U.S. News and World Report has released its annual list of the top-performing high schools in the country.
On that list, Decatur High School is ranked 17th in the state of Georgia, #476 nationwide and received a “Gold” award from the publication. You can view a more detailed version of Decatur’s ranking HERE.
Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science and Technology in Lawrenceville was the #1 ranked school in the state.
U.S. News uses a 3 step methodology to determine ranks.
- Step 1: The first step determined whether each school’s students were performing better than statistically expected for students in their state.
- Step 2: For schools passing this first step, the second step assessed whether their disadvantaged students – black, Hispanic and low-income – were outperforming disadvantaged students in the state.
- Step 3: Schools that made it through the first two steps became eligible to be judged nationally on the final step – college-readiness performance – using Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate test data as the benchmarks for success, depending on which program was largest at the school.
Photo courtesy of Wikipedia
It’s important to note that this is based on 2012-2013 data. Enrollment is at least 12% higher now and I’ll bet that the sociodemographic make-up of the student body has changed a bit.
Having just returned from a talk by the foreman of the APS jury, I will no longer put stock in any rankings based on test scores. He told us that 70% of Georgia schools were flagged with at least one classroom with testing abnormalities, meaning that there was only a 1 in 263 (pretty sure that is number) chance that the number of wrong answers changed to correct answers was naturally occurring.
(Not to take anything away from DHS, which is a wonderful school.)
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/05/why-high-school-rankings-are-meaningless-and-harmful/276122/
Just because the rankings are imperfect doesn’t provide value. The imperfection is what can be highlighted and improved so to understand the ROI of a specific school.
Four of the top five schools are magnet programs. I’m sure they are great schools, but there’s a big difference between excelling with a student body which is “selected” via an application process versus excelling with whichever students happen to live in the district.
Yes, Jeff. And a lot of the other top schools are in relatively affluent areas. But Decatur’s student population, while somewhat more diverse, is getting less and less diverse.