Congratulations to the Real Bay Area’s Best High Schools!
Congrats to the world famous Real Bay Area high school! Let’s see where they placed this year in the US News and World report rankings!
Let’s look and celebrate the ones in the Top 20!
Uh… Santa Cruz at 19? Well, that’s sort of Bay Area, but not Real Bay Area.
Let’s look and celebrate the ones in the Top 40!
What the heck? Where are they? Maybe we should filter by state. Let’s look at California only:
There we go. Now, sure, you can say that these are 76th, 134th, and 169th ranked nationally… but they are in the Top 10 in California, which means… drumroll… that they are Top 10 in the world!
Let’s take a quick look at our arch nemesis, New York:
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! These must all be lies!
Ok, let’s take a look at our other arch nemesis, New Jersey.
Hah. So it turns out those famous, good, New Jersey schools were just a lie. (This is pretty strange…)
July 16th, 2010 at 7:24 am
I’d like to know more about their methodology. I typed in Lowell HS in SF which is every city mother’s aspirational dream and it didn’t come up at all. Unless it has a new name something’s fishy here.
July 16th, 2010 at 9:21 am
What about La Jolla High? I remember reading an article about how they sent about 1/4 of their class on to Ivies. Have things changed so much in the last 10 years?
July 16th, 2010 at 9:24 am
The results of these studies need to taken with a grain of salt. Depending on the specific metrics used, the results can vary widely.
For instance, I once saw a study that was largely based on the average number of AP tests taken by students. In school districts that subsidized the fees for these tests, virtually everybody signed up for multiple AP tests, regardless of whether a student was likely to score 5′s or 1′s on them. In other schools, only those students likely to perform well actually sign up for the tests because it costs money.
July 16th, 2010 at 9:43 am
aa:
That is this very ranking. The methodology is simple:
1. Count the number of AP tests passed by all students at a given high school.
2. Divide that number by the number of graduating seniors
Boom, you are done. It heavily over-weighs AP tests.
It is painfully, embarrassingly simplistic, easily gamed, rewards schools teaching to tests and penalized schools that don’t go for volume.
Anyone who uses these rankings for much beyond, “That’s interesting” is a fool.
July 16th, 2010 at 9:53 am
The methodology says that they counted the number of AP tests give (regardless of outcome) and divided by the number of students. How is this garbage even published? The only high school I’m personally familiar with doesn’t even offer AP courses because they won’t build their courses around just learning the facts of the test. They think it’s more important to teach their students how to think critically, write clearly, explore subjects deeply and instill a lifelong love of learning. It’s a nationally known school that wouldn’t have even made the list. All of their students go on to college and usually about half go to Ivies. When the kids get to college they jump right into junior level classes. Emphasizing AP for the sake of AP strikes me as being deeply ignorant about how to teach our children.
July 16th, 2010 at 12:36 pm
You got it, maryjane. Just more fodder to feed parents’ neuroses.
July 16th, 2010 at 12:43 pm
The top 20 rankings changed since burbed took his screen cap. The new addition:
12 Science Academy of South Texas Mercedes TX 8.119 43 60
Did someone over there have a hissy fit?
July 16th, 2010 at 12:46 pm
Never mind. See FAQ page, number 2:
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/06/13/america-s-best-high-schools-faq.html
maryjane: We do not include any magnet or charter high school that draws such a high concentration of top students that its average SAT or ACT score significantly exceeds the highest average for any normal-enrollment school in the country. This year that meant such schools had to have an average SAT score below 1,975 or an average ACT score below 29 to be included on the list.
July 16th, 2010 at 1:30 pm
I was, uhh, “asked to leave” Lynbrook high after my sophomore year in 94. I have no high school equivalency. I never took the GED, never completed elsewhere. I just went straight to De Anza, and have since gotten an BSEE, and MSEE, and a JD.
July 16th, 2010 at 1:33 pm
The way they decided to rank the schools is just laughable. The title of the list should be’ Top Mediocre Schools that Emphasize Memorization over Learning’.
July 16th, 2010 at 2:02 pm
The worship of AP classes is one of the biggest problems in education today. If your school offers them you have to take them if you’re planning to go to a decent college. The high school will value a B in an AP course as a 4.0, so if you get an A you get a 5.0. You then have B students who think they’re really 4.0 students and a whole bunch of kids with GPA’s around 4.5.
