of people blatantly following the misinformation disseminated by mass media, without finding out the facts, or doing their own research.

The first thing that I noticed is that neither Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, or The Hunter College High School are on that list. That seems a little bit strange, since in my years of wandering the halls of academia (in an undergraduate and graduate capacity), I am yet to meet anyone from the Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School (number 29).

The Columbia University Undergraduate Admissions Office has one admissions officer devoted just to Stuyvesant and Bronx Science; by comparison, they also have one admissions officer devoted to about twelve states in the Midwest. In high school, while participating in Math Olympiad contests, chess team tournaments, and the Intel Science Search, I remember scoping out my competition from Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Tech, Lowell, and Hunter, not from the Jefferson County High School in Alabama (number 1). And while I am at it, I should mention that Stuyvesant and Bronx Science have graduate more Nobel Laureates (4+7, respectively) than most medium-sized European nations. But I guess the people at Newsweek would dismiss all this as just some elitist banter from a blue-state Ivy League snob.

So what's wrong with this list, and why does it fail to mention some of the best schools in the country? Well, the most important fact to note is that it excludes all high schools which require an entrance exam. That automatically eliminates the three specialized math and science schools in NYC, Hunter, LaGuardia, and a number of other academically exceptional Ivy League feeder schools. They also exclude private and parochial schools, which is why you won't see Horace Mann, Trinity, or Phillips Exeter on that list.

Quoting the author: "I do not include any high school that accepts more than half of its students into the school based on highly competitive academic criteria like grades and test scores. [T]he Challenge Index is designed to honor schools that have done the best job in getting average students into college level courses. It does not work with schools that have no, or almost no, average students."

Besides that, the rating is based solely on this simplistic formula: the number of AP tests taken by all students divided by the number of graduating seniors. This unfairly favors very small schools. It also unfairly favors schools with financially well off students, since anyone who is willing to pay for it can take the AP test. This list says nothing about how the students actually do on the AP tests. Nor does it say anything about college acceptance rates, the percentage of the teaching staff with advanced degrees, and participation in the Intel Science Search and other academic contests - metrics which I find to be particularly valuable in assessing a high school.

Parents who are looking for accurate statistics are better off doing their own research instead of relying on Newsweek's simplistic and incorrect lists.