I know of one child who went to a school that didn’t offer AP courses but got all A’s. When she applied to the UC’s she got back letters telling her to go to a community college for two years and try to reapply. Instead she went to school near Boston. (Ahem) They were familiar with the high school and it’s reputation. Apparently the UC’s either didn’t know or didn’t care. They were so number driven that a 4.0 from one of the most prestigious high schools in the country wasn’t enough to get their attention.
July 16th, 2010 at 5:27 pm
#11: Too many applicants to UC so they probably use spreadsheets to decide who gets to go. If this school across the river from Boston was established in 1636, then they still have a real human being read every application folder.
The same problem exists with parents who go by state tests and nothing else, leading to drill-and-kill schools like Faria with their occasional 1000 API scores. Or as my eldest puts it, “Monta Vista isn’t ‘the best,’ they just have the best scores. We beat them in just about every sport. And same for Kennedy, their teams suck.”
#9, did you go straight to de Anza after being encouraged to seek other educational opportunities? My brother asked to do an accelerated program to graduate a year early, something they had let another kid do, and they told him no, you’re doing your senior year and you can graduate then. he said, I’ve already been admitted to Rutgers, bye-bye. They just asked him to take HS English over the summer. Like you, no HS degree, just BSME and MBA.
July 16th, 2010 at 5:56 pm
Here’s a few schools often mentioned on burbed.
134 – Gunn HS, Palo Alto
217 – Lynbrook HS, San Jose (Fremont Union)
249 – Monta Vista HS, Cupertino
321 – Saratoga HS, Saratoga
408 – Mountain View HS, Mountain View
444 – Palo Alto HS, Palo Alto
552 – Los Altos HS, Los Altos
623 – Cupertino HS, Cupertino
646 – Los Gatos HS, Los Gatos
771 – Homestead HS, Cupertino
1076 – Pioneer HS, San Jose
1475 – Fremont HS, Sunnyvale
Wow, Paly is just DEATH on Chinese-American families.
July 16th, 2010 at 10:18 pm
Paly has a more well-rounded program than Gunn. If you want your kid to be a engineer, Gunn is the place. If you want your kid to run a company, Paly is where you want to be.
July 16th, 2010 at 10:32 pm
huh. If I had a kid, I’d want them to decide for his or herself what they want to do with their life. There’s that whole self-actualization thing again.
July 16th, 2010 at 10:35 pm
If I want my kid to run a company, I’ll certainly not leave it up to a high school
July 16th, 2010 at 10:40 pm
DreamT,
Try applying to college without high school.
July 16th, 2010 at 10:41 pm
nomadic,
Why don’t you hold your comment until you have a kid?
July 16th, 2010 at 10:52 pm
#17 – .. I wouldn’t leave it up to a college either. The qualities required to enjoy running a company are not acquired at school, but at home. The school will merely help the kid run the company successfully.
July 17th, 2010 at 10:42 am
Try applying to college without high school.
#17, meet #9, and #12′s brother. It can indeed be done without a HS degree. Are you seriously suggesting there are people who don’t go to HS at all because they don’t live in Palo Alto?
July 17th, 2010 at 11:13 am
Real Estater- “Why don’t you hold your comment until you have a kid?”
And how many kids to you have?
July 17th, 2010 at 11:33 am
If you want your kid to run a company, Paly is where you want to be.
—-
How many of them are running companies? Has Paly started making Jobs/Brin/Page/Zuckerberg clones “like sausages”?
July 17th, 2010 at 11:36 am
And how many kids to you have?
—-
Don’t question a “high scorer” rabbit.
July 18th, 2010 at 12:28 am
If I want my kid to run a company, I’ll teach him how to abuse dumb-dumbs like Faux Estater and screw people by banging his wife.
Wait. That’s my lesson plan for becoming a politician.
July 21st, 2010 at 3:06 pm
Burbed,
Those are the Newsweek Rankings, US News is at http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/high-schools/2009/12/09/americas-best-high-schools-gold-medal-list.html
Newsweek doesn’t list my high school in the rankings because there is an entrance exam, I’m guessing it is the same deal for Lowell.
I’m kind of critical of both particularly Newsweek since all they do is take the number of AP exams taken and divide it by the number of graduating seniors. It doesn’t matter how well students do on the AP exam, this in part has lead to some school districts to jam AP courses regardless of how appropriate it is